The next graphic honours a collaboration with University of Regina Press, publishers of the National Bestseller The Education of Augie Merasty — A Residential School Memoir. This Colonialism Skateboards graphic explores the life of the late Joseph “Augie” Merasty, a Cree man who survived the St. Therese Residential School. His memoir offers a first hand account of the physical, emotional, and psychological violence of the Residential School system and the federal policy of forced assimilation that attempted to erase Indigenous identity.

Augie Merasty attended St. Therese Residential School from 1935 to 1944, a period when government funded, church run schools enforced aggressive assimilation policies on Indigenous children. The memoir is both a personal testimony and a historical document: it records one man’s survival while illuminating the broader system that affected an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children. Merasty’s story contributes to public understanding and to the ongoing work of truth, accountability, and reconciliation. This release is meant to educate and prompt reflection. By placing Merasty’s memoir on a skateboard graphic, Colonialism aims to bring this history into everyday spaces like skate parks, streets, and homes, so that the story of Residential Schools is not confined to textbooks but remains present in public memory. Remembering these stories is a step toward justice and toward honouring survivors.

During the 1860s and 1870s, as European settlement pushed west, missionaries established small boarding schools across the prairies, the North, and parts of British Columbia to assimilate Indigenous children. Although the federal government funded some of these early schools, by the 1880s, Ottawa formally partnered with Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, United, and Presbyterian churches to create larger, industrial style institutions across Western Canada. More than 130 Residential Schools would eventually operate, forcing...