February 23rd, 2010
Photo by Bruno Schlumberger of the Ottawa Citizen
Picking up on the theme of “heart” the Ottawa Citizen recently ran this Valentine’s Day interview with Project of Heart coordinator Sylvia Smith. It is a well-written article that makes for as a useful introduction to what the project is all about.
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February 9th, 2010
Click on image to see slideshow from Frederick Banting event
Students at Frederick Banting Secondary School in Stittsville participated in Project of Heart as part of their Lifeskills and Aboriginal Studies courses. They chose to commemorate the Spanish Indian Residential School – formerly Wikwemikong – in Manitoulin Island. The tiles were smudged by Willy Bruce, who is a Native veteran and Carrier of the Aboriginal Vetern’s Eagle Staff. Students participated in an Honour Song at the Drum and listened attentively to Willy as he shared the Traditional Teachings on values that should govern our choices in life. As well, Willy gifted an Eagle Feather to the Banting Staff to honour all the young warriors who gave their health or lives as a result of the IRS experience.
As the social justice component of the project, students signed up to be witnesses to the proceedings of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on First Nations Child Welfare.
John Curry from the Sttitsville News covered the event; a scan of the newspaper coverage can be seen here.
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October 26th, 2009
Project of Heart graduates from across the National Capital Region gathered at Rideau Hall this past month to help the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) launch its “five year journey” to educate Canadians about the residential school era.
In a two day program culminating with a “Witnessing the Future” encounter hosted by Governor General Michaelle Jean, POH participants David Choiniere, Kheyahna Meekis, Evana Smith, Emianna Vargatoth and Daniel Wiggins were recognized for their contribution to remembering the students who died in the care of the Mohawk Institute, a notorious residential school located in southwestern Ontario.
In preparation for the ceremony, POH students joined in a workshop along with youth from across Canada brought together through the TRC. They included five older youth affiliated with Canadian Roots, an organization working with young people to address the pressing need for reconciliation around the issue of residential schools, as well as ten young people who are grandchildren of IRS survivors. Together, the students produced clay sculptures to present to survivors as gestures of reconciliation.
Click on the photo above to see a photoset including images from both the prepatory workshop and the “Witnessing the Future” event itself.
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June 29th, 2009
Those are the words of a student from teacher Kristin Jefferies’s First Place program at Richard Pfaff Alternative in Ottawa.
The First Place students were reacting to what they had learned about the experience of being aboriginal during the Residential School era in Canada. The empathy they felt with the story of the abused students of their chosen school — Poplar Hill Residential School in Northern Ontario — showed clearly in the care and creativity with which they crafted their memorial tiles.
The competed tiles were smudged in a ceremony that included invited survivor Violet Kakekapetum from Sandy Lake First Nation. Click on the image to see a photoset from the event.
The social justice component of their POH project saw First Place students poster downtown Ottawa in support of the campaign to find missing indigenous teens Maisy Ojick and Shannon Alexander.
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May 18th, 2009
The infamous Mohawk Institute was an Indian Residential School in Brantford, Ontario, which operated for over a century, finally closing its doors for good in 1969. Earlier this month, students of Elizabeth Wyn Wood Alternative School in Ottawa commemorated the children whose lives were lost as a result of attending the “Mush Hole”, as the institute was known to generations of students. (Click on image to see the set description, click here to see the slideshow.)
Students from art teacher Emily Park’s classroom joined with others students to participate in Project of Heart. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 19th, 2009
Gabriel Dumont Institute visual arts instructor Christina Johns of the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) had her pre-service teachers complete the tile decoration component of the POH module during the fall term of 2008.
The SUNTEP students brought extremely compelling imagery to the exercise which commemorated the students who died at the Lebret Indian Residential School at Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan. Click on the adjacent photo to see more examples of her class’s work.
Russell Fayant of the SUNTEP program and Christina herself have also responded through verse to the ongoing colonial project of cultural extinction, as experienced by their Métis community. Christina’s poem can be read here and Russell’s here.
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March 19th, 2009
The following report was submitted by Warren McBride, an educator from Ottawa:
We are a family of four, including two children aged 14 and 12, and in August 2008 we set out from Ottawa on a year-long round-the-world back packing adventure. Before leaving, we decided to participate in Project of Heart. We received the wooden tiles and agreed to keep in contact with the Project of Heart team in Ottawa.
POH would send us, via email, several names of children who had died while attending Indian Residential Schools in Canada and we would choose an appropriate location in the world to dedicate and decorate these blocks in those children’s memory. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 16th, 2008
In one of its last community activities as an independent congregation before amalgamating to form Kitchissippi United Church, members of Northwestern United Church in Ottawa’s west end gathered in May to participate in a Project of Heart workshop.
Led by POH co-founder Louise Madaire, the group met to do some research and find out a little of the Unitied Church’s complicity in carrying out the government’s “genetic engineering” project. A map of the IRSs across the country show which denominations and which locations the schools resided. Participants then met on a second evening to decorate the tiles and decide on a social justice issue to confront head-on. Click on the image to see the photo set from the two evenings.
August 17th, 2008
As clicking on the image will show, Sherry Ambridge’s students at Dryden High School have decorated their tiles for Project of Heart. Sherry is the Aboriginal Alternative Education teacher at the school, which is in the Keewatin Patricia District School Board. Thank you to Sherry and all of her students.
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June 9th, 2008
..mainstream Canadians wouldn’t profess such ignorance”
So says Winnipeg educator Angela Busch in this special report filed earlier this week by CBC reporter Karen Paul for the Stolen Children series on Radio One; it’s an interview with students from Project of Heart partner school Southeast Collegiate in Winnipeg and was recorded with teacher Angela’s history class.
The audio was originally aired on World Report on Sunday, June 8.
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