Keely George raised her hand at her band's treaty talks to say she could try to explain what some of the words meant, when no one else could.
Sometimes she was guessing on the word, just from the way people spoke.
"So I got home, I looked in the dictionary, I was right," Keely says. "Then my neighbours asked me, 'How'd the meeting go?' Then I told them what I did, I guessed the word, so they said, 'Why don't you go to school?'
"And I says, 'At my age! Why would they accept me?' They said, 'Why not try anyways.' They loaded me into their car, and they brought me here. I had a test, and I was accepted, and I've been coming since."
And now, 14 years later, Keely, 84, is getting her high school diploma.
Keely started at the Columbia Square adult learning centre with a Grade 6 education. The only time she had spent in school was at St. Mary's residential school in Mission, where she went from age nine to 15.
Many First Nations people say they had horrible experiences at residential schools, but that's not the case for Keely.
Life with her biological mom - whom she moved in with when she was seven, after living with her loving aunt and uncle - was hard. Residential school was easier than being with her mother because there were breaks, she says.
"Where on the reserve we worked from five in the morning until we went to bed," Keely says. "We didn't have playtime."
She was sad to leave school but carried on. To stave off boredom, Keely had 10 kids.
"When you are living on the reserve, you'd say, 'I'm not a lazy person.' I'd get bored, having nothing to do, and I'd want another baby after a while," she says. "My husband said, 'No more, no more,' - after eight, and I tricked him," she adds, with a mischievous smile.
Through it all, Keely raised the children and worked, doing beading and basket weaving. For a time they lived on the reserve, and she baked pies, cakes, bread and stew, which she sold for a living. Her husband was a logger.
Eventually, they moved to Gibsons, but her husband died in 1974. Two years later, Keely decided it was too lonely on the coast without him, so she moved to New Westminster.
Keely's favourite subject is English. "Cause that's what I've got to learn so I can explain to the people what they need to know. How to make a better life on the reserve," she says, her blue eyes twinkling.
Keely says those blue eyes come from her grandmother, who was Irish. Despite the white ancestry, Keely looks every bit a First Nations elder. She was born into one of the 11 bands of the Lillooet Valley, Port Douglas, Keely says. Keely has creases when she smiles - her smile takes over her whole face - and is warm, gentle and easy to talk to.
Her voice is quiet, and she speaks deliberately, thinking about each word. She is dressed in a denim shirt, which has a brooch on one side and an Elvis Presley (she's a big fan) pin on the other.
Deborah Goertz, a teacher at community education, says Keely has helped many students at the adult learning centre over the years.
"Not just First Nations students, but all students," Goertz says, adding that she "enlivens" the classrooms she's in.
Keely has routinely come to the school. Initially, she came seven hours a day every weekday, but then about two years ago she cut back her hours.
"There's a lot of other people that want to come to school but can't come because of the cuts," she says about provincial government cutbacks to adult education.
Keely is graduating, but she has no plans to stop going to school.
"I wouldn't do anything else. I'm going to continue coming to learn more till I can't walk," she says. "I'd like other people to see that no matter how old you are, you can do something and help other people, not only the Native people too, just anybody who needs your help."
Before she came to school, Keely - remember, the woman who had 10 kids to fend off boredom - used to spend her days driving to thrift stores with her sister.
"I didn't know how to stay home. My sister and I, we'd travel around - look at thrift stores. We didn't buy anything, but we liked to just you know, look. Don't know how to stay home. We're not too much on TV. We don't drink, so we just liked to roam around, but I'm glad I came to school."
Keely lives by the 22nd Street SkyTrain station in the West End and uses the train to get to school.
"That's why I'm lucky I have the bus pass. I never used to have it, so I used to have pay my own way," she says, pulling the pass out of her purse to show it.
The teachers at the adult learning centre have been a huge help to Keely, she says.
"Very good, they're very, very good," she says. "They really help the students to understand. They treat you very well."
At the adult learning centre's upcoming graduation ceremony on June 25, Keely will be wearing a First Nations outfit made of tanned hide. The 84-year-old graduate likely won't have to guess at the meaning of any words when she speaks at the ceremony.
