They called me number one : secrets and survival at an Indian residential school

Sellars, Bev 1955- (author.).

Summary: In the first full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, British Columbia, Xat'sũll chief Bev Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. She tells of hunger, forced labour, and physical beatings, often with a leather strap, and also of the demand for conformity in a culturally alien institution where children were confined and denigrated for failure to be white and roman catholic.

Record details

ISBN: 9780889227415 (paperback)
Physical Description: print
regular print
xx, 227 pages : illustrations, map, portraits ; 22 cm
Publisher: Vancouver, British Columbia : Talonbooks, 2013.
Copyright: ©2013.

Content descriptions

General Note:	CatMonthString:july.14
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Foreward / Hemas Kla-Lee-Lee-Kla (Chief Bill Wilson) -- Preface - What pain have you suffered? -- Chapter 1 My grandmother and others before me -- Chapter 2 Sardis hospital = loneliness -- Chapter 3 St. Joseph's Mission = prison -- Chapter 4 I got religion but what did it mean? -- Chapter 5 The body was no temple -- Chapter 6 A few good memories -- Chapter 7 Pain, bullying, but also pleasure -- Chapter 8 Home sweet home -- Chapter 9 Summer of '67 -- Chapter 10 Life on the reserve -- Chapter 11 One day I realized I had survived -- Chapter 12 Becoming a leader -- Chapter 13 Going to university -- Chapter 14 Final thoughts -- Afterword / Wendy Wickwire.