Mike Cachagee, advocate for residential school survivors, dies at 83

Arnold "Mike" Cachagee, an advocate for residential school survivors and former chief of Chapleau Cree First Nation in northern Ontario, died Saturday in hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. He was 83.

A residential school survivor, he founded the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and the Ontario Indian Residential School Survivors Society and served as president of the National Residential School Survivors Society. He was present in the House of Commons for the 2008 apology to residential school survivors.

His sister Marjorie Cachagee-Lee said he fought to see children who died at the institutions returned to their families until he died. 

"Getting our children who never returned home, to find them, to take them back home, to have ceremony for them, that was one of his biggest wishes," said Cachagee-Lee, a survivor of the Shingwauk residential school in Sault Ste. Marie.

She said her brother was her hero, who never stopped fighting for Indigenous rights.

"It's very heartbreaking for us to lose such a warrior," she said.

Cachagee was a survivor of Bishop Horden Hall in Moose Factory, Ont., Chapleau (St. John's) residential school and Shingwauk residential school.

He worked as a mechanic for over 30 years before changing career paths, graduating from Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie with a degree in Political Science in 1995. He became the dean of Native Studies at Confederation College in northern Ontario and went on to become chief of his home community, Chapleau Cree First Nation. 

His friend Don Jackson, a professor emeritus at Algoma University, met Cachagee in 1981 at a Shingwauk residential school survivors reunion.

As an organizer, a movement builder and an advocate, Jackson said Cachagee was "very successful," and that his speaking left a lasting impression.

"My fondest memory of Mike is his amazing capacity to speak well with a lot of humour," said Jackson.

"He was a real orator; a very, very astute thinker."

WATCH | Mike Cachagee explains efforts to identify children who died at residential schools 

Inside efforts to find the names of residential school children

3 years ago

Duration 3:33

Researchers and survivors have taken on the work to identify students who attended a former residential school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. It’s a history that’s difficult to access because in many cases, the records have been erased.

Jackson remembered Cachagee's efforts to secure land for Chapleau Cree First Nation. As chief, he was part of the efforts to finalize a Treaty Land Entitlement negotiation — a mechanism some bands are able to explore when negotiating for lands that were not included or were miscalculated by the federal government — in 2016 on behalf of the First Nation. 

They would secure nearly 3,650 hectares of land and $21.5 million in compensation from the federal and Ontario governments to settle debts from Treaty 9 promises related to land that were unfulfilled. 

Jay Jones, president of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, worked with Cachagee for 25 years during his time as an outspoken advocate for residential school survivors.

He said Cachagee's advocacy work on behalf of survivors like Jones' parents will be missed.

"He's left such a big hole in that realm that it's going to be hard to fill it," Jones said. 

"I don't think two or three people could fill all the work that he's done."