It’s a tiny wooden, tile, half the size of a child’s thumb.
Yet Vincent J. Maloney student Anastasiya Girenko has packed it full of meaning.
She’s one of the many students at her school that took part in Project of Heart this week. The national program has students learn the truth about Canada’s residential school system in order to affect reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
As part of the program, students are asked to illustrate their thoughts about residential schools on a wooden tile that’s incorporated into a larger mosaic.
Girenko said her piece depicts a young girl on a grassy field looking at a residential school beneath a starry sky. The girl wishes to leave the school, but can’t, as she like all residential school students, is forced to attend it. She sees spirits in the sky and wishes she could go home.
“Most kids, they didn’t want to be there, they were forced to be there, and they all wanted to go back to their families,” Girenko said.
Teacher Billie-Jo Grant is the one running Project of Heart at VJM. She’s a member of the Greater St. Albert Catholic board’s indigenous advisory committee, and hopes to introduce this program to other board schools. The St. Albert Public board plans to do Project of Heart at its schools later this year.
Project of Heart was started by Ottawa teacher Sylvia Smith in 2008 to commemorate the thousands of indigenous children who died as a result of the residential school system, reports the program’s website. It has now been taught in thousands of schools across Canada.
Grant said she had heard about the program and thought it would be a beautiful way to teach students about Canada’s history.
Four of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations deal with the role of education in reconciliation, Grant noted.
Recommendation 62 specifically calls on governments to create age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, treaties and aboriginal people’s historic contributions to Canada for all grade levels.
“Education is what got us here, and education is what will get us out,” Grant said, quoting TRC chairman Justice Murray Sinclair.
Schools have a responsibility to be part of the healing process from the residential schools, said VJM principal Greg Lamer.
“Knowing the truth and recognizing the wrongs of the past is the way to help pave a better future.”
Even though some students may have read about the schools, Grant questioned if they felt an emotional connection to that history.
“When you feel something, you’re going to remember it a lot more than just reading about it in a book.”
The program has students read age-appropriate, yet often heart-wrenching, books about how the 150,000-some students in residential schools were often stripped of their names, clothes, language, identity, and, in some cases, lives while at residential school.
Girenko said she had heard a little bit about this from friends who had relatives familiar with the schools.
“They had their culture taken away from them.”
The tiles illustrated by the students are being stuck onto a picture of a teepee made from sticks, burlap, moss and lichen created by Grant and educational assistant Lorraine Russell. About 500 tiles should be in place in time for the mosaic’s unveiling at the school’s open house next Thursday.
Taylor Pukanich drew a feather for her tile.
“It’s kids our age that have gone through this before,” she said.
“It wasn’t fair, and we need to tell the truth so it doesn’t happen again.”
Others draw hearts, dream-catchers and Métis flags, or write words such as “hope,” “love,” and “remember your culture.”
Grant said she’s been amazed by what the students have done with their tiles.
“The kids are incredibly engaged, and the pieces they draw and the messages they are writing just inspire hope,” she said.
“I think that’s what truth and reconciliation is all about.”
Projectofheart.ca has more on this initiative.
