news | Friday September 20, 2013

Video: Bev Sellars Makes an Expression of Reconciliation

Reconciliation Week in British Columbia draws to a close in Vancouver this Sunday, September 22nd, 2013 with a public Walk of Reconciliation through the city’s downtown core. As the Week nears its end in communities across the province, Talonbooks reflects on the emotional and enlightening experience of hosting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada National Event here in Vancouver.

From Reconciliation Canada’s website:

Reconciliation Canada offers an opportunity for all Canadians to renew relationships, based on a shared understanding of our histories and our cultures and walk a path together for a shared tomorrow.

Born from the vision of Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, Gwawaenuk Elder, Reconciliation Canada is a charitable project established as a collaboration between the Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society (IRSSS) and Tides Canada Initiatives Society (TCI).

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) is holding its BC National Event in Vancouver from September 18 to 21, 2013. Come and share your truth about the schools and their legacy. Witness and celebrate the resilience of Aboriginal cultures!

Part of Talonbooks’ experience of the National Event held at the Pacific National Exhibition included attending an “expression of reconciliation” ceremony on September 18th in which Chief Bev Sellars presented her memoir, They Called Me Number One, to a TRC Commissioner.

They Called Me Number One is the first full-length memoir to be published out of St. Joseph’s Mission at Williams Lake, B.C., in which Sellars tells of three generations of women who attended the school, interweaving the personal histories of her grandmother and her mother with her own. Sellars’s book is a courageous step towards healing, and it is one of many expressions of and responses to the residential school experience to be made during Reconciliation Week.

While expressions of reconciliation are welcomed and accepted by the TRC throughout the year, Commissioner Marie Wilson told Talonbooks in an email that “expressions made during the TRC Event become part of the permanent record of the TRC and the National Research Centre that the TRC is mandated to establish and will therefore be a record for the decades and hopefully the centuries to come.”

In the video below, Bev describes how she came to write the book, and how her writing process relates to her personal journey of healing and reconciliation. Her placing of the book in the beautiful Bentwood Box is symbolic of her gift of expression to the Commission and to the public as part of the National Research Centre archives.

TRC events will continue at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver until Saturday, September 21st. For more information on the event and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, see its website