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Indian Horse Sparknotes

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Recommended: Introduction to native american literature

Indigenous people across Canada have been suppressed by the government, system, and settlers still to this day. The residential school system was a system of boarding schools that were established by the Canadian government and administered by various churches to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Many of these children suffered physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from school staff. Even though residential schools have been abolished they can still affect indigenous people today. The book “Indian Horse” clearly represents the intergenerational trauma of Indigenous communities in Canada.
The book Indian Horse was written by Richard Wagamese, and it portrays a story of a boy who is naturally gifted at hockey. This boy, …show more content…

His struggles with addiction and his journey toward healing are at the crux of the novel. Although this book follows one character, every character in this book has been experiencing the same prejudice, discrimination, and trauma as Saul has. In one section of the book, every person on the indigenous hockey team called the Moose gets urinated on, but Saul. For example, Wagamese writes, “When I got back out they Cicrcled me. The first one came at me and we got into it. But all he did was push me back and someone else grabbed me and spun me around and I got punched in the face. Then someone else grabbed me and gave me another shot. They pushed me all around that circle, punching and kicking and when I fell to the ground, dizzy, one of them stood over me and pissed on me. It was the same for all of us” (Wagamese 136). Right after this interaction with Virgil, Saul asks “They hate us because we won?” Virgil replies “They hate us because we’re skins.” As Saul grows older, he turns to hockey as a way to cope with the trauma he has experienced. While hockey provides him with a sense of purpose and identity, it also exposes him to racism and discrimination, further showing the ongoing impact of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in the book Indian Horse. So why would people even decide to make Residential schools just to see them cause trauma that can never be

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Saul was known as a Fish Clan child but is now known as an amazing hockey player. Saul uses hockey to escape his pain -- like how his family used drinking to escape their pain from the lost of their children. Which is one of the theme in this book -- the theme of escaping the tragedies by distracting yourself. Frankly, abuse is a recurrent theme throughout the story which has affected Saul. His family was ruin because of the white men; but since they had to make a living, they had to work earnestly for the white people.

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The atrocities that the children of residential schools had to endure is not something that can be ignored, just as the lessons these children learned, like shame, humiliation, hate, compassion, and forgiveness cannot be overlooked (Borrows 486-7). Borrows raises an important point, which is that the children of the Residential schools, who survived, grew up to eventually become elders (487). Although there are some who feel Residential schools had positive impacts, the high suicide rates in Indigenous communities cannot be

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901 Words | 4 Pages

Saul has continuously been targeted physically in and out of St. Jeromes and this accumulation leads him to angriness. Also, the underneath of an iceberg is dangerous, suggesting that the Saul fears his identity. In addition, Wagamese shows how the lasting trauma of St. Jerome's forces Saul to isolate and cope with alcohol. Wagamese shows the impact trauma has on Saul’s mental health. Saul is faced with discrimination and he finds a way to cope, as he says, “In alcohol I found an antidote to exile.

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1256 Words | 6 Pages

With over 130 residential schools built across Canada, thousands of negatively impacted survivors never got a chance to recover their identity and build themselves a community. In Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, the main character Saul uses hockey as an escape from reality and a way to keep a hold on his freedom of identity. Hockey allows him to build a sense of community and introduces him to the concept of family. Wagamese uses hockey to depict Saul’s identity loss and rebuild, serving as an example of the lasting negative impacts on residential school survivors.

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1097 Words | 5 Pages

In addition, hockey gave Saul a passion and also something to look forward to in the dark. However, Saul quotes, “I no longer felt the hopeless chill in the air around me because I had father Lebotuiller on the ice and the morning promise of the game (68). This quote proves that hockey gave Saul some much-needed motivation, and his love of his new hobby allowed him to wake up early each morning looking forward to the next. Lastly, the text provides readers with evidence of Saul’s newfound motivation. Wagamese writes, “But I want to learn it” and “Can I look after the snow then”.

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642 Words | 3 Pages

Hockey has the capability to alter a person's life and personality. Saul, the main character in Richard Wagamese's novel, Indian Horse, is shown as a boy who has always had a strong passion for Hockey and recognizes how meaningful it can be for himself and others. Throughout his career, Saul stood out among the other players on his team as well as the opposing team. This was due to his much more advanced skills in goal-scoring, puck control, and creating a variety of goal opportunities for his teammates. However, even though his talent and success were acknowledged, Saul was confronted with the harsh reality of the world.

