Community Practice & Archives at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre

The residential school system in Canada was created to forcefully assimilate Indigenous children into settler society. It was only recently that the last residential school closed in Canada, and the harm it has caused cannot be understated. Arising from this is the need for remembering and educating, as a community, about the atrocious acts, and the lives that were, and continue to be, affected.

Join Krista McCracken as they talk about the Shingwauk Residential School Centre with a focus on community archives as a way of telling the history of the residential school system.

About Krista McCracken, Public Historian, Archivist, Interim Director of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre

Krista McCracken is an award winning public historian and archivist.  They are the interim Director of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre at Algoma University.  Krista’s research focuses on community archives, Residential Schools, access, and outreach.  Krista is an editor of the popular Canadian history website Activehistory.ca. They are 2021-2022 President of the Archives Association of Ontario. They also serve as member of the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives – Response to the Report on the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force.

In 2020, they won the best article in Indigenous History prize awarded by the Canadian Historical Association’s Indigenous History Group for their article “Challenging Colonial Spaces: Reconciliation and Decolonizing Work in Canada’s Archives.”  They have two ongoing book projects, Decolonial Archival Futures with Skylee-Storm Hogan and Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in LIS with Kalani Adolpho and Stephen Krueger.

About Moska Rokay, Digital Humanities Research Fellow, Archivist

Moska Rokay is the Digital Humanities Research Fellow at the Institute of Islamic Studies (University of Toronto) tasked with coordinating the Muslims in Canada Archives (MiCA). She is an advocate for community-centered, activist archives, especially of diaspora communities. She completed her Master of Information at the University of Toronto (2019). In 2020, she was the recipient of the ACA New Professional Award and Archivaria’s Gordon Dodds Student Paper Prize. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) as Director Without Portfolio. 

 About the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre

The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre is an archival repository and cross-cultural education centre within Algoma University with a special mandate to collect and preserve material relating to the legacy residential schools in Canada, healing and reconciliation, and Indigenous communities. It is jointly governed by the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and Algoma University. 

About the Muslims in Canada Archives (MiCA): 

The Muslims in Canada Archives (MiCA), a collaborative and participatory initiative at the Institute for Islamic Studies (IIS), provides a platform for the missing Muslim voices in Canada.  MiCA acquires, organizes, preserves, and makes accessible records of and about Canadian Muslim individuals and organizations that possess enduring value for the preservation of the history and documentary heritage of Muslims in Canada. 

Community Collaborations Learning Series

The Community Collaborations Learning  Series is a series of collaborative events where MiCA hosts a discussion or talk with an archive or related public history/community storytelling/cultural heritage initiative. These events allow MiCA to leverage its platform and audience to showcase the multitude of archives and archives-adjacent initiatives to a wider audience and learn from other related initiatives about community-centred, decolonial, anti-racist, and radical archival practice.