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Margaret-Olemaun says, “He knew things about the school that I did not”.

Her father did not want her to attend the school. In this text, the child, Margaret-Olemaun really wants to attend the school, because she wants to learn to read like her sister. I’m curious, also, about the ways the books are different. Margaret-Ouleman’s story was also told in the book for younger readers, Not My Girl, and the books for middle level readers, Fatty Legs and A Stranger at Home.ĬELESTE: There are many similarities in the picturebooks about residential schooling that we have read so far because governments and churches were working out of the same genocidal playbook of cutting hair, physical abuse, stripping of language and culture and names, and shaming. This picturebook was written with middle to upper elementary students in mind.

Margaret-Olemaun was determined to learn to read and prove to the nuns that she was a strong and capable student, and she did. When she convinces her parents and begins attending the school, the nuns try to humiliate and shame her in many ways. Olemaun’s parents do not want her to attend the school away from her home of Banks Island, but Olemaun longs to learn to read like her older sister. When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret-Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton (Inuvialuit) tells the true story of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s experiences at an Indian Residential School in Aklavik, in what is now known as Canada.

By Celeste Trimble and Kristen Suagee-Beauduy