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By MegAnne Liebsch
To tan buffalo hide, you must first pray. So, the students and staff of Mother Teresa Middle School (MTMS) cluster in the schoolyard beside a fresh buffalo skin. Smudged medicine wafts overhead as artists Lorne Kequahtooway and Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway lead the prayer. Then, a burst of activity. The yard transforms into an open-air hide-tanning workshop in which every student helps stretch and scrape the hide, following a process traditional to the Native peoples of the Saskatchewan plains.
Under the guidance of the Kequahtooways, buffalo-hide tanning is an annual, school-wide endeavour. The hide produced this week will become moccasins, drums, beaded bags, jewellery, and other art projects for students throughout the year.
“Buffalo builds kinship and community,” says Lorne Kequahtooway. As the kids work, he explains, they infuse their energy into the once-living hides. “What we’re doing is historical—we’re creating history right now! There’s no other school in the public system or the Catholic system that has artists coming in and scraping a buffalo hide on school grounds.”
Forming Hearts and Minds in the Ignatian Tradition
Native hide tanning is just one piece of a holistic curriculum that sets MTMS apart. Located in Regina, on Treaty 4 Territory, MTMS was founded in 2011 and serves a diverse student body, 70 percent of whom are Indigenous. The school, endorsed by the Jesuits of Canada and part of the NativityMiguel Coalition, brings equity to all students through education.
With a total of just 56 students across grades six through eight, MTMS is a tight-knit community that encompasses current students, staff, alumni, and local leaders. According to Principal Terri Cote, the school’s model cares for the whole person—the Ignatian principle of cura personalis. It’s an individualized approach that begins with getting to know each student as an individual, learning about their identities, cultural backgrounds, and families, strengths and areas for growth, and dreams for the future.
“MTMS ignites a love of learning and empowers students to embrace their personal and cultural identity,” says Principal Cote, quoting the school’s mission statement. “We live by the words shared with us by Elder Harry Francis, ‘Love one another and help one another.’”
“We live by the words shared with us by Elder Harry Francis, ‘Love one another and help one another.’”
Learning from Indigenous Knowledge Keepers
MTMS recognizes the painful history of Native residential schools in Canada. A Truth and Reconciliation framework guides its curriculum, comprising Indigenous cultural education and land-based experiential learning, such as buffalo-hide tanning and sweetgrass picking on the Pasqua First Nations Reserve. As the school’s Indigenous advocate, Evan Whitestar teaches Cree language and shares cultural teachings across all grades. He also leads the Buffalo Boys Drum group (the group’s first drum was made from a hide scraped by the MTMS family), teaching students of all cultural backgrounds traditional Indigenous drumming and singing.
By Adam Pittman, SJ Provincial Assistant for Secondary Education
Mother Theresa Middle School (MTMS) is one of six schools in Canada that are officially sponsored or endorsed by the Jesuits.
Some Jesuit schools are owned and operated by their respective Jesuit provinces. In such cases, the school is sponsored and under the direct authority and oversight of the Jesuits. In other cases, partnerships are formed with institutions that champion our values, pedagogy, and Ignatian formation. These partnerships involve collaboration between the endorsed school and the Jesuits—offering guidance, support, resources, and inclusion in one of the largest global networks of schools.
The link between these schools and the Jesuits of Canada is rooted in their mission and values inspired by Jesuit principles: a commitment to academic excellence, promoting justice, service, and reconciliation, and developing ethical and compassionate leaders.
But at the heart of Jesuit education lies something even more profound—an inspiration drawn from the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the ultimate teacher and servant leader, modelled compassion, humility, and selflessness in everything he did. His example serves as a guiding light for all Jesuit educators, reminding us that true greatness is found in serving others, especially the most vulnerable and underserved.
This is the fundamental link between MTMS and the Jesuits of Canada: Their leadership is at the forefront of creatively and passionately modelling what it means to love, transform, and empower.
