About Project of Heart

Project of Heart facilitates a safe space for reciprocal learning about the residential school system in Canada, a history that still has repercussions on Indigenous communities today. This program responds to the Calls to Action  outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and is identified as a recommended activity by the Commission.

Project of Heart was originally created by University of Regina (U of R) graduate student, Sylvia Smith, as part of her Master of Education program as a way to address the lack of teaching tools on Indigenous history in the school system.

How Project of Heart Supports Truth and Reconciliation

• Examines the history and legacy of the residential school system forced upon Indigenous people in Canada in order to seek the truth about that history and acknowledge the extent of loss to former students, their families and communities

• Commemorates, with the use of artistry and Indigenous ceremony, the lives of the thousands of Indigenous children who died as a result of the residential school experience

• Builds on our understanding of how residential schools contributes to the intergenerational trauma experienced across the Indigenous population of Canada

• Calls all Canadians to action, through social justice endeavors, to recognize our current as well as historic colonialist practices

• Builds right relationships, based upon truth and reconciliation, amongst all peoples with the intention to transform Canada from a colonized land to one built upon mutual respect and full autonomy for all

Luther College’s Role in Project of Heart

Luther College finances the Project of Heart eight-week evening workshops and encourages participation from faculty, staff, students, and community members as one of our institution’s responses to the Truth and Reconciliation’s 94 Calls to Action.  To date, over 200 people have participated in Project of Heart at Luther College at the University of Regina.

“I was given the opportunity to participate in an engaged learning component and I jumped at the chance because I knew that getting out and doing something would be more interesting and rewarding to me than hours of research on the computer. Although there were many options, I chose to participate in Project of Heart because Aboriginal (sic) history is a very significant yet often ignored part of Canada….This was a way for me to participate in acts of reconciliation and acknowledge past wrongdoings. Project of Heart allowed me to be part of a group with a shared goal and to have practical experiences be a foundation of my learning.”

Mirella M.
POH Participant

Project of Heart 2026

Healthcare and the Children of the Qu’Appelle Industrial School

In this edition of Project of Heart, participants will learn about the health care that the children detained at the Qu’Appelle Industrial School received. This includes care provided by the school’s staff, along with other services and public health initiatives, such as the File Hills Colony Hospital, the Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium, and the Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital. They will also hear about the Church’s and the State’s motivations for providing these services, while actively seeking to suppress local forms of knowledge and healing practices.

Although many of the stories in this series are from several generations ago, and the physical spaces where they unfolded have disappeared from the regional landscape and the settlers’ collective memory, this history still has repercussions on Indigenous communities today.

Details

Project of Heart will be offered weekly from January 26 to March 23, 2026. Facilitated by Veronique Mireault, the sessions will take place on Monday evenings from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in LC 207 at Luther College at the University of Regina.

This series is open to all and offered at no cost. Please direct any questions to Veronique.Mireault@uregina.ca

*Please note there will be no class on February 16, Family Day.

Thank you for the interest in Project of Heart 2026. Registration is now full and has closed.

Resources for Project of Heart 2026

A Few Definitions

Medical Colonialism:
Refers to a culture or ideology, rooted in systemic anti-Indigenous racism, that uses medical practices and policies to establish, maintain, and/or advance a genocidal colonial project.

Samir Shaheen-Hussain, pediatric emergency physician and author of the book Fighting for a Hand to Hold

Systemic Racism:
Systemic racism can be defined as policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society that leads to a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment or others based on race.

Systemic racism takes many forms including:

  • When one group of people and their values, ways of doing things are classified as “normal” and other groups or people are “abnormal”.
  • The political power to withhold basic rights from people of colour and use the full power of the state to enforce segregation and inequality, in practice.
  • The social power to deny people of colour full inclusion or membership in associational life.
  • The economic power that privileges white people in terms of job placement, advancement, wealth, and property accumulation.

