Experiential exhibitions and difficult history
The reclaiming of Shingwauk Hall was initiated by Shingwauk Indian Residential School survivors and its current occupants, Algoma University and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig.
“There’s a large Shingwauk Survivor community, which has been gathering since 1981,” says Cooper-Bolam. “The survivor-directed Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre has amassed the largest archive on residential schools in this part of the country, and it’s a major centre for learning and research on residential schools.”
Her background in various disciplines — including management and design and a stint at the Legacy of Hope Foundation — will inform Cooper-Bolam’s approach to commemorating and honouring this difficult subject matter.
She is looking to develop new tools to manifest lost physical environments and recover associated memories. Cooper-Bolam says she hopes to apply cutting-edge technology such as virtual reality and 3D modelling, which has been used by tech companies like Ubisoft and the Moment Factory in Montreal to create an immersive virtual-storytelling environment.
“I’m looking to expand the repertoire we use to reckon with difficult subject matter in exhibitions,” she says.
The aim is to create a unique experience of place at the site, with an educational or pedagogic aim as well. Or, as Cooper-Bolam describes it, “putting immersive storytelling technology in the service of survivors.”
The work will be done every step of the way in collaboration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous site-based partners with whom Cooper-Bolam has developed relationships over many years. The exhibition will be oriented by Indigenous experiences, knowledge systems and ways of being.
“I have no personal history with residential schools, but the people from whom I’m descended are more likely to have taught in a residential school than to have been students at one. I have a responsibility to that inheritance,” Cooper-Bolam explains.
“Museums have for decades attempted to inhibit or prevent the recurrence of violence, to foster an ethic of ‘never again.’ I hope to contribute critical museum methods to that effort.”
Learn more about Concordia’s Department of History.