This partnership and collaboration aim not only to identify the advantages MTMS can receive from the Jesuit way of proceeding in education but also, and perhaps more importantly, to explore the wisdom and practices that we, the Jesuits, learn from them.
Students learn from Indigenous knowledge keepers off campus, too. For the last two summers MTMS students and staff have participated in a land-based learning retreat on the Grandmother’s Bay Reserve (territory of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band in Saskatchewan), where they learned fishing, trapping, tipi-raising, beading, and traditional cooking from local elders. By prioritizing experiential learning from a variety of teachers, MTMS encourages students to see their community as a classroom.
“MTMS is creating a new narrative in collaboration with community partners,” says Cote. “Spending time with new individuals can positively impact and change the life trajectory for MTMS students by providing them with this authentic opportunity to connect with the land, engage in their culture, and build social capital.”
“MTMS is creating a new narrative in collaboration with community partners.”
Since the first buffalo-hide tanning in 2016, artists Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway (Nakota/Cree/Salteaux Tribes) and Lorne Kequahtooway (Zagime Anishinabek First Nation) have become integral to the MTMS community-learning curriculum. The couple teach weekly classes at MTMS in traditional arts such as beading and moccasin making.
For BigEagle-Kequahtooway, art classes provide a “snapshot” of the people students will become. She notices who helps instruct their fellow classmates in proper techniques and who leads by doing. These are insights you might not notice in math or English class, she says.
The Jesuits are also involved in the school’s daily work. For Nader Nasralla, SJ, serving at the school was one of the key experiences of his novitiate. Over time, relationships were formed between Nader and Indigenous children and adults, and he was invited to participate in a springtime prayer ceremony at the end of his experiment. Alejandro Lozano,SJ, just returned from MTMS. “My time there has been marked by personal growth and spiritual blessing. I witness and participate in what it means to do the work of God in twenty-first-century Canadian society. Seeing Terri leaving with the kids for bubble tea, for example, I thought, ‘The Lord is at work here.’ My experience has been learning to contemplate and imitate what I see.”
“I know that this work that we’re doing is important because we’re planting seeds,” explains BigEagle-Kequahtooway. “To help the youth be proud, to help the youth know that they can gain access to some of this traditional knowledge and that it’s here, you can take it.”
Although the Kequahtooway family is not Christian, they believe deeply in the school’s mission. The relationship is “symbiotic,” says BigEagle-Kequahtooway. Their daughter is currently in grade seven at MTMS, and their son, a recent MTMS graduate, now attends a private high school on a scholarship he received through MTMS’s assistance.
Supporting Lifelong Formation
These wraparound supports at MTMS extend long after graduation. In a city where only 44 percent of Indigenous students finish high school on time, MTMS equips students to meet the challenges of high school through its Graduate Support Program. Staffed by a team of five specialists, the Graduate Support Program assists students as they transition to high school, providing weekly classes on everything from good study habits to handling stress. The team continues to support alumni in high school and further education through homework help, mental health resources, and college and career counselling.
“The aim of the Graduate Support Program is for all students to graduate high school, pursue further education, and follow their dreams,” says director of student supports, Ron Gonzales.
As of 2023, 74 MTMS alumni are enrolled in high school, and 44 are enrolled in or have completed post-secondary education. Many are now entering the workforce as nurses, computer programmers, and teachers—such as alumnus Draydin Cyr.
A member of the Pasqua Nation, Cyr was part of MTMS’s first class in 2011. In 2023, while completing his BA in Education, Cyr returned to MTMS as a teaching intern.
“The atmosphere still feels the same as when I first walked through the doors in middle school,” says Cyr. “You feel that sense of belonging and connection… Those circles of belonging sparked my interest in teaching. I experienced the impact that the teachers and staff had in my life and wanted to pay it forward.”
Join us in making a difference. Visit jesuits.ca to learn more about how you can support the Jesuits of Canada and initiatives like MTMS. Together, we can continue to foster community, justice, and education for all.
