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Indian Horse By Richard Wagamese Sparknotes

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The dark horrors of St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School overcast the life of a young boy who faces adversity on its icy rink through his newfound passion for hockey. Abandoned by his family, he is forced to leave the comfort of his home and is fated to survive with his grandmother, who eventually succumbs to the harsh winters of Canada. "Alone, he must face the societal stigma in Canada in the 1960s, fighting back to ensure he can enjoy the only thing keeping him sane: hockey." The novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese is about the journey of an Ojibway boy, Saul, and reveals how societal stigma towards minorities affects the healthy upbringing of youth, fostering long-lasting physical and mental trauma embedded throughout generations. Indigenous communities face a common occurrence of race-based trauma, as members of BIPOC face a …show more content…

Saul is one of the many victims of discrimination inflicted upon Indigenous hockey players due to their culture, subsequently causing the depletion of their mental health. When describing the typical scene on the rink, Saul says, “I heard ‘Chief’, ‘Tonto’, ‘Geronimo’, ‘dumb Injun', or the hundred other labels men applied to me” (Wagamese, 180). Saul experienced severe inner contemplation when fighting with his heart, torn between succumbing to the demands of society, being the violent Indigenous man they perceive him to be, or letting his values win, and continuing to play hockey with the fierce passion that subsides within him. A colossal battle was being fought on the rink—a physical struggle between Saul and the members of other white dominant teams plagued with the racist ideology of white supremacy. Saul became a pawn of constant brutality brought by the players who slashed and physically dominated Saul to ensure the top of the leadership was dominated by

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