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Exploring Identity, Trauma, and Resilience in "Indian Horse"

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Introduction

Identity and cultural displacement, trauma and healing.

Resilience and Survival

Legacy and reclamation.

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Adversity in "Indian Horse": Story of Difficulties and Misfortune Pages: 5 (1227 words)
Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple Pages: 5 (1282 words)
Impact of Society on Saul's Life in Indian Horse Pages: 5 (1450 words)
Abuse in Residential Schools as Depicted in the Novel Indian Horse Pages: 3 (708 words)
How Minor Characters Affect the Character Development of Saul in Indian Horse Pages: 4 (1027 words)
Saul Indian Horse: The Concept of Culture Pages: 3 (885 words)

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Nighttime Invasions, Colonial Dispossession, and Indigenous Resilience in Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse

2022, American, British and Canadian Studies

This essay demonstrates how Richard Wagamese employs oral storytelling techniques to make the complex idea of Indigenous dispossession sensually and intellectually accessible to readers of his novel, Indian Horse. The Wabseemoong First Nation writer depicts the devastating effects of white entitlement when rendering character Saul Indian Horse's experiences in Canada's residential schools and the effect those schools had on his subsequent life. Using narrative analysis, it will be shown how Saul loses his ability to perceive places as being alive and resonant, and is thereby dispossessed on an individual, social, and spiritual level. Furthermore, Wagamese's descriptions of the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of Indigenous children draw attention to the harrowing histories of Canada's residential schools, thus laying bare the necropolitical potential of settler-colonial dispossession. This essay links Wagamese's narrative to recent arguments brought forward in Indigenous studies. It aims to demonstrate that Indigenous dispossession in settler colonial states is part of modernity, and its overarching political economy, that is capitalism.

Related Papers

Actio Nova: Revista de Teoria de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada

Franck Miroux

This paper purports to explore the narrative devices which enable the Anishinaabe Canadian author Richard Wagamese to compel the reader of his novel Indian Horse (2012) to experience the same violence as that faced by the young protagonist when the repressed memory of the terrible abuse suffered at an Indian residential school resurfaces decades after, disrupting the apparently linear course of the story. This study also seeks to show that Wagamese offers a major contribution to the rewriting of the history of residential schools in Canada by reclaiming Aboriginal narrative forms as a means to recover stolen memories, and thus to reconstruct both the fragmented (his)story and the shattered self.

American Indian Quarterly

Rauna Kuokkanen

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Sarah de Leeuw

Although not fully conceptualized as such by geographers, children and concepts of childhood were focal points of colonialism. Well into the twentieth century, Aboriginal peoples in Canada were discursively constructed by colonists as child-like subjects in need of colonial intervention in order that they ‘grow up’ into de-Indigenized Canadian citizens. Further, an important aspect of the colonial project entailed confining

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Angelica Bravo

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Penny Kelsey

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Michelle Daigle

Conference: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Native American Symposium 2019At: Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, OK

Samantha D . Stevens

As colonial powers imported written material commodities to their colonies, they also imported colonial ideals and values. One of these textual imports was the white savior trope, where forms of communication, including literature, from the imperial centre informed newspapers at the periphery, and vice-versa. This applied particularly to the treatment of non-white, non-English-speaking peoples. In Canada, primary concern was given to considerations of the ‘Indian problem,’ where depictions of Indigenous peoples were fraught with notions of helpless and savagery. Grounded in the affirmation that the colonizer’s way was the right way to live, the white savior informed the textual representations of Indigenous peoples. Through an examination of works by Rudyard Kipling, Henry Morton Stanley, and Duncan Campbell Scott, this papers examines how depictions of “Others” were imported into Canadian culture through works belonging to the imperial archive. By mobilizing concepts put forth by Harold Innis, Thomas Richards, David Spurr, and John Hartley, this paper also explores how through early Canadian residential school policy and newspaper representations spawned a fantasy of control that has been maintained through Canadian textual depictions of Indigenous peoples, which were exported to the colonial centre and acted to reinforce the white savior aspect of colonization. This paper is adapted from the literature review of my Masters in Journalism thesis, titled “Towards Reconciliation: The White Savior Trope in Canadian Newspaper coverage of Grassy Narrows First Nation between 1977 to 2019,” which is being completed at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Colin J Samson

