MMPL is planning further efforts to meet the T&R commission’s calls. We all need to know these stories in order that these histories aren’t repeated. Michelle Good’s debut novel, Five Little Indians, about five young children taken from their families and sent to a residential school just recently won the 2020 Governor General’s Award for Fiction (English). The library has many accounts told in adult voices, in non-fiction and fiction as well.

Please explore these books and all other materials about these experiences. These are my words: the residential school diary of Violet Pesheens, by Ruby Slipperjack Stolen Words, by Melanie Florence, is one man’s emotional tale of strength, hope, and healing, shedding light on the continued repercussions of the horrific residential schools that separated indigenous children from their families and heritage in the name of cultural assimilation. Many teachers use Phyllis Webstad’s two published children’s books, The Orange Shirt Story and Phyllis’s Orange Shirt, to introduce students to her experience as a six-year-old girl going to residential school. The Dupuis family is part of the Nipissing First Nation. I am Not a Number is a picture book based on the residential school experience of Irene Couch Dupuis, grandmother to the author, Jenny Kay Dupuis.

Many books on these lists are indigenous-authored titles, like the four pictured and described here: Last year, the library published ten lists to promote diversity in reading at every age. All organizations and levels of government must take up these serious calls for love, justice, truth and reconciliation more energetically. Like all organizations and groups, the Mississippi Mills Public Library can do more than it’s been doing to meet the Calls to Action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

These Are My Words by Ruby Slipperjack