A group of museums and cultural centres from across northwestern Ontario are looking to add to their list of indigenous veterans from the region’s First Nations.
The Times spoke with Jessie Richard, Curator at Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre (Manitou Mounds), one of several institutions involved with the project.
“It’s a partnership with the Thunder Bay Museum, Lakehead University, Confederation College, Thunder Bay Military Museum, the Muse [in Kenora], the Dryden Museum, Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre and then also InterGroup Consultants and of course Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre,” Richard said. “The entire project actually started when Kayleigh Speirs was here at The Mounds, and she started the indigenous veterans exhibit, which was a small exhibit here in the centre, just to bring the focus specifically on indigenous veterans of the Rainy River District. Then it just slowly transformed into a much bigger thing. She worked on it after going to the Fort Frances Museum. Now that Kayleigh is working at InterGroup, she has a passion project of having this entire project, all of Northwestern Ontario veterans. So the project was introduced to myself and a number of other institutions probably about a year ago. So it’s kind of already been a year of talking and planning just with no actual advertising or anything like that quite yet.”
The group is currently putting out a call to learn about veterans who have fought in any conflict from as far back as the First World War to as recent as conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. They’re hoping for veterans who are still alive or the families of those who are already dead to come forward and tell their stories.
This exhibit is going to be featuring indigenous veterans of all of Northwestern Ontario. The biggest struggle with that, though, is a lot of the time indigenous people would go in and enlist and they might change their name, they might change their age so that they could have enlisted,” Richard said. “But one of the biggest factors that we’re facing now is that when their names were getting written down through government bodies, there were a lot of spelling errors and assumptions made on how to spell their last name. So that is something that we are having a hard time with, and so we’re welcoming anyone who has a family member who did serve, who was indigenous, and from the Northwestern Ontario that they would send us over their information so that we can have interviews with them to learn more about their family member, and so we can very distinctly ensure that that versus getting honored in this exhibit as well.”

In preparing a smaller, more local exhibit for the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre Richard found that the process can be complicated.
“I had a small exhibit in November for Indigenous Veterans Day here at The Mounds, those people in that exhibit, there were tons of spelling errors and like mistruths about them,” Richard said. “So that is absolutely a big challenge for us, being able to ensure that we’re getting the information correctly.”
To have someone included in the exhibit, you can contact any of the partner institutions or you can contact the exhibit project directly on the Facebook page “Indigenous Veterans of Northwestern Ontario Travelling Exhibit,” or by email at IndigenousVeteransExhibit@thunderbaymuseum.com.
The hope is to gather the information so that the exhibit can be prepared for next fall and start visiting communities and band offices across the region.
“We want to ensure that the resources and the information are going to be accessible and viewable by the community members that are giving us this information and that are supporting the project,” Richard said. “So it will be a traveling exhibit, hopefully with staff. We’re waiting on funding for that, and it will be visiting different communities in all of northwestern Ontario, after which it will be traveling to the institution, but the Thunder Bay museum will actually be the point of contact for the traveling exhibit.”
Even after the exhibit is “complete” and starts traveling, they will continue adding to the material Richard says.
“Our hope is to have a good portion of this done by fall of 2025,” she added. “However, it is going to be an ongoing and growing exhibit. So we do hope to also receive funding for an online component, where we continue to add information and imagery and oral history about those people too.”
The team is also looking for digital artists to add art to the exhibit. Artists from Indigenous communities in northwestern Ontario can submit their portfolios for consideration. Artists will be paid for work commissioned for the traveling exhibit. More information is available on the exhibit’s Facebook page. The deadline for digital art submissions is Feb. 20, 2025.
As next fall draws closer, the facebook page will feature more information about where you can see the exhibit.