The National Indigenous Residential School Museum in Portage la Prairie
In 2025, RRC Polytech began offering two new professional development opportunities for staff and faculty to expand their journeys in Truth and Reconciliation – tours of the Witness Blanket at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the National Indigenous Residential School Museum in Portage la Prairie.
On tours of the museum, participants view footage recounting the Portage la Prairie Residential School’s history, which features Survivors sharing their stories and the journey to make the building a place of truth. Museum tour guides take the participants through different rooms curated with historical objects sourced from Residential Schools all over Canada and explain their uses within the context of students’ experiences.
Every story comes from a Survivor, or the families of Survivors, to contextualize the exhibits and the histories shared throughout the museum. Each room features different artifacts to illustrate the quality of life at Residential Schools.
Plastic dishes of fake oatmeal and dry bread demonstrated the kind of nutrition offered to students. Fine china with fake cuts of meat, vegetables, and fruits show what the priests and nuns ate three times a day every day. This exhibit was just one of many that participants walked through to learn more about daily life in Residential Schools.
After participants tour the classroom exhibits on the main floor, guides lead them outside to explore the museum grounds, which include the Golden Eagle Memorial and a community garden.
The Portage la Prairie Residential School was founded in 1886 and the school’s building closed 89 years later in 1975. In 1981, Long Plain First Nation obtained the land as part of an outstanding treaty land entitlement and opened as Yellowquill College three years later. Yellowquill College moved to Winnipeg in 2000 and the building was converted into an office space. In 2005, the former school was designated as a Provincial Heritage Site and later in 2020, it was designated as a National Historic Site where it became the National Indigenous Residential School Museum we have today.
After a recent tour, participants also visited the RRC Polytech Portage Campus to eat lunch and come together in a Sharing Circle led by Knowledge Keeper and instructor Marilyn Dykstra. Each person processed the experience by sharing what they knew and felt during the tour and how the stories impacted their understanding of Residential Schools, racism, and intergenerational trauma.
Haley Pratt, Navigation Coach, Indigenous Education, says that she didn’t learn about Residential Schools until she went to university – which is true for many earlier generations of Canadians due to gaps in curriculum.
“It really opened my eyes. What I learned back then was so shocking, I wanted to know everything I could,” says Pratt. “Even when going to the museum, there’s always more to learn. It’s an experience that everyone should have, to understand Indigenous history and help reduce discrimination. Learning from a textbook is one thing, but being there surrounded by the physical history of those stories is completely different.”
Knowing what Residential School Survivors endured and being able to relate those stories with the environment and the historical evidence captured in documents and artifacts helped many people understand why and how Residential Schools affected so many people and families.
Beyond the abuse students faced at the hands of priests, nuns, and government officials, the cultural genocide embedded into policy – an execution order to “kill the Indian in the child” – fundamentally stripped away everything with which Indigenous children understood the world, themselves, and their families. Without the connection to their families and the land, children learned what was imposed on them through the schools. Children learned worthlessness, punishment, and deprivation. They learned that the people that would hurt them would not be held to account.
Entire generations of people went through a system designed to change them. For millennia, Indigenous Peoples navigated these lands as part of them – everything they needed to exist and thrive was learned from one generation to the next in symbiosis with the land, water, and animals.
Residential Schools intentionally broke that ancestral cycle on a great scale. Without their languages, their communities, and their identities, Indigenous children had to adapt to the new society with what they learned in the schools. The sacred Ceremonies and Medicines that supported physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing were cut away. Many former students turned to whatever was available to ease or express their pain and loneliness.
Such conditioning, passed on from student to child, has contributed to disproportionate rates of addiction, suicide, houselessness, mental illness, incarceration, and crime among Indigenous Peoples throughout Canada. Residential Schools were but a cog in the machine designed to assimilate and eliminate Indigenous Peoples – along with the Indian Act, the buffalo runs, the reserve and pass systems, and the Sixties’ Scoop, among many others.
Victoria Iroawuchi, Career Advisor, WIL, says that she learned a lot about Residential Schools in the course of her education and the tour put a lot of her knowledge into perspective.
“With the maltreatment that happened in those schools leading to intergenerational trauma, it made me understand why some Indigenous students I work with, when they get offers to work at crown organizations, why they don’t immediately accept offers with institutions like that,” said Iroawuchi.
The National Indigenous Residential School Museum is dedicated to teaching people the history of Canada’s Residential School system and looks forward to curating more exhibits to share students’ stories. Canadians can learn about what was glossed over or neglected in history books, and Indigenous people can learn about the stories their families don’t talk about due to pain, fear, and shame.
For members of the RRC Polytech community, understanding the intergenerational effects of the Residential School system is essential to curbing preconceived notions about Indigenous Peoples. Our commitment to Truth and Reconciliation and improving the post-secondary education experience for Indigenous learners start with each and every one of us – instructors and support staff that work with students every day, administrative staff that shape and promote our institutional culture, and decision-makers that chart the course for our future.
If you’d like to register for the National Indigenous Residential School Museum Tour in Portage la Prairie, go to HRIS > My Portal > My Learning > Learning Library > More > search “Residential School”.
