I Am Not a Number

Based on the childhood experience of Jenny Kay Dupuis’s grandmother, this picture book follows eight-year-old Anishinaabe girl Irene Couchie after an Indian agent takes her and her brothers from their family on the Nippissing Reserve to a residential school in Northern Ontario. Irene is separated from her brothers, stripped of her name, and punished for speaking her language. As she endures frightening conditions, she holds onto her family’s instruction to remember who she is. When the children return home for summer, their parents resolve to protect them from being taken back.