Amnesty International

Week 1: Introduction
Suggested resource: None

Week 2: What were the conceptions of Indigenous health and the different practices before the introduction of colonial medicine? What did we try to take away?
Guest speaker: Nicholas Ironchild, White Raven Healing Centre
Suggested resource: None

Week 3: Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce and the history of whistleblowing in the residential school system.
Screening: Finding Peter Bryce: Story of a National Crime https://youtu.be/ETw4Zkv2FJ4?si=Msg6vgMJP2i_mH7b
Suggested resource: Podcast: One-on-one with “Clearing the Pains” author James Daschuk
https://mediaindigena.com/podcast-one-on-one-with-clearing-the-plains-author-james-daschuk/

Week 4: Health care as a right protected by Treaties.
Guest speaker: Aaron Tootoosis, Office of the Treaty Commissioner
Suggested resource: “The Treaty Right to Health: A Sacred Obligation” by Aimée Craft and Alice Lebihan
www.nccih.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/10361/Treaty-Right-to-Health_EN_Web_2021-02-02.pdf

Week 5: Colonial healthcare in the Qu’Appelle Valley: The Qu’Appelle Industrial School. What healthcare was available to the children – IRS hospital, File Hills Colony Hospital, Fort San, Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital.
Guest speaker: Véronique Mireault and Dr. James Daschuk, University of Regina
Suggested resource: “We were Children” by Tim Wolochatiuk
https://www.nfb.ca/film/we_were_children/

Documentary Screening: “I Plowed the Sacred Soil” by Mark Dieter
Guest speakers: kêhtê-aya Lorna Standingready, Mark Dieter, Cheyanne Desnomie, Wilfred Dieter, Monte Verhulst

Week 6: The File Hills Colony
Guest speaker: Cheyanne Desnomie, First Nations University

Week 7: Colonial healthcare in the Qu’Appelle Valley: Discussion with survivors and living students
Guest speakers: kêhtê-aya Lorna Standingready, Barbara Lavallee, and Daryl Obey
Suggested resource: “The Cure was Worse” by APTN Investigate
https://youtu.be/o_Z11n9by-8?si=aUQk9PnZMRNgyWD7

Week 8: Presentation of the services and the approach at the All Nations Healing Hospital and the White Raven Healing Centre
Guest speaker: Kimberley Okeeweehow, White Raven Healing Centre
Suggested resource: None

For Further Learning

Books:

Articles:

  • Administering colonial science: Nutrition research and human biomedical experimentation in Aboriginal communities and residential schools, 1942-1952, by Ian Mosby
  • Medical colonialism and the power to care: unsettling participatory inclusion in the settler-state care paradigm, by Eva Boodman
  • Starvation, Experimentation, Segregation, and Trauma: Words for Reading Indigenous Health History, by Mary Jane Logan McCallum

Newspapers:

Maps/Visual Aids:

Apologies:

Reports:

Websites:

Films/Videos:

Podcasts:

Historical Documents:

Photo Gallery

The Qu’Appelle Indian Industrial School, Saskatchewan, 1885

Source: https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/canadian-west/052920/05292006_e.html

The Qu’Appelle Industrial School, 1907

Source: https://archives.nctr.ca/A2022-010-1033 

The Qu’Appelle Industrial School’s hospital (plans), 1894

Source: Plan of the proposed addition, February 25, 1894, RG 10, Volume 3917, file 116, 575-5, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, On, Canada. 

Sanatorium tents at Touchwood Agency, ca. 1900

Source: https://search.saskarchives.com/sanitorium-tents-at-touchwood-agency 

Hospital on the File Hills Colony, 1900s

Source: https://search.saskarchives.com/hospital-at-file-hills-colony

Fort Qu’Appelle Sanitorium, 1928

Source: https://archive.nationaltrustcanada.ca/issues-campaigns/top-ten-endangered/explore-past-listings/saskatchewan/fort-quappelle-sanitorium

The Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital, nd.

Source: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-hospitals-in-canada#:~:text=During%20the%2020th%20century%2C%20the,at%20the%20Blackfoot%20Hospital%2C%201926