A University of Winnipeg history professor’s book and art exhibition, which trace the exploitation of student labour at an Ontario residential school, have collected two awards in recent weeks.
Nii Ndahlohke: Boys’ and Girls’ Work at Mount Elgin Industrial School 1890-1915 by Dr. Mary Jane McCallum and Nii Ndahlohke / I Work, an associated art exhibition at Art Windsor-Essex, received a 2024 Community Impact Award from the Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums (ATLAM) last month.
The book and the art show were developed to educate people about Mount Elgin and how unpaid, student farm and domestic labour was central to the economy of the school.
Dr. Mary Jane McCallum
Dr. McCallum—Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People, History and Archives at UWinnipeg, and a member of the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group, which supports Indigenous history and language learning—accepted the award at ATLAM’s 2024 conference in Palm Springs, California November 12–14.
ATLAM’s Community Impact Awards celebrate initiatives that exemplify community engagement, innovation, and overall excellence. In addition to accepting the award, Dr. McCallum and co-curator Julie Rae Tucker delivered two presentations at the conference.
“The book and the art show were developed to educate people about Mount Elgin and how unpaid, student farm and domestic labour was central to the economy of the school and can tell us much about racism, injustice, and inequity in southwestern Ontario,” Dr. McCallum said. “We also use our own language, making the book and exhibition the only widely accessible resources featuring Munsee Lunaape.”
Nii Ndahlohke / I Work also won an Exhibition of the Year Award at the 47th annual Galeries Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards. Winners were announced at a gala in Toronto on December 3.
Published in 2022, Nii Ndahlohke weaves together oral histories, archival research, art to tell the story of forced child labour at Mount Elgin Industrial School in southern Ontario. The book is structured into two sections: the first focuses on boys’ work, including maintenance and farm labour, and the second examines girls’ work, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry.
The art exhibition, which was on display from September 2023 to June 2024, featured work by descendants of Mount Elgin students who interpreted the book in their own medium of choice.
Together, the book and the exhibition powerfully expose how children’s unpaid manual labour was used to keep residential school operating costs down, adding the injustice of exploited labour to the more widely-known harms of residential schools.
The awards from ATLAM and GOG aren’t the first accolades Nii Ndahlohke has received. In 2023, the book was shortlisted for an Indigenous Literature Award by a jury of Indigenous librarians from across Ontario. The book has also been adopted for curriculum by at least five Canadian universities, and by the Thames Valley District School Board, which oversees 130 schools in southern Ontario.
To purchase a paperback or ebook copy of Nii Ndahlohke: Boys’ and Girls’ Work at Mount Elgin Industrial School, 1890-1915, visit the FriesenPress Publishing website. An audiobook version is also available via Audible.ca. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to support Indigenous language and history learning.
