My Name Is Seepeetza

Shirley Sterling

Image | BOOK COVER: My Name is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling

Caption:

At six years old, Seepeetza is taken from her happy family life on Joyaska Ranch to live as a boarder at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Life at the school is not easy, but Seepeetza still manages to find some bright spots. Always, thoughts of home make her school life bearable.
An honest, inside look at life in an Indigenous residential school in the 1950s, and how one indomitable young spirit survived it. (From House of Anansi)
Shirley Sterling's My Name is Seepeetza was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Awards for young people's literature (text) in 1993.
My Name is Seepeetza won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize.
Shirley Sterling was a member of the Interior Salish Nation of British Columbia. Her Nlaka'pamux name is Seepeetza.