“Stolen Words”

Stolen Words is a powerful story of a grandfather and his granddaughter, written by Melanie Florence and illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard. The story followed a grandfather, who had been a victim to residential schools when he was young, and his granddaughter. The granddaughter asked him how to say “Grandfather” in Cree, to which he explained to her how his Cree words were “stolen” from him. Although this story was short, it was very moving. The story told us about how much the residential schools affected the children who went there, and in this case, it was the grandfather. Stolen Words really made me think about how the First Nations’ felt when the children were being taken and forced to learn another culture and to forget their own. This story made me ask a few questions like “Why did they think the schools were a good idea?” and “Did they ever think about the outcomes?”. During the last part of the story, when the granddaughter gave the book to her grandfather gave me mixed emotions. I was happy for the grandfather, for he was learning his language again, but I also felt upset. I thought about how none of this would’ve happened if the Government just left the Indigenous alone, they wouldn’t have had to relearn their language or their culture. What was the motive of the Government to force this on the children? The story left me with a bittersweet feeling, and although things are currently being fixed, I still can’t push aside the fact that people went through all of that. This book really shows how much residential schools have damaged their people, and I’m glad that a book is spreading awareness for all of that.