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Indian School Days

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Indian School Days
Book Review

Justin Delorme
Introduction
The book, “Indian School Days” is an autobiography of the author Basil Johnston, an Ojibwe native from Wasauksing First Nation, in Ontario. This piece by Author, “Basil Johnston”, gives the reader more and more evidence of the structural lifestyle of the Spanish Indian residential school. From the very beginning his writing style links the reader to never put down the book, it is full of action and true events that took place during his lifetime. The book starts off with Mr. Johnston as a young child of ten years, skipping school with another student, an act that they didn’t think would get them both shipped off to a residential school. But as fortunes and his unfortunate luck would have it, the feared Indian agent showed up to Basils door and took himself, along with his 4 year old sister to St. Peter Clavers School, a boarding school run by Jesuit priests at Spanish, which was close to Sudbury, Ontario. With the fear of police and punishment his mother and grandmother got both children ready and there was nothing nobody could say or do to change the mind of the Indian agent. In the pages that were to follow, Basil creates many portraits of the young Indian boys who struggle to adapt to the harsh and inhumane environment of this institution. By looking at some key examples from the book that Basil Johnston wrote, it will show the reader why this would be a good book to read as his writing style is from his own personal reflections of his past life and the institution that made him the man he is today. From the very beginning of the book it tells of situations that he and other native children had to endure. From the almost army like structure and cruel administrators, the Jesuit priests, it was a place of strict learning and hardship for all. Many Authors that might have wrote about such instances

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