Janet cried through most of our interview. Not sobs but silent, steady tears as she talked about her experiences as a child at Marieval Indian Residential School in the 1950s. She told me how she was repeatedly molested by a priest, how she only got to see her parents for two months a year, how, to this day, she hates autumn because it reminds her of having to go back.

“I didn’t know who I was,” she told me. “I was ashamed to be native, and I was ashamed to be brown, so [after residential school] I ran to the darkest part of the city, where I thought I belonged. We all just want to belong.”

Halfway through our conversation, I saw