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930 Words | 4 Pages

A book can be an eye-opening stimulus and challenge for many individuals. For instance, reading Indian Horse gave me an epiphany of the true worldview of Indigenous people and how the Indian Horse family managed to tackle the challenges of crossing their path. Heretofore, my discernment of Indigenous people was limited to what I passively absorbed from media, popular culture, and school. As it happens, Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse nourished my understanding by dismantling stereotypes and creating visual imagery by using descriptive language of the struggles Indigenous people endure through the perspective of a young Indigenous hockey player named Saul Indian Horse. The novel Indian Horse, written by Richard Wagamese, revealed the depth of

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1259 Words | 6 Pages

The book “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese features an Indigenous man named Saul. The book begins as Saul, now 30 years old, recounts the difficulties he had to endure growing up as an Indigenous boy. Saul’s family is in constant fear that he will be abducted by European Canadians, as two of his siblings were. One of his siblings, Benjamin, escapes and finds his way back to Saul’s family. In efforts to escape his captors, Saul’s whole family travel to a place called God’s lake where they harvest rice until Benjamin’s health becomes very poor and he dies.

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872 Words | 4 Pages

He continues, stating that “Elbows and knees were constantly flying at [him]. [He] couldn’t play a shift that didn’t include some kind of cheap shot, threat or curse. ”(Wagamese Chapter 38). His love for hockey dwindles as this occurs, and with it, his sovereignty. This highlights the struggles of Indigenous people as they fight to maintain their sovereignty in a world still rife with colonialism, where their self-determination, autonomy, and agency are constantly under

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806 Words | 4 Pages

This paper will review the first five chapters in J.R. Miller’s book Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. These chapters examine the events that took place before residential schools were made, as well as looking into the historical context of Canada during this time period. The first chapter of the book explains the way in which indigenous communities educated their children before contact by the European settlers. The educational systems from these indigenous communities were much different than the European educational systems, in the sense of a formal, rigid, institution.

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1476 Words | 6 Pages

The purpose of Elizabeth Graham’s text is to explore the uses, abuses and techniques of control used in two Ontario residential schools. The first being the Mohawk Institute located in Brantford. Originally opened as a Mechanics Institute by the New England Company in 1831 the building was later made into a residential school in 1834. The second, Mount Elgin in Muncey, founded by Peter Jones and the Methodist Church in 1850. Graham explains the residential school system as a preliminary attempt to mould and educate Canada’s Indigenous youth to fit into the greater Eurocentric society.

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“Indian School Road” by Chris Benjamin sheds light on the horrific experiences of Indigenous children and families at residential schools. It is a non-fiction book that explores the impact of the residential school system in Canada on Indigenous Communities. The author focuses specifically on the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, where Indigenous children were taken and forced to attend the school from 1930-1967. The Canadian government established these schools intending to indoctrinate Indigenous children into Christian ways, with churches as the main locations and priests and nuns as educators. The book uncovers the history of the Shubenacadie Residential School, exposing the responsible individuals, the government's passive

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Jerome's Residential School further traumatized Saul with a lack of instability in hockey. In an ideal situation, hockey would have provided Saul with a joyous escape from the realities of the Residential school. Meanwhile, history repeats itself as the school takes a positive aspect of Saul's life and turns it into a new trauma. During hockey, Saul experiences an escape from the familiar emotion of sadness and regret. Throughout fleeting moments, Saul frees himself from the shackles of loneliness and depression the school placed around his wrists.

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833 Words | 4 Pages

This connects back to the author himself, Richard Wagamese, who inherited trauma from members of his family who were accustomed to going to residential schools. (Lederman, 2017) Wagamese’s vivid use of language to display the abuse and cultural oppression Saul experiences at the residential school, which mirrors the traumas endured by Wagamese's own family members who attended residential schools. In one of Wagamese’s essays, he describes the emotions of his family by stating, “Each of the adults had suffered in an institution that tried to scrape the Indian out of their insides, and they came back to the bush raw, sore and aching,” (Lederman, 2017). By depicting and having Saul undergo the same dehumanizing treatments at the fictional St. Jerome’s residential school, Wagamese describes this trauma repeats across generations of Indigenous families.

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364 Words | 2 Pages

The story "Secret Path" by Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire opens your eyes to the awful truth about Residential Schools and how Indigenous children are treated. Before I watched this heartbreaking video, I had some prior knowledge of the topic of residential schools and knew they were made to convert indigenous children to Christianity and to strip them of their culture. But what I didn't realize was just how much abuse and mistreatment happened there. To begin, what hit me the hardest was the way Indigenous children were hurt and mistreated in these establishments. The "Secret Path" shows us just how horrible things are in Residential Schools.

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