For more than a century, the U.S. and Canadian governments ran a network of forced assimilation boarding schools for indigenous children. The results were devastating.
The Book
Signs of Your Identity, the winner of the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award, features multiple exposure portraits of 25 First Nations residential school survivors. Out October 2016.
Educational Materials
Lesson plans, historical documents, supplementary materials, unpublished interviews and photos. Everything you could need to use Signs of Your Identity in the classroom.
About the Project
Learn more about the evolution of Signs of Your Identity, photographer Daniella Zalcman, the partner organizations who have helped to facilitate the work, and what comes next.
“I was brought up believing in the nature ways, burning sweetgrass, speaking Cree. And then I went to residential school and all that was taken away from me. And then later on, I forgot it, too, and that was even worse.”
— Valerie Ewenin