Saul; Residential Schools and Hockey Why is it so important that we learn more about aboriginal history and Canada’s past with residential schools? The novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese is an excellent example of how one can use a sport to escape the horrible things going on in their life. The novel goes into detail about what happens in residential schools and it brings to light how terrible these schools were. The story goes into depth about a man’s past at residential school and his relationship with hockey. It makes the reader think about how awful residential schools were and how a sport can help someone through horrible times. It is important for Saul Indian Horse to tell his story because it brings awareness to the reader about …show more content…
Jerome’s Indian Residential School. When children arrived at the school, the clergy wanted to “remove the Indian from [the] children” (page 46-47). This was really upsetting because the children deserve to keep their spirituality and believe in what they want. To hear about what happened in the residential schools was heartbreaking because the children who got forced to go there were innocent, and they do not deserve to be treated the way they were. As soon as the children got into the school the first thing the clergy did was wash them. Saul felt that they were “trying to remove more than grime or odor. It felt as though they were trying to remove [his] skin” (44). This is awful. The children do not deserve to go through any of these painful things. They deserve to live how they want and express their own culture. The clergy would punish the kids for speaking their own language. Once, the clergy “washed [a boy’s] mouth out with lye soap for speaking Ojibway. He choked on it and died” (48). The reader believes that the children should be able to speak their own language. Residential Schools were anything but fun. It is terrible that something like this has to be part of Canada’s …show more content…
Hockey. Hockey helped him get through his difficulties and even helped him get out of residential school. In the beginning, Saul was too young to play hockey, so he became the ice cleaner. He would wake up very early to go get the ice prepared for the older kids to play, and make sure he had time to clean the ice and work on his skills. Saul would take the smallest pair of skates and “[stuff] the toes… with newspaper to make them fit” (63). This was a smart move by Saul and it shows that he wanted to improve his skills. Saul was determined to improve his skills, which was very smart because he had to play with the older boys one day. He got to play with the team because a player got injured during a scrimmage, and Father Leboutilier said to Saul, “Well, I suppose you can fill in for the scrimmage” (69), and that was where Saul’s hockey career began. Hockey helped Saul immensely. It helped him have a break from all of his worries and clear his mind; it allowed him to have some fun for once. If Saul did not discover hockey, he probably would have struggled even more and may have
Shatter the Indian, Save the Man Indian Horse, a novel by Richard Wagamese is a heartening story about a boy named Saul Indian Horse who attended residential school. This novel brings a depressingly believable story of a 1960’s residential school to life, through Saul, an Ojibway boy from northern Ontario. Saul’s character evolved through the challenges that he faced in his adolescent and adult life such as feelings of neglect, abuse and fault due to the gruesome environment that no young child should be in no matter they’re ethnicity. Firstly, Saul began to feel overwhelmed by the system even before he started to attend St. Jerome’s.
Indian Residential Schools is a horrible event that happened from the 1840s until the 1990s. From these past mistakes in judgement, the education system has added curriculum to bring more knowledge to the event. By doing this we read “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese which is a fictional novel based on true events. It is about an Ojibway boy who experienced the hardships before, during, and after the Indian Residential School. The importance of learning the past is to ensure that this can be prevented in the future, to recognize what happened, and to help those affected by Indian Residential Schools.
In the residential schools, students would be taught how to read as well and write in English and/or French because you needed to know how to do so if you wanted to communicate with white people. Learning to read/write would also help you do jobs and help you learn skills. Many people believed that the First Nation’s living off the land had to be changed and so schools also wanted the schools to teach them how to farm. As well as all this, the First Nations had asked the Canadian government for schools so they could get an education since their way of life was being lost. The buffalo were reaching critically low levels and could only live on small isolated reserves.
Through the Medicine Wheel, we are reminded of our lifelong journey that is continuous upon birth and living through youth, adulthood and senior years. In Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, the protagonist Saul experiences many obstacles which shape and develop his character. Saul’s life can be divided into more than the four stages of life to better understand his journey. Saul’s Life with His Family The time Saul was able to spend with his family was very short due to the effects of the white men.
