When I first came here from Snowdrift, I was so excited. As we were leaving, I looked back and Snowdrift slowly disappeared. I started crying. My sisters were already living in the Fort Resolution convent, and they said it would be okay.

When we got here, we were separated. I didn’t understand what was going on. We were assigned to a bed and shown where the honey bucket was. In the middle of the night, I was so scared my first night that I never slept. The next day, we had to go to church. We were just like little army men, marching into church, single file. We were even given a number, and my number was forty-five, I’ll never forget that.

When we got into church, I had never seen anything so beautiful. I didn’t know how to pray, but I saw this tree. I thought, “This is where we must get our apples from.” There was this beautiful plant, which I thought was an apple tree.

The reason I thought this was because there were buds on the plant. To me, they were tiny little apples. At that time, I couldn’t confirm if the apple tree was real or not. I didn’t know because I couldn’t ask questions. I didn’t speak any English at all, and besides I wasn’t in contact with my sisters.