They Called Me Number One

BC Book Prize, Non-Fiction, Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Finalist)
Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature: Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Third Prize winner)

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.

Bev Sellars is a former Chief and Councillor of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia. First elected Chief of Xat’sull in 1987, a position she held from 1987 to 1993 and then from 2009 to 2015. She also worked as a community advisor for the BC Treaty Commission. Sellars served as the representative for the Secwépemc communities on the Cariboo-Chilcotin Justice Inquiry in the early 1990s. She has spoken out on racism, residential schools, and on the environmental and social threats of mineral resources exploitation in her region.

Sellars is the author of They Called Me Number One, a memoir of her childhood experience in the Indian residential school system and its effects on three generations of women in her family, published in 2013 by Talonbooks. The book won the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness, was shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature. Her book Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival, published in 2016 by Talonbooks, looks at the history of Indigenous Rights in Canada from an Indigenous perspective. Sellars has a degree in history from the University of Victoria and a law degree from the University of British Columbia. She served as Chair of First Nations Women Advocating for Responsible Mining (FNWARM) for four years and is currently serving as a Senior Advisor to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (www.ilinationhood.ca).