Verna Miller

About Verna

Verna (Pepeyla) Miller is a Residential School Survivor and member of the Nlaka’pamux homelands within the Interior Salish area of British Columbia. She is the former director of Tmixw Research—an Indigenous research group consisting of ethnobiological interests, water rights, title and rights, cultural/sacred landscapes and archaeology. 

In 2004, she was appointed as Project Facilitator for the Nlaka’pamux Health and Healing Society to provide mental and spiritual counselling for those affected by residential schools. Verna and her husband Jack have established various scholarships at UVic and Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. She was one of the first Indigenous members of Thompson Rivers University’s Board of Governors, and she has been a guest lecturer on Indigenous issues and continues to shape educational pathways for Indigenous students.

Verna and other members of the Nlaka’pamux Arts Council have made and collected more than 900 comfort quilts for communities affected by wildfires near Ashcroft and Lytton and flooding along the Nicola River. She has also been an active member of her community's Housing Committee and the Liaison Committee working with the Highland Valley Copper Mine extension proposal that involves reclamation of homelands and critical water sources lost when the mine was first established.

'Big mouth, little pond'

“My Indigenous name is Pepeyla, which means frog or frog woman, and I always introduce myself as, ‘My name is Pepeyla—big mouth, little pond.’ I do have a big voice and it started in my days at residential school. I was always vocal, got myself into a lot of trouble because of it, but they made me the leader of the drill team… and then I was a Parade Square Sergeant Major when I was in the Canadian Forces Reserves for 16 years.”

Time at UVic

“Nancy Turner was my mentor when I was taking her courses and it helped me recall a lot of the traditional knowledge that I learned from my grandparents… the times I spent with my grandmother, the journeys I took with my grandparents, the things I could remember learning at a very young age before I had been sent away to the residential school. A lot of those memories were brought back in learning, and then I was able to contribute some of my knowledge to the class as well.”

Lending a voice

“I think most of us who have gone through the Rez school system, there's PTSD, so there's always a mental-health issue, and I still struggle with that. I have what they call catastrophizing that happens randomly and has no basis in reality, but I try to keep as busy as possible. If I'm not quilting, I'm reading or I'm doing something else—getting involved in community and international organizations where I feel I have a strong voice… I'm not afraid to challenge or support some of these international issues that come up, especially where Indigenous people are concerned.”

Grandmother's knowledge

“I keep harking back to my grandmother's knowledge. She didn't speak English very well. She couldn't write, but her depth of knowledge was incredible. Sometimes I say to people, I missed out on an incredible education from my grandparents because I was sent away to residential school. I wish I had one sixteenth of knowledge that my grandmother had… She knew all the medicines and how to cure things. One time when I was about five, I was thinking I was being helpful and going out to chop kindling for her, and I ended up chopping my foot instead, and she stayed very calm. She bandaged me up and she took the bandage off a little while later and it started to infect. She always kept a tobacco can full of pine pitch and it turned gummy and she would chew that—the saliva is also very medicinally based… She put it in a clean cloth, put it on the wound, wrapped it up. A couple of days later she took it off and the infection was gone. So that stuck with me forever, and I still use that method whenever I can. In addition, these memories of times spent with my grandparents prompted me to become more active in defending Indigenous food sovereignty along with food security.”