A research project examining the experiences of Indigenous residents of the Mohawk Institute Residential School and the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium has received more than $2 million dollars in funding.

Re-Neighbouring as Reconciliation: Indigenous Stories of Resistance, a multi-year project led by Indigenous Studies and Sociology associate professor Vanessa Watts, will explore how residential schools and the forced displacement of Inuit to tuberculosis sanatoriums were both part of the same colonial process of assimilation.

It will also bring together survivors and community members from both experiences in a process called “re-neighbouring,” with a goal of fostering a sense of community and reversing the isolation they experienced.

 “I am very excited about this project, and it is a privilege for our research team to be engaging with Indigenous organizations that provide such crucial and innovative programming in their communities,” said Watts.

The project, which is already underway, is designed to promote collective understanding of reconciliation by advancing an Indigenous-led, place-based perspective that brings together First Nations, Métis, and Inuit research methodologies and knowledge frameworks, Watts said.

More than 1,200 tuberculosis patients from Eastern Arctic Inuit groups were treated at the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium after being separated from their communities in the years after the Second World War.

Just 40 kilometres west, more than 15,000 First Nations children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the Mohawk Institute residential school between 1828 and 1970.

Forced to stay in colonial institutions that were relatively close together, members of these two communities had no opportunity to meet, let alone foster community or learn from each other’s experiences.

Watts’ research project aims to “re-neighbour” the two groups — bringing survivors and members of both communities together to share their stories and create the connections that were denied to them by the colonial institutions.

“This work calls on us to consider reconciliation as a form of both remembrance and transformation by promoting education, culture, and justice through the novel concept of re-neighbouring, which reverses the colonial logic of displacement by imagining historical and future Indigenous proximities in co-productive and Indigenous-led terms.” 

Watts is joined on the project by co-investigators Chelsea Gabel, Bonnie Freeman and Amber Dean from McMaster, and Kara Granzow from the University of Lethbridge.

The project received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant worth $975,598. Together with contributions from McMaster, the University of Lethbridge and partner organizations, the total value of funding has reached $2,008,048.

The grant for this project is provided through the Reconciliation Network, a partnership between the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and SSHRC.

It was created in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 65, which calls for the establishment of a national research program to advance the collective understanding of reconciliation.

This project is one of six across Canada that will play a crucial role in advancing Indigenous research, research training and knowledge mobilization in the social sciences and humanities, said Madelaine Ricard, knowledge mobilization coordinator at the NCTR.

“The Reconciliation Network is a great opportunity to enhance collaboration and Indigenous ways of knowing in research fields,” Ricard said.

“The goal is to create research that is not only by and for Indigenous peoples, but that is centred in Indigenous approaches to knowledge sharing, while being inclusive and accessible to all.”

The project will see Watts partnering with various organizations such as the Woodland Cultural Centre and the Nunavut Arctic College.

The project will help in the healing process in the aftermath of the harmful historical practices, said Heather George, executive director of the Woodland Cultural Centre, which operates on the site of the old Mohawk Institute.

“This project demonstrates the importance of relationships of solidarity and care across Indigenous nations and communities to address the harmful and challenging histories associated with state sponsored removal of children from our communities,” said George.

“Masked behind terms like education and health care is a history of harm, tragedy and genocide experienced by Survivors, and their families, of the Mohawk Institute Residential School and the Hamilton Sanatorium.”