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Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese’s Indian Horse Novel Essay

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Native Americans have always been discriminated against and harassed. The unemployment rate among the indigenous population is much higher than among American citizens. The well-known reservations, assimilation programs in schools and colleges, and other forms of persecution caused a serious deterioration in the indigenous people’s quality of life and morale. The novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese discusses the fate of one of the sufferings from the stigmatization of a young man. The novel touches on three major themes: the importance of family traditions, cultural genocide, and trauma resulting from abuse, which can lead to significant addiction problems.

Throughout the novel, the author emphasizes the importance of family traditions. One of the significant examples is when the question of funerals was raised. Naomi was unable to bury the dead person according to the ingenious traditions of the Ojibway. Such a situation shows the complete discrimination of the cultural minority, which affects people’s self-identification. Another important aspect of traditions and family kinship is shown when Naomi, without any hesitation, strives to find her nephew, being sure that he can help her and Saul. Thus, by implementing such events, the author shows that the connections between family members are unconditional for the representatives of Ojibways.

The second theme is cultural genocide, which is especially highlighted in the narration of the example of Saul. The humiliation experienced in the residential school is primarily based on the differences in the cultural perception of the surrounding world. Another example of genocide is the prohibition from being part of the hockey team due to Saul’s religious and cultural inheritance. A young man’s life was destroyed because such stigmatization occurred to him. Therefore, the cruel discrimination resulting in significant problems with self-identification is considered cultural genocide.

The horrifying attitude to Saul resulted in the occurrence of alcohol addiction. Being unable to get any joy in life, Saul tried to calm down his sorrow using alcohol. As a result of his mental issues, which he can not bear, he drinks himself into a seizure and ends up in the hospital. Only by accepting the horrors he experienced at school and feeling a connection with his family does Saul connect his life with hockey again. Only through finding the support of his family and understanding the moral issue resulting from alcoholism does the character obtain freedom by striving for a different everyday life.

Therefore, the novel addressed three major themes related to cultural stigmatization, genocide, and the addiction caused by moral struggles. Discrimination causes significant problems with self-acceptance. The culture-centered bullying causes mental issues, which in adulthood causes lower resilience to habits. Therefore, various cases of abuse can lead to the emotional breakdown of the person and addiction to substances or alcohol (as in the novel). The fight against addictions should be started by minimizing emotionally adverse living conditions, including cultural discrimination. The effects of some addiction-eliminating organizations can be in vain if no other regulations limit the stigmatization. Moreover, the government should also sponsor psychological help for people mentally suffering from abuse, discrimination, or addiction.

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IvyPanda. (2024, May 7). Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese's Indian Horse Novel. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-of-indian-americans-in-wagameses-indian-horse-novel/

"Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese's Indian Horse Novel." IvyPanda , 7 May 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/life-of-indian-americans-in-wagameses-indian-horse-novel/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese's Indian Horse Novel'. 7 May.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese's Indian Horse Novel." May 7, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-of-indian-americans-in-wagameses-indian-horse-novel/.

1. IvyPanda . "Life of Indian Americans in Wagamese's Indian Horse Novel." May 7, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-of-indian-americans-in-wagameses-indian-horse-novel/.

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Indian Horse

By richard wagamese, indian horse themes, assimilation.

Assimilation, or the loss of group identity in favor of the dominant culture, is central to Saul’s story. While assimilation can happen gradually due to primarily economic and social factors, Wagamese emphasizes that the assimilation of Canadian Indigenous people into White settler culture was forced and violent. This is accurate to Canadian history—residential schools were built with the explicit purpose of “killing the Indian” in Indigenous people. The violence Wagamese details at St. Jerome’s illustrate how literal that “killing” could be; policies that prohibited Indigenous language, religion, and dress could be enforced only through brutality. Yet even without the physical abuse that surrounded these policies, Indian Horse also emphasizes the tragedy of the loss itself. Wagamese uses poetic language and evocative emotional phrases when he describes Saul and his peers’ fishing trip, and the tension between their longing for their old way of life and the nuns’ assumption that they are happily embracing Christianity.

