They called me Number One : secrets and survival at an Indian residential school / Bev Sellars.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Xat'sull Chief Bev Sellars spent her childhood in a church-run residential school whose aim it was to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings, forced separation from family and culture, and discipline. In addition, beginning at the age of <U+FB01>ve, Sellars was isolated for two years at Coqualeetza Indian Turberculosis Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia, nearly six hours' drive from home. The trauma of these experiences has reverberated throughout her life. The <U+FB01>rst full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph's Mission at Williams Lake, BC, Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the 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 con<U+FB01>ned and denigrated for failure to be White and Roman Catholic. St. Joseph's mission is the site of the controversial and well-publicized sex-related offences of Bishop Hubert O'Connor, which took place during Sellars's student days, between 1962 and 1967, when O'Connor was the school principal. In this frank and poignant memoir, Sellars breaks her silence about the institution's lasting e<U+FB00>ects, and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Bev Sellars is chief of the Xat<U+2019>sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia"--Provided by publisher.

Winner of the Burt Award for First Nations, M�etis and Inuit Young Adult Literature (Third Prize), 2014.

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