Residential school survivor Augie Merasty: 'We were treated like animals'
CBC Radio | Posted: April 16, 2015 12:09 PM | Last Updated: April 16, 2015
"I wanted to tell the world how we were treated as Indian kids. It was a terrible place to be to tell you the truth" - Augie Merasty
Augie Merasty, or Joseph Auguste Merasty, was a young boy getting in trouble for swearing in Cree at an Indian Residential School called St Therese Residential School, in Sturgeon Landing, Manitoba.
Augie Merasty was just five-years-old when he first went there, late in the summer of 1935.
Like so many aboriginal children, he experienced abuse. And like so many others, he didn't talk about what happened inside those walls after he grew up.
But now he has. He's put his story down in a new book called, "The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir."
David Carpenter spent more than a decade helping to write that memoir. He was in Campbell River, B.C.
Arlene Merasty is Augie Merasty's daughter. She was in La Ronge, Saskatchewan.
This segment was produced by The Current's Josh Bloch.
RELATED LINKS
Augie Merasty: 86, homeless and a first-time author - The Globe & Mail
A residential school survivor's remarkable memoir - Leader-Post
The Education of Augie Merasty - CBC Books