My Name Is Seepeetza

Dave Jenkinson is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Manitoba.

Sterling, a member of the interior Salish Nation of British Columbia,
draws on her own experiences for this work of biographical fiction that
episodically chronicles a year in the life of Seepeetza (a.k.a. Martha
Stone), a 12-year-old girl attending B.C.’s Kalamak Indian Residential
School (KIRS). The narrative, in the form of journal entries, begins on
Thursday, September 11, 1958, the day the Grade 6 class learned how to
write journals, and concludes on Thursday, August 27, 1959, the eve of
another school year.

In the book’s time period, laws required status Natives to attend
residential schools. The “fictional” KIRS, operated by the Catholic
clergy, was, with the exception of Christmas and summer holidays,
“home” to 400 Native children in grades 1 to 12. Seepeetza decides
to maintain a journal but must keep her record secret, for the nuns
prohibit any written communications about the school. Through her
writing, Seepeetza gives readers not just a picture of that one school
year but, via flashbacks, a larger vision of what Native children
experienced by being taken from their homes for a dozen years to be
“educated” and “de-Indianized.”

While Seepeetza, meaning “White Skin” or “Scared Hide,” was the
name by which this girl was known on her family’s ranch, on entering
KIRS she was forced to replace her “Indian” name with the
“white” Martha. Seepeetza’s journal entries usually begin by
describing some school happening and then shift to memories of her
previous family life. Almost invariably, the switch in setting provides
sharp contrasts; the residential school is portrayed as a place of
unrelenting physical discipline and control, emotional coldness,
constant fear, and loneliness, while Seepeetza’s recollections of home
evoke warm images of family love, security, and freedom.

While the book is a good episodic read, it can also be used as a social
history to acquaint readers in grades 3 to 7 with one of Canada’s more
shameful “educational” practices.

A must purchase for collections serving elementary-grade children.