Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu’ll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school.
These institutions endeavored to “civilize” Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only—not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.
In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph’s Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school’s lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Number One comes at a time of recognition—by governments and society at large—that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them.
44 weeks on the B.C. Bestsellers list in 2013 & 2014!
First Nation Communities READ – Periodical Marketers of Canada Aboriginal Literature award (2017–2018), Finalist
Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature (2014), 3rd Prize
Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (B.C. Book Prizes, 2014), Finalist
Named one of 15 memoirs by Indigenous writers you need to read (CBC Books, 2017)
"Sellars has given the readers an insight that we needed to hear."
—Rabble.ca
"They Called Me Number One is from my perspective necessary reading across the generations."
—Jean Barman
“Deeply personal, sorrowful and ultimately triumphal, They Called Me Number One is an important addition to the literature on residential schools, and Canada’s reckoning with its colonial past.”
—the Winnipeg Free Press
Bev Sellars was chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia, for more than 20 years, and she now serves as a member of its Council. Sellars was first elected chief in 1987 and has spoken out on behalf of her community on racism and residential schools and on the environmental and social threats of mineral resource exploitation in her region.
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