Moccasin project honours children who never made it home from residential schools

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

When Kawisaiénhne Albany was making a pair of moccasins for a community project to honour children who died at residential schools, she had one person on her mind: her great-great-uncle Ernest Nicholas.

He never returned home from Shingwauk residential school in Sault Saint Marie, Ont.

"I really wanted to represent love because these kids had a really hard ending to their life at such a young age," said Albany, who is from Kanesatake, a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) community west of Montreal.

Albany doesn't know what happened to her great-great-uncle, but she wanted to make the small pair of moccasins for him when a call went out on social media over the summer for beaders to make 215 pairs of moccasins.

"The residential schools were a cultural genocide, so having those moccasins is really bringing back the culture and beadwork," she said.

Jessica Hernandez, the owner of Nicia's Accessories in Kahnawake, south of Montreal, started the project to promote healing through beadwork, following the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across the country.