So in order to receive an education, Highway said he entered the Guy Hill Indian Residential School in Manitoba on September 1, 1958.
Highway, who wrote about his sub-Arctic childhood in last year’s “Permanent Astonishment,” told The Post that he credits his years spent at Guy Hill for his success in life.
“I went because my father wanted me to,” Highway said about his dad, a caribou hunter and champion dog sledder who was illiterate. “My oldest brother was illiterate, too. He didn’t want the same thing to happen to the rest of us kids. So we went.”
Highway said the Guy Hill school wasn’t perfect and that he witnessed and experienced some abuse.
But “I didn’t see any strange deaths,” he said. “A lot of the white people there were kind. The education I got there…set me up for life.”