Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City

While often used interchangeably with Ojibwe, Anishinaabe refers to a group of culturally related Indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the US. The Ojibwe are one of these groups. The Anishinaabe speak Anishinaabe languages, which belong to the Algonquian language family.

The Presbyterian Church ran the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School between 1929 and 1969. The school was named after Cecilia Jeffrey, a white woman whose dream was “to build a school to teach the children English and to prepare them to live in the white world” (69), thinking it could “save” the Indigenous children. Among local Indigenous groups, however, the school was well-known for its excessive corporal punishments. Because of this cruelty, Indigenous families started refusing to send their children to the school. Some students ran away to escape punishment.

The school officially closed in 1976. The residential school was demolished, although the baseball diamond still survives. The local Indigenous peoples think it was a burial ground and avoid it. Today, a “single-storey sky-blue office building” (64) stands on its grounds. This building is the home of the tribal council. Elder Thomas White plans to set up a display for the survivors and their families so that they can see what remains of the residential school.