In the western canon, coming-of-age and hero’s-journey stories often center around a white male main character who finds his strength by becoming independent and triumphing over his problems alone. While Wagamese is writing in conversation with these genres, he importantly deviates from the trope of the liberated individual by constantly emphasizing the necessity of community and interdependence. From St. Jerome's to life as a migratory worker, Saul responds to his trauma by choosing to be alone. Rather than finding himself in these moments, they are the darkest in Saul’s life. When he decides to follow the road alone, he quickly realizes that he misses his family and the camaraderie of his team. Each positive turning point in Indian Horse happens when Saul lets someone else help him: Erv Sift, Moses at the New Dawn Centre, the Kellys, his great-grandfather. Indian Horse suggests that strength isn’t being able to survive on one’s own: it's being brave enough to admit that you need other people, and that they need you. It is telling that the novel doesn’t end with Saul alone on the ice, facing his fears, but with the arrival of his neighbors and friends, coming to share the game with him. Through Saul, Wagamese models an Indigenous masculinity that embraces land, ancestry, and community rather than rugged individualism.

In Indian Horse , land isn’t just a setting; it's a character. This dynamic is introduced when Naomi teaches Saul about the family’s history with Gods Lake, which illustrates that land can have a specific character, and that it can choose to accept some people and not others. While St. Jerome’s, and settler colonialism as a system, asserts ownership of land through private possession and transformation, Saul and his Indigenous ancestors have a connection to Gods Lake rooted in a reciprocal relationship with it as a place. When Saul is suffering from alcoholism, land serves as an emotional haven, the place where he feels grounded and at peace. Saul’s ability to see into the spiritual world is also closely related to the land. When he leaves Gods Lake with Naomi, he is able to see the path his great-grandfather left when he focuses closely on the sound of the river, the taste of the air, and the feeling of the snow on his face. Towards the end of the novel, Shabogeesick appears again only after Saul spends a night in the bush, indicating that Saul needs to see and connect with the land in order for his vision to show him his great-grandfather.

By focusing on Saul, and employing an internal narration that tells the reader about his mental state as well as his circumstances, Wagamese highlights not just the mechanisms but the impacts of racism. The anti-Indigenous bigotry that white settlers inflict on Saul wears several guises: institutionalized dehumanization and abuse at St. Jerome’s, the stereotyping that haunts his athletic career, and the coldness white teammates and coworkers show towards him. The cumulative effect of these interlocking forms of bigotry is to cause Saul to shut off from the world. The abuse of St. Jerome’s is the catalyst for this pattern, but Wagamese emphasizes that the verbal and social marginalization Saul experiences as an adult has a similar effect. Fred and Martha Kelly recognize that Saul’s decision to leave hockey and go off alone was rooted in his childhood trauma, but Wagamese makes clear that the immediate decision stemmed from the racism of his teammates and commentators, which barred him from finding freedom on the ice. The stereotypical commentary that followed him as a hockey player also emphasizes the violent power of language; in fact, Saul is able to out-skate physical violence on the court, but cannot so easily evade the way racist language hems him in as a player and a person.

Reckoning with the Past

The central conflict of Indian Horse is Saul’s struggle to reconcile with his past by allowing his traumatic memories to resurface and finding ways to work past them. The beginning of the novel sets up this conflict through Saul’s mother and father, who are terrified by “the school” and unwilling, or unable, to speak of it. This silent preoccupation leads to alcoholism, neglect, and eventually their abandonment of Saul. At the same time, their presence in the novel highlights the past in a different way, as Saul inherits the trauma of the residential school even before he attends it. When Saul reaches adulthood like his parents did, he struggles with many of the same behaviors—he, too, isolates himself, abandons his found family, and slips into alcoholism. However, while Saul’s parents ignored Naomi, embraced Christianity, and shut themselves off from the past, Saul is able to reconnect with his ancestors and his traditions. By reaching back into the deep past, he is able to find the truth about his own immediate past, and to carry what he experienced with honesty. Unlike his parents, after his revelation, Saul speaks about his trauma, both to the younger patients at the New Dawn Centre and to Fred, Martha, and Virgil. Through open conversation, and relying on his community, Saul is able to begin moving on.

