The Fire Still Burns is a tale of survival and redemption through which Squamish Elder Sam George recounts his residential school experience and how it led to a life of addiction, violence, and imprisonment until he found the courage to face his past and begin healing.
Preface / Sam George
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
1 Your Name Is T'seatsultux
2 In Them Days
3 Our Lives Signed Away
4 The Strap
5 A Girl Named Pearl, a Boy Named Charlie
6 Runaway
7 I Tried to Be Invisible
8 Finding Ways to Feel Good
9 On Our Own
10 Oakalla
11 Haney Correctional
12 Longshoreman
13 Misery Loves Company
14 Drowning
15 Tsow-Tun Le Lum
16 I'm Still Here
Afterword: On Co-Writing Sam George's Memoir / Jill Yonit Goldberg
Reader's Guide
About the Authors
Sam George is a Squamish Elder and a survivor of the Canadian Indian Residential School system. A retired longshoreman and semi-retired drug and alcohol counsellor, Sam now works as an educator with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and speaks with students and community groups about his experiences. Jill Yonit Goldberg is a writer, and a literature and creative writing instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, BC, where she teaches the Writing Lives course in which students collaborate with Indian Residential School survivors who are writing their memoirs. She worked with Sam George to bring his story to the page. Liam Belson, Dylan MacPhee, and Tanis Wilson are students who participated in the Writing Lives class where they worked with Sam George to write his story.
Unflinchingly honest… - Mina Kerr-Lazenby (North Shore News) Once in a blue moon…I'm faced with a story that creeps into my bones and will not let me forget it. Like Sam George's recently released memoir…I could not put Sam's book down…I did not eat, sleep or shower: I read it cover to cover in one day - Linda Pfeil (The Beacon) "The Fire Still Burns is a formidable rendering of the survivance of the human spirit in residential schools, a book that should be read by Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences as a testament to the power of healing." - Vanessa Mitchell, University of Northern British Columbia (BC Studies) It's a harrowing tale that adds to the growing record of the horrific legacy of residential schools in Canada. George's personal story culminates with the lessons he learned for rebuilding his life after the mountain of trauma he suffered: by embracing his traditional culture–the very ways the nuns had tried to beat out of him. - Graham Chandler (BC Book World) George is unsparing in his accounts of the years lost to drugs and alcohol, and the damage he did to people close to him. But he is also able to tell the story of how reconnecting with his Indigenous roots and culture helped him heal and become a loving, contributing elder in his community…Highly recommended. - Tom Sandborn (The Vancouver Sun)
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