This book follows 5 residential school survivors from upbringing to adulthood. It’s really effective at illustrating the complex way trauma integrates into an identity and manifests differently for each individual. Behaviours stigmatized by society can have underlying causes that people dismiss. Even more so when it comes to indigenous people, who have been dehumanized by our culture.

That means the people who need the most compassion and empathy, and those that have been harmed immeasurably, and continue to be harmed, are isolated and do not have access to help. The narrative does a great job of backtracing issues to the schools. And that was not long ago and only the latest attempts of the governmental assault on indigenous peoples.

Even more pertinent with the residential school mass graves being uncovered up here in Canada. Yet racism and systemic issues continue to be present and, in some cases, even exacerbated when it comes to these issues. The school system to this day is terrible and ineffective. Reserves aren’t getting support. The program in place to distribute funds and service reserves has been found to be incompetent and harmful.

Every year there is an additional voice being added to the stories of residential schools, missing and murdered indigenous women, and systemic issues indigenous people face. But the government does nothing, as usual, no matter the government. I hope the graves being uncovered are enough of a catalyst to have more people pick up books like this and overhaul indigenous programs and some form of restitution. No doubt only more travesties will be unearthed and more people like those in this story will have to try to navigate their lives with unnecessary and cruel pain inflicted upon them for no other reason than their heritage.