Sexual Abuse

In Chapter 21, Saul describes the role sexual abuse plays in the hell of St. Jerome’s. When Saul describes overhearing the other boys being raped, he uses the first person plural, depicting confusion and terror as communal. By speaking more generally, Saul illustrates the impact the assaults had on everyone. He also recounts the silence surrounding the assaults, the way none of the children would say anything to protect their friends from shame. When Saul has his revelation about Father Leboutilier at the end of the novel, this scene is put in a new light. Saul’s avoidance of the singular first person and the lack of references to himself foreshadowed the way he coped with assault—denial. Furthermore, it becomes clear that part of the traumatizing impact of rape was precisely the way it made open discussion so difficult. Overcoming that silence and speaking openly with Fred and Martha is thus central to Saul’s own healing process.

Wagamese also emphasizes the relationship between assault and the ideology and operation of St. Jerome’s. Father Leboutilier takes advantage of Saul’s desire for familial affection when he abuses him, and it was St. Jerome’s that stole Saul away from his family in the first place. Fred and Martha Kelly also draw a simile between the sexual assault and forced assimilation: both are rape because they are both ways of violating someone’s bodily and spiritual autonomy.

St. Jerome’s isn’t really a school, but a way to prepare Indigenous children for manual labor while trying to separate them from culture and family. Saul’s teacher is his grandmother Naomi, who instructs through storytelling, often about Saul’s own ancestors, and through hands-on examples, as when she teaches the family how to make traditional rice ties. Her teaching is thus situated within both land and community. When Saul recovers, he picks up the mantle of teaching. He returns to the New Dawn Centre finally willing to speak, which becomes a way to both learn about himself and teach the younger inhabitants of the center. Then he makes his way back to Manitouwadge and decides to become a coach. Saul sees coaching as a way of giving back, of sharing the joy he found in the game. His goals in coaching parallel the way Naomi taught him; they’re relational and rooted in a desire to share, to pass down.

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Indian Horse Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Indian Horse is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

On page 111 Saul describes his people and a part of their identity. Find this piece, and quote it in your answer.

“We came from nations of warriors, and the sudden flinging down of sticks and gloves, the wild punches and wrestling were extensions of that identity” (111).

Chapter 1 Question

Chapter One introduces the main character and narrator. Saul Indian Horse is an indigenous Canadian of the Ojibway tribe. He is in his thirties, and he is a recovering alcoholic, who has been admitted into a recovery center called the New Dawn...

what does saul mean when he tells virgil they think its their game?

Saul and Virgil have just been through hell. The boys were forced into an alley and humiliated in the worst way by white bar patrons. Saul explains that white people don't want Indians being good at hockey: they feel hockey belongs to them.

Study Guide for Indian Horse

Indian Horse study guide contains a biography of Richard Wagamese, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Indian Horse
Indian Horse Summary
Character List

Essays for Indian Horse

Indian Horse essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese.

Saul's Form of Strength: Persevering in Indian Horse
Erasing the Indian in 'Indian Horse'
The presentation of trauma in Indian Horse
'Indian Horse' in the Context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Injustice and the Road to Healing
Self-Discovery and Cultural Rediscovery: Growth in Indian Horse

Lesson Plan for Indian Horse

About the Author
Study Objectives
Common Core Standards
Introduction to Indian Horse
Relationship to Other Books
Bringing in Technology
Notes to the Teacher
Related Links
Indian Horse Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Indian Horse

Introduction

Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / Indian Horse / Representation of Residential School Trauma in “Indian Horse”

Representation of Residential School Trauma in "Indian Horse"

Category: Crime , Entertainment
Topic: Child Abuse , Indian Horse

Pages: 2 (999 words)

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