The building remembers what happened inside it. The Rufus Prince Building, on the Long Plain Indian Reserve No. 6 near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, once housed the Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School -- one of more than 130 institutions in the Canadian residential school system where Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages, and subjected to conditions that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada documented as cultural genocide. On August 14, 1981, the building and its surrounding land were transferred to the ownership of the Long Plain First Nation as part of an outstanding Treaty Land Entitlement. What the community chose to do with this place of pain -- not demolish it, but transform it into a space of testimony and healing -- is itself a powerful act of reclamation.
The building's journey from instrument of assimilation to site of remembrance spans decades. After the residential school closed, the structure was renovated and housed Yellowquill College from 1984 until 2000, when the college relocated to Winnipeg. The Long Plain First Nation then used the building as a resource centre, with offices for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council, and First Nation administration. In December 2001, a benefit-cost study laid the groundwork for something different: a museum dedicated to the history of the residential school system. The Long Plain First Nation began the project in 2003, and the National Indigenous Residential School Museum of Canada took shape within the walls that had witnessed the very history it now preserves. In 2020, Parks Canada designated the Former Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School a National Historic Site, recognizing its significance to Canadian history.
The museum describes itself as a Place of Healing. Its collection includes artifacts, documents, and materials not only from the Portage la Prairie school but from residential schools across Canada. Exhibits address the daily conditions children endured -- the separation from family, the suppression of language and ceremony, the physical and emotional abuse documented in thousands of survivor testimonies. One room is dedicated entirely to the Indigenous cultures that the government and residential school system attempted to erase: the languages, ceremonies, art, and knowledge systems that survived despite sustained institutional efforts to destroy them. The museum meets Reconciliation Call to Action number 10 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report, which called for adequate funding of museums and archives preserving residential school history. Delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum held an open house in December 2022 and began offering tours in 2023.
The National Indigenous Residential School Museum operates with a vision that is both specific and expansive: a place where people can learn, share, heal, and move forward with a greater understanding of the forces that shaped and forever changed multiple generations of First Nations peoples in Canada. In 2023, the museum was awarded the Manitoba Tourism Award for Best Indigenous Business or Operator at the inaugural Manitoba Tourism Awards. The Long Plain First Nation continues developing the site, with plans for a library and garden honouring survivors. The museum acquired new display showcases in June 2024. That a community chose to preserve the very building where its children suffered -- to hold it open as testimony rather than raze it as a source of pain -- speaks to the conviction that forgetting serves no one. The building stands on the prairie, visible from the road, asking visitors to look at what happened here and to carry that knowledge forward.
Located at 49.962°N, 98.323°W on the Long Plain Indian Reserve No. 6, near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. The site is approximately 50 nm west of Winnipeg. Portage la Prairie Southport Airport (CYPG) lies approximately 3 nm south of the museum. The flat agricultural landscape of the Manitoba prairie makes the reserve and surrounding community of Portage la Prairie visible from considerable distance at low altitude. The Assiniboine River winds through the area to the north. Approaching from the east at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL, the community layout and reserve lands are clearly distinguishable from surrounding farmland. Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport (CYWG) is the nearest major airport, approximately 50 nm east.