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| Indian & Métis Friendship Centre, Winnipeg |
I had an opportunity to speak with researchers Darrell Chippaway and Larry Morrisette about their work cataloguing
and preserving the history of Aboriginal organizations in Winnipeg. This is a
SSHRC funded project combining the expertise of the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg,
Aboriginal Community Groups and organizations and various Elders. The
researchers including Kathy Mallett, Evelyn Peters and John Loxley are
attempting to gather the reports, records, meeting minutes, notes and photos
from as far back as the 1960s Aboriginal institutions. Many of the principal
Aboriginal organizations started in the 1960s, but because they have been
attempting to build their programming they have not put resources to
documenting their past. The Western Scientific empiric-historical method of
writing about history often excludes histories that have not been written. This
preservation of the archives of these organizations will show the development
of Aboriginal agency within our great city.
We spent time discussing the history of the
school of Children of the Earth, the Winnipeg Indian and the Métis Friendship Center
(started in 1958 and run by a Board of non-Aboriginal peoples (Moonyas)). The
ignoring of urban Aboriginal people by too many researchers (often searching
for the last exotic tribe for the kernels of past truth) is being rectified by
this collective of academics.
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