Neepawa and Area Immigrant Settlement Services (NAISS), an organisation that works with permanent residents and temporary foreign workers in the region, has partnered with the National Indigenous Residential School Museum of Canada to help newcomers become more aware of and understand Indigenous culture and history. NAISS and the Residential School Museum held two sessions, one which was open and aimed at adults and a second private session for students in the SWIS program.

Gladys Ragandang, Settlement Workers in Schools (SWIS) Coordinator for NAISS, said that the project has been in the works for a couple of years now. Indigenous history and the history of residential schools is a part of Canada that doesn’t often get talked about, especially outside of the country. Ragandang said that it was important for them to help newcomers understand that it’s more than Orange Shirt Day and pow-wows. 

One participant even mentioned during the session that when they took their citizenship test, there was only one paragraph that dealt with Indigenous Canadians, so most of what they were learning was new information for them. Other questions dealt with how children were separated from their families, and whether the schools were optional.

The sessions, headed by the museum’s executive director Lorraine Daniels, connected first-hand accounts of residential schools and a history of Indigenous peoples in Canada with the realities of contemporary life in Canada for Indigenous people, settlers, and newcomers.