They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars

“Soon after we arrived at residential school,” she writes, “we were given a number that would become our identity. As Bishop O’Connor, he was convicted in 1996 of committing rape and indecent assault on two young aboriginal women during his time as a priest at St. Sellars was forced to attend the Catholic-run school in the 1960s when the principal was Hubert O’Connor. Joseph’s school.īev Sellars accepting the George Ryga Award Her lifelong path towards healing has culminated in the first book to be written by someone who survived St. Joseph’s and O’Connor, as well as the hunger, forced labour and beatings with a leather strap that were common in the school. Joseph’s.īev Sellar’s memoir They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School describes St.

Joseph’s Residential School in Williams Lake where both her grandmother and mother had been incarcerated before her. She later endured far-worse isolation from her family for ten months each year in the notorious St. “What is impressive about Bev Sellars,” says historian Jean Barman, “is that her book is only the tip of the iceberg that is her life.” Barman recalls she once wrote a prize-winning article sparked by watching Bev Sellars in the courtroom inspiring a group of indigenous women to stand tall and be their own persons.Īt age five, Bev Sellars was isolated for two years at the Coqualeetza Indian Turberculosis Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia, nearly six hours’ drive from home.

writer who has achieved an outstanding degree of social awareness in a new book published in the preceding calendar year. Initiated by The George Ryga Society, BC BookWorld and Okanagan College, the annual Ryga Award has been presented since 2003 by Okanagan College to a B.C. Joseph’s Residential School was released coincidentally with the proceedings of the Truth & Reconciliation hearings and events that were held around the Lower Mainland, September 18-21. It wasn’t planned-but the memoir recounting abuse at the St. Chief Bev Sellars has presented her memoir, They Called Me Number One, to Canada’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission to be part of the public archive.

They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars