Faye HeavyShield's mixed media sculptures are constructed out of everything from wire, plaster and wood to dried grasses, cloth and paper. The prairie environment that surrounded her as a child has had a tremendous influence on her artworks. Many are painted monochromatic shades of ochre, bone and muted earth tones that are intended to evoke the sensation of the bleached grass and calm of the prairies.

Each sculpture is built up through a long process that begins with the artist's journal writings. First she sorts through her journal entries to draw out the most powerful memories and experiences. These she explores through a series of drawings. When the image has been refined to her satisfaction, she then develops it as a sculpture. The results are sophisticated and restrained expressions of the original image or memory. Their visual simplicity masks their complex psychological and emotional content. Untitled, for example, is the sculptural resolution of the artist's exploration of the conflict between Native and European forces, represented by the images of the tipi and the fort. For HeavyShield, forts embody defensiveness, protectiveness, and solidity. When presenting Untitled to an audience at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992, she walked in and out of the structure, later explaining: "I wanted to relate how much redefinition there was [in the work]. People perceive forts as very male things. I wanted to relate the freedom I got redefining that image. The only way I knew how was to walk in and out of the circle to show that there was nothing to protect, that there was nothing to defend against." For the artist, the image of the fortress also symbolizes colonial barriers. Its pared-down, almost ghostly form is thus a visual metaphor for the freedom to move through traditional barriers.

Similarly, HeavyShield's 1993 solo exhibition Heart Hoof Horn used the central metaphor of the human body to explore her residential school experiences as a child, and many of the sculptures address issues of physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse.