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PAGC to create virtual residential school museum

May 23, 2013 | 6:52 AM

The Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC) announced it plans to launch a new Indian Residential School Virtual Museum later this year.

“It’s a way to really educate people, both First Nations and non-First Nations, about the residential school system and experience of the PAGC First Nations,” said the virtual museum’s curator Jalal Fietz.

The museum features a timeline of life for First Nations residents before, during and after the residential schools came into existence.

“Really we want to look at three time periods, life just prior to residential schools, life during the residential schools, and the aftermath and how people are going forward after they left,” said Fietz.

However, Fietz said during the time of the residential schools, records were not well kept, so there is no way to determine exactly how many former residential school students are living now in the PAGC area.

“There’s no place that we can go and see ‘okay these people went to this school and these people went to this school,’” said Fietz. “So that is what we’re hoping to do.”

The online museum may also be the first of its kind in the country for residential schools.

“There’s information about residential schools online, (but) none that is specifically a residential school museum,” said Fietz. “There’s lot of information from archives but there’s nothing specifically from the PAGC area, and that’s what we really want to focus on.”

While this project is starting out as a virtual experience only, Fietz says the ultimate goal of the PAGC is to have a physical building dedicated to the artifacts and testimonies of this time.

She said that the museum is meant to feature stories from as many of the former residential school students.

“We’ve already collected about six or seven interviews from various people (in the PAGC area) about their residential school experience,” said Fietz. “We hope that people who did go through the residential school experience will contact us and will be willing to share with us their stories and photographs.”

Fietz said she they hope to have the virtual museum running with the material they have so far towards the end of November.

“There will be exhibits, and there will also be the full catalog online,” said Fietz. “So people can see all of the objects, photographs and interviews that we’ve been able to collect from this area.”

The project was funded by the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

Fietz said they will be traveling to the various treaty days in the Prince Albert area to hand out information on the project.

“We really want to welcome people to share their stories with us.”

She said that individuals she has contacted so far have reacted both positive and negatively towards the organization about sharing their experiences.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim