They Called Me Number One Front Cover


ISBN: 9780889227415
Pages: 227 pp
Pub. Date: April 15 2012
Dimensions: 8.5" x 5.5" x 0.75"
Rights: Available: WORLD
Categories
Non-Fiction / HIS028000

  • BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Indigenous
  • BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
  • HISTORY / Indigenous / General

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They Called Me Number One
By Bev Sellars

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)