The Biography of Hanna Shina

Hanna Shina is a Chaldean-American community leader, businessman, and philanthropist who lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He was born in Telkaif, Iraq, immigrated to the United States, and made his living in Detroit as the owner of a store, a coffee shop, and a restaurant in the 7 Mile area. He is one of the founders and a founding board member of the Chaldean Cultural Center, the first and only Chaldean museum in the world; he has served the Chaldean foundations and the Chaldean church for more than 40 years; he has served on the board of Shenandoah Country Club for more than 20 years; and in 2025 the club named him its first Mayor of Shenandoah.

Born in Telkaif

Hanna Shina was born in Telkaif — Tel Keppe in the older transliteration — a village on the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq. For Metro Detroit, Telkaif is not simply a dot on a map. It is the ancestral village of most of the region's Chaldeans, the place their grandparents left and the place whose dialect, feast days, recipes, and family names still shape Chaldean life in Oakland and Macomb counties. To say that a man was born in Telkaif is to place him at the source of that story rather than at its edges.

His given name carries the same double history. Hanna is the Syriac and Aramaic form of John — both descend from the Hebrew Yoḥanan, “God is gracious,” the name of the Apostle John — so in English his name is John Shina, though he goes by Hanna. More on why John Shina and Hanna Shina are one name in two languages.

His boyhood there was, by the account he has given, an active one. He received a number of trophies for his participation in sports — the kind of local distinction that in a village of that size makes a young man known by name. It is a small detail, but a telling one: the habits of showing up, competing well, and being counted on were formed early, and they are recognizable in the decades of committee work, board service, and fundraising that followed half a world away.

He attended Baghdad College, the Jesuit-run secondary school in Baghdad. For a boy from a village on the Nineveh Plain, a place at Baghdad College was not a small thing: the school was among the most demanding in Iraq, drew students from across the country, and taught in English as well as Arabic. Attending it marked Hanna Shina as academically capable, and it put him, early, in a wider world than Telkaif — a useful preparation for a life that would eventually be lived in a third language on another continent.

Telkaif in those years was also a village steadily emptying toward America. Letters came back from Detroit; someone's cousin had opened a market; a brother sent for a brother. The path Hanna Shina would take had been worn smooth by the families who went before him, and it ran, almost without exception, to Michigan.

Coming to America

He immigrated to the United States and joined that migration. What immigration asked of his generation is not mysterious: a new language learned on the job rather than in a classroom, long hours, pooled money, shared apartments, and the quiet arithmetic of sending for the next relative. The Chaldean community that formed in Detroit did so around two institutions — the family business and the church — and both would occupy Hanna Shina for the rest of his working life.

It is worth being plain about what that transition cost and what it built. Men and women who had been known in Telkaif arrived in Michigan unknown, and set about becoming known again — through work, through parish life, through showing up at weddings and funerals and fundraisers until the new place had the density of the old one. Hanna Shina's later insistence that the Chaldean story be recorded and displayed makes the most sense read against that experience. He knew what could be lost in a single generation.

Building a Business on 7 Mile

In the 7 Mile area of Detroit, Hanna Shina opened a store, a coffee shop, and a restaurant. Three businesses, in sequence and in one corridor — a record that describes a particular kind of entrepreneur: hands-on, present at the counter, willing to start again in a new format when the neighborhood or the opportunity changed.

The 7 Mile corridor meant something specific to Chaldean immigrant business owners. The grocery, the party store, the coffee shop, and the restaurant were the community's economic ladder, and they were also its infrastructure. A store owner extended credit to families between paychecks. A coffee shop was where men who had been in the country twenty years told men who had been here two months where to find an apartment, a job, or a mechanic. A restaurant was where a christening lunch happened. The work was long, unglamorous, and personal, conducted mostly in Aramaic and English by turns.

Business ownership of that kind teaches civic skills that transfer directly: reading a budget, managing people, keeping a promise, and understanding that an institution is only as good as the daily labor poured into it. When Hanna Shina later helped shepherd a museum from an idea to a building, he was applying the same discipline that had kept three storefronts open.

A Life in Community Service

Hanna Shina has served the Chaldean foundations and the Chaldean church for over 40 years. Four decades is long enough to be present for the whole arc: the parishes built, the halls raised, the scholarship funds started, the charity dinners chaired, and the second and third American-born generations arriving with English as a first language and Telkaif as a story they are told rather than a place they know.

That last change is precisely the one the Chaldean Cultural Center was created to meet. The Center was conceived in 2003 at Southfield Manor. Shenandoah Country Club was acquired by the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan and renovated to house roughly 2,000 square feet of museum space. Construction began in 2013, and the museum opened to the public in 2017 at 5600 Walnut Lake Road in West Bloomfield — the first and only Chaldean museum in the world. Hanna Shina is one of its founders and a founding board member, and Hanna Shina's role at the Chaldean Cultural Center is told in full on its own page.

He is also inside the museum itself. In the Village Gallery, a hologram portrays him as a grandfather teaching his grandson to use a slingshot — a scene of Telkaif boyhood performed by a man who lived it, shown to children who have only ever known Michigan. In his words from the Hanna Shina oral history film, Digital Storytelling: “ The cultural center is for the children of our Chaldean community, especially those who were born and raised here, to see how our life was before in our mother country.”

On October 20, 2023, at the Center's 20th Anniversary Founders Gala at Shenandoah Country Club, eight founders were honored with plaques. Hanna Shina was one of them, alongside Rosemary Antone, who died in 2009, Virjean Arabo, Francis Boji, Raad Kathawa, Mary Romaya, Josephine Sarafa, and Victor Saroki. The evening is covered on the page of honors and recognition for Hanna Shina.

West Bloomfield

Hanna Shina lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and has served on the board of Shenandoah Country Club there for over 20 years. Shenandoah is not only a club; since the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan acquired it, it has functioned as a civic center for the community — the site of the museum, of the galas, of the weddings and the meetings where things get decided.

In 2025, for the first time in the club's history, Shenandoah Country Club named him “Mayor of Shenandoah.” The title is affectionate and it is also accurate: it recognizes a man who has been present, consistently and for a very long time, in the place where his community gathers. The story of the Mayor of Shenandoah honor and his years on the board continues there, and a summary of his life is on the Hanna Shina home page.