The detrimental and unfair categorization of people by race, gender and more, commonly known as discrimination, affects many in society both mentally and emotionally. Many instances of this act of hatred occurred among Aboriginal and Native Canadians in the 20th century. However, for a little Native Indian boy stepping onto the rink, this is the norm that surrounds him. Saul Indian Horse, in Richard Wagamese’s “Indian Horse”, faces discrimination head on, where his strengths for hockey are limited by the racial discrimination from the surrounding white ethnicity. Consequently, this racism draws him into a mentally unstable state, where he suffers heavy consequences.
Saul’s life at St.Jerome 's was hell, everywhere he looked there was agony and heartbreak. “We lived under constant threat. If it wasn’t the direct physical threat of beatings, the Iron Sisters or vanishing, it was the dire threat if purgatory, hell…” Page 80. As a result hockey became an escape for Saul, something so pure that helped Saul cope with the nightmare his life became.
The voices of Indigenous children are unheard and purposely ignored. This is portrayed through the literature of Birdie by Tracey Lindberg and Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese. Despite both apologies from Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, the government system to protect First Nations children appears to have detrimental effects on the life of a child. This is proven by young children turning to drugs in order to satisfy their growing pain, family members who abuse their children because they consume high amounts of alcohol, which has a negative impact on the child, and discriminatory behaviour by surrounding communities. To begin with, young children turning to drugs in order to satisfy their growing pain.
The games turned into battlegrounds where he had to avoid and endure attacks and name calling from the players and the audience. Once he finally resulted in fighting back, he lost the connection between hockey and his culture because “there was no joy in the game… no
Native Americans in Canadian society are constantly fighting an uphill battle. After having their identity taken away in Residential Schools. The backlash of the Residential Schools haunts them today with Native American people struggling in today 's society. Native Americans make up five percent of the Canadian population, yet nearly a quarter of the murder victims. The haunting memories of Residential Schools haunt many Native Americans to this day.
He felt his brother respected him and his new found skills as a hockey
People encounter many obstacles in their lifetimes, obstacles that are too arduous to overcome by themselves. They must find a way to get through these difficulties, and there is always something, or someone, that helps keep them sane through these hard hours. To Saul Indian Horse, the main character of Richard Wagamese’s novel Indian Horse, that obstacle is St. Jerome’s Residential School and the very element that kept him sane was hockey. In the residential school, Saul is abused both mentally and physically, witnessing the continued deaths of his Indian classmates. Fortunately, Saul was able to keep himself sane through hockey.
Saul states, “In the spirit of hockey I believed I had found community, a shelter and a heaven from everything bleak and ugly in the world” (Wagamese 90). Thus, hockey serves as an escape route for all the emotional turmoil that Saul has gone through, and he uses the hockey spirit as a tool to facilitate his healing
Imagine going to school to learn new things; now imagine going to school to get beaten and never to return home. Indian Horse, written by Richard Wagamese, is a very emotional book that enables people to see what true horror it was to take part in Residential Schools as Saul Indian Horse and the after effects his parents portrayed. Wagamese establishes a very strong story line to examine how life was in Residential Schools including pain, punishments, and suffering. Punishments included mouths being washed out with soap, children being beaten (sometimes to death), laborious chores, strict rules to be followed along with certain religions, and racism. Residential schools caused Saul Indian Horse to forget his Ojibway heritage, follow his hockey
Critical Summary #3: First Nations Perspectives In Chapter eight of Byron Williston’s Environmental Ethics for Canadians First Nation’s perspectives are explored. The case study titled “Language, Land and the Residential Schools” begins by speaking of a public apology from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He apologizes for the treatment of “Indians” in “Indian Residential Schools”. He highlights the initial agenda of these schools as he says that the “school system [was] to remove and isolate [Aboriginal] children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them[…]” (Williston 244).
In the novel Indian Horse, written by Richard Wagamese, the main character Saul Indian Horse endured many hardships as a child leaving a permanent impact on who he became as an adult. The trauma he faced as a child shaped him from a happy young boy to an aggressive, dissociative alcoholic. Every aspect of his adverse childhood contributed to making him into the man he became, but the countless deaths Saul witnessed, the time he spent at St. Jerome's having his identity stripped from him, becoming a victim of abuse, and the endless racism he endured played momentous roles in his adult development. At a young age, Saul witnessed many deaths of both his peers and his family members. First it was his brother, then his grandmother, next many of