Roberta Hill has been talking about the brutality of Canada's residential school system for years, but it took the discovery of unmarked graves at the site of a former school in British Colombia for people to really start listening.
She was just six years old when she was sent in 1957 to the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario — one of 139 residential schools operating for Indigenous children between the 1870s and the 1990s.
To this day, locals from the nearby Six Nations reservation call the Mohawk Institute the "Mush Hole", a reference to the bland, mushy food served up there.
"That was one of the threats. If you don't behave as a kid, you'll get sent to the Mush Hole," Roberta Hill said.
"The Mush Hole to us was like a scary thought. It's not a good place. So it was always in a kid's mind. 'What's this Mush Hole?'"
Hunger was a constant companion during Ms Hill's four years at the school, but there was much worse.
The children were referred to not by names, but by a number they were assigned when they were admitted.
If they got caught trying to run away, they were imprisoned in a cupboard under the stairs.
They were also deliberately separated from their siblings and used as forced labourers, and say they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse by their guardians.
"[He] took me by the hand and took me over to his office and sat me on his lap, and that's where the sexual abuse started," Ms Hill said of the abuse she said she suffered.
"It just escalated to a lot worse where I don't even like to say those things, but it got worse."
Some children never returned home
One hundred and fifty thousand Indigenous children were channelled through the residential schools, which were set up by the state and run mainly by the churches.
In 1920, amendments to the Indian Act made attendance compulsory for Indigenous children.
The senior civil servant behind the amendments, Duncan Campbell Scott, famously said their aim was to "get rid of the Indian problem".
A 2015 report by Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded the establishment and operation of the schools were central to a policy of eliminating Indigenous identity best described as "cultural genocide".
"Essentially, you start thinking about it, and it is enforced assimilation, indoctrination, re-education camps," said Professor Scott Hamilton from Lakehead University.
"Suddenly, the reality of those children's experience becomes very clear to us."
The discovery last year of more than 200 unmarked graves in former residential school grounds at Kamloops, British Columbia, finally forced Canada to come face to face with the grim reality of the residential schools.
"[The Kamloops discovery] had such stark, dramatic impact, that it kind of shocked a general public into an awareness that this stuff is real," Dr Hamilton said.
"This is not just a historic footnote.
"I think we should safely assume that children died from violence. Children died from neglect, children died from illness."
Dr Hamilton's report for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Where the Children Are Buried, concluded that many children were likely buried on school grounds.
In addition to a lack of respect, he said a desire to save money was probably the main reason children were never returned to their families.
"Frankly, the instruction from Ottawa is to bury the children at the least possible cost," he said.
"That probably means that the religious authorities in charge of the schools would say, 'OK, well let's establish a wee cemetery behind the school somewhere on our own grounds'.
"That way [they] avoid the cost of an undertaker, avoid the cost of purchasing a plot in the local municipal cemetery, avoid the cost of transporting the children home to their families."
The discovery at Kamloops prompted Indigenous communities across the country to start searching the grounds of former schools to try and find the children who never came home, including at the Mohawk Institute.
Local police are assisting in the search.
Six Nations Police Chief Darren Montour said the grounds should now be viewed as a potential crime scene.
"What happened to our children in that building was atrocious," he said.
"That's why we're here investigating, to uncover that.
"If there are perpetrators still out there, they will be criminally charged."
Survivors want justice
It's painstaking and emotionally draining work, as many of the people working on the investigation are descendants of Mush Hole students.
Geronimo Henry often comes by to watch searchers use ground-penetrating radar.
The 86-year-old was admitted to the school in 1942.
He was six years old and remembered getting his hair cut off and crying for a month.
When he finally left eleven years later, he changed his name from Gerome to Geronimo.
"I didn't like that guy Gerome – he went through too much trauma," he said.
He also left with a low educational level, which he said affected his whole life.
"A lot of us survivors are still hurting," he said.
For years, Geronimo didn't talk about the abuse and neglect he suffered.
Now, it's his life's mission to tell people about it.
"There's people who have passed on, never seen justice," he said.
"That's the ones I'm talking for."
Mr Henry said if graves were found on the grounds of the school, the community would rally to give the children a proper burial.
"The way we believe, traditional people, is that they're still there, the spirit is still there," he said.
"We'll send them on their way to the spirit world. It will be done right."
Roberta Hill too still feels the pain of being at the school.
"It's difficult to leave institutions like this and function, and to have a normal life, because you carry an awful lot with you," she said.
Ms Hill said finally being heard helps the healing process, but said it shouldn't be a one-way process.
The local council in Brantford has agreed to open its archives to aid the search for information on any children who never made it home.
The survivors are calling on all levels of government and on the churches to follow suit.
"We've stood up, as hard as it was. Where's their accountability?" said Roberta Hill.
"You want to be reconciled, then hand over those documents."
