A Decade of Truth and Action: Visualizing the Impact of Indigenous Education Programs

Confidentiality Agreement and private project

About The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund

In 1966, 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack, an Anishinaabe boy from Marten Falls First Nation (Ogoki Post), ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in northern Ontario to reunite with his family, who lived 600 kilometres away. He died on October 22, 1966, from starvation and exposure, and his body was found beside the railway tracks the next day. His death sparked the first inquest into the treatment of Indigenous children in the residential school system, and years later, inspired Gord Downie’s album, Secret Path.

Reconciliation became Gord’s central focus after he learned about Chanie’s story and the history of Indigenous people in Canada. At one of the final Tragically Hip concerts, Gord Downie asked everyone in Canada to look at the state of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in this country and to “Do Something” to change them for the better.

Inspired by Chanie’s story and Gord’s call to build a better Canada, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) aims to build cultural understanding and create a path toward reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. DWF’s vision is to improve the lives of Indigenous people by building awareness, education, and connections between all peoples in Canada.

Key Goals for This Project

To help celebrate and acknowledge the 10th anniversary of Secret Path and DWF’s accomplishments over the past 10 years, we are preparing a report that demonstrates our impact. It should also further reinforce that by donating to DWF and/or participating in our programs, campaigns, and events, you are a part of the movement toward reconciliation. 

We would like Data ChangeMakers to help us create a visualization that illustrates DWF’s accomplishments and the impact of Secret Path over the past 10 years.

Volunteers are encouraged to use a mixed method approach while using the qualitative data to drive a narrative story (the "Why" and "How"). We prefer grounded theory to serve as the methodology for the qualitative research segment, however, volunteers retain creative freedom to execute a combined synthesis or split their focus into standalone works. We are open to ideas for qualitative analysis.

Available data

The data are collected through surveys and an analysis of internal reports and covers a snapshot in time. The following data are provided:

• Legacy schools data and Recommended Resources Survey

• Finding Your Path Survey

• Grounded Theory qualitative coding of historical evaluation reports and staff focus group data

• The data may require cleanup due to character encoding artifacts, inconsistent date formats, comma-separated strings, and missing values.

Confidentiality Agreement 

Private website group

Once volunteers have submitted the form, volunteers will be added within 2 business days to a website group and private Slack channel where data will be shared. You will need to become a member of DCM website.

We also ask volunteers to seek permission before sharing any output on social media.

Key Dates

• Live volunteer showcase: TBC

Support and collaboration

• Jessica Bosh (jessica.bosch@datachangemakers.org ) is the project coordinator and will be your point of contact. She will invite you to the private website group and Slack channel.

Website and Social Media

• Website: https://downiewenjack.ca/

• Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/downiewenjack/?hl=en

• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/downiewenjack

• Youtube: http://youtube.com/@DownieWenjack