Ms. Denny was sent to two schools run by the Roman Catholic Church. She said that when she was beaten with a leather strap by the school’s nuns and priests, she made a vow: “I wasn’t going to give them what they wanted to hear — me crying. I just held it back. Even to this day I’m like that. I hold back on crying. It kind of hurts me, you know.”

Despite that experience, one wall of Ms. Denny’s living room has two paintings of Jesus and a Christian prayer. Small statues of Jesus sit on an end table.

She told me that while she had remained a Christian, she also followed Indigenous spiritual practices, something that was strictly forbidden at residential schools.

“I pray the way I was taught in the residential school, Our Father, Hail Mary and all that,” she said. “And then, in the other ways I believe what my Granny believes. Both ways. And sometimes I think about it. Which one is true? The Catholic way or my Granny? So I just go on both sides.”