Chilling Lessons

It is a long four days in May in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Survivors of St. Joseph’s Mission Indian Residential School have come together jointly for a commemoration project and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian residential schools. Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is present for the unveiling of a memorial to those who survived “the Mission” and the many who did not. Walking where the schoolyard once was means walking on unmarked graves. Children simply disappeared.

Somehow on day three, Atleo looks both refreshed and exhausted on the plane to Vancouver, where he will transfer to Winnipeg and attend Elijah Harper’s funeral. The death of Harper (another residential school survivor) at age 64 from complications from diabetes mirrors First Nations communities everywhere, sadly accompanying the many tales of death told at the Williams Lake commemoration and in Bev Sellars’s They Called Me Number One: Secrets and...