Where the Spirit Lives (1990)

In 1937 a young First Nations Canadian native girl named Ashtecome is kidnapped along with several other children from a village as part of a deliberate Canadian policy to force First Nations children to abandon their culture in order to be assimilated into white CanadianBritish society She is taken to a boarding school where she is forced to adopt Western Eurocentric ways and learn English often under brutal treatment Only one sympathetic white teacher who is more and more repelled by this bigotry offers her any help from among the staff That with her force of will Ashtecome forced to take the name Amelia is determined to hold on to her identity and that of her siblings who were also abducted