Xat’sull Chief Bev Sellers spent her childhood in a boarding school run by the church. Like other Native American boarding schools, the goal was to assimilate students into mainstream society by forcing students to abandon their heritage and language and adopting Christianity and “civilized” ways of living. The trauma experienced at school continued to haunt Sellars throughout her life. This memoir tells the story of three generations of women who attended St. Joseph’s, culminating in former students destroying what was left of the school after it closed.

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Source: Sellars, Bev. They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Talonbooks, 2013.