Dear Canada: These Are My Words: The Residential School Diary of Violet Pesheens

Publisher's description (Scholastic, 2016): 
Acclaimed author Ruby Slipperjack delivers a haunting novel about a 12-year-old girl's experience at a residential school in 1966. 

Violet Pesheens is struggling to adjust to her new life at residential school. She misses her Grandma; she has run-ins with Cree girls; at her "white" school, everyone just stares; and everything she brought has been taken from her, including her name-she is now just a number. But worst of all, she has a fear. A fear of forgetting the things she treasures most: her Anishnabe language; the names of those she knew before; and her traditional customs. A fear of forgetting who she was. 

Her notebook is the one place she can record all of her worries, and heartbreaks, and memories. And maybe, just maybe there will be hope at the end of the tunnel. 

Drawing from her own experiences at residential school, Ruby Slipperjack creates a brave, yet heartbreaking heroine in Violet, and lets young readers glimpse into an all-too important chapter in our nation's history.

Author Biography (Scholastic Canada): 
Ruby Slipperjack is a member of the Eabametoong First Nation and she is fluent in her Anishinabe language. She was born and raised at her father's trapline at Whitewater Lake, Ontario, and entered a one-room Indian Day School, with no knowledge of English, at the age of seven. These schools were built all along the Canadian National Railway line where there were enough school-aged children to attend. After Grade 5 she was sent to Residential School, and later attended a city school. For that period, she lived in a room-and-board situation with non-native families until she graduated from high school. She retained her traditional knowledge and still practises her Nation's cultural activities at her family's homeland at Whitewater Lake.

Ruby completed her formal education with a B.A. in History, B.Ed. and M.Ed. from Lakehead University and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from the University of Western Ontario. She is a tenured, full professor in the Indigenous Learning Department at Lakehead University. Her prior novels include Honour the Sun, Silent Words, Weesquachak and the Lost Ones, Little Voice, Weesquachak and Dog Tracks. She contributed stories to the Dear Canada anthologies Hoping for Home: Stories of Arrival and A Time for Giving: Ten Tales of Christmas.

Resource format: Novel

Age recommendation: Grades 4 - 7

Keywords: Residential School, Anishnaabe, family, journal, memories, reserve, tradition, knowledge, food, friendship, school, memoir, resiliance, way of life, storyteling, knowledge, hunger, learning, remembering  

Year of publication: 2016

Publisher information: Scholastic