Intergenerational Legacies at the University of Ottawa (ILUO-LIUO) was initiated in 2025 to examine the historical relationships between the University of Ottawa, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), and their involvement in the Indian Residential School system. This work emerges directly from sustained advocacy by Indigenous students, faculty, and community members who called on the University to acknowledge its historical entanglements with settler colonial structures and educational systems. With support from the Office of the Provost, Indigenous Affairs, and the Senior Indigenous Advisor to the President, ILUO-LIUO was established to undertake a comprehensive historical inquiry into the University’s role in shaping, sustaining, and legitimizing Indian Residential School and Day schooling systems. The project is co-led by Dr. Daniel Rück (history) and Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (education)
The student researcher will conduct historical research on some aspect of the colonial history of the University of Ottawa and its relationship to Indian Residential Schools, and will build an ArcGIS StoryMap to share the research finding with a general audience.
This work will become part of the SSHRC-funded Kichi Sibi Historical Research Project, a collaboration between Algonquin communities and the University of Ottawa. The student will begin by producing an annotated bibliography that critically evaluates these works, and by constructing a historical timeline highlighting key events and developments. The deliverable will be an ArcGIS Story Map telling a particular historical event or series of events, showing how it progresses through time and space.
Objectives
In collaboration with the Dr. Rück and Dr. Ng-A-Fook, the student researcher will identify a part of the larger research project that lends itself to the format of the StoryMap. The topic could be, for example, the life of a particular Oblate priest whose life could be told through the form of a StoryMap, spatial representations of the connections between a particular residential school and the University of Ottawa, or the spatial relationship between the university and a particular Indigenous community. The student researcher will write 1. A draft narrative with a title (2500-3000 words) 2. A timeline (dates, events, places) with eight to ten events. 3. A bibliography of the best ten to twenty sources on this topic. 4. Eight to ten images with reference information. The student will then use this information to create an attractive and informative StoryMap using the ArcGIS StoryMap platform (uOttawa students have access) that can be shared widely.