Saul Indian Horse Sparknotes

The novel Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese, depicts the societal injustices done to the Native Americans in the 1960s. The protagonist, Saul, endures an arduous journey that extends throughout his life. At the beginning of his life, he lived with his native family, only to get ripped away from them by an atrocious residential school. The horrid residential school, St. Jeromes, inflicted detrimental damage upon Saul, physically and emotionally. Saul was able to escape the confines of the school through hockey.

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.

Two adults entered the hospital room which housed the man by the name of Gunther Cardigan, who was pushing 83. Although it may be considered cruel, there wasn’t a soul on the continent who would find surprise in seeing Mr. Cardigan attached to life support. As one may expect from a chronic alcoholic, he had been in and out of the hospital frequently enough such that one may even jest that he was a regular. After accumulating one too many misdemeanors, a judge had him sent to rehab; this was encouraged by a disproportionate amount of hospital staff who had grown tired of threatening him over the various dangers of excessive drinking. Despite being generally successful, rehabilitation would not undo the damage to Mr. Cardigan’s internal organs, and his son, one of the adults looming over his bedside, would begrudgingly offer up one of his kidneys for a transplant after being declared a match – yet this was not the reason Gunther Cardigan would be lying on his deathbed.

Saul Indian Horse had a traumatic childhood. He was taken away by white people after having his sibling being taken away from his family. First of, this story started very dark; from the very beginning, Saul had a rough childhood. Moreover, while, he was still a part of the Fish Clan, his gift was his vision; for, he saw (he had a vision) of his ancestors getting crushed by a boulder when he was by the river during the night. Again, when Saul was trying to escape to a better life --after his family had gain hope from regaining Saul’s brother -- Saul’s hope was taken away after he had that vision.

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese is a powerful and moving exploration of Indigenous identity, trauma, and resilience novel of an Indigenous boy named Saul. The story is set against the backdrop of Canada's dark history of residential schools, where Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and sent to schools to assimilate into European culture. The trauma of this experience is woven throughout the story, highlighting the lasting impact of colonial policies on Indigenous communities. As Saul grows up and confronts the legacy of his traumatic past, he is forced to grapple with his Indigenous identity and the impact of colonialism and cultural genocide on his community.

“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

Imagine living in a world where the government works to erase your cultural identity from you and your people. Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, follows the story of Saul Indian Horse, a young Anishinaabe boy who navigates through a racist, unjust system while pursuing his dream. Along the way, he gets put into a residential school where they work to remove his indigenous identity from him which leads to an internal struggle. To overcome this struggle he must return to his indigeneity; this is demonstrated by Saul reconnecting with his ancestors, re-embracing his native language in the form of prayers, and taking part in rituals important to his culture. In order to fully heal as a person, Saul must return to a missing piece of himself, his

Trauma Through the Eyes of Residential School Survivors Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include "Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks)" (Sandhya Pruti). Therefore, trauma occurs from an emotionally disturbing or life-threatening event causing long-lasting unpleasant effects. Similarly, numerous notable works of literature explore post-traumatic stress disorder. In Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese uses Saul's character flashbacks to exemplify the realities of trauma toward developing children. St. Jerome's Residential School destroyed all positive aspects of Saul's life through excessive trauma.

As Saul grows up and moves on from hockey, he experiences the intergenerational trauma of his parents drinking to deal with their problems. Therefore, Saul starts to also drink to deal with his problems which cause significant obstacles and separate him from

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.

Reading becomes a constant throughout his life, and escaping into a book has always been Saul’s primary comfort zone. Saul taught himself to retreat into a book when his life was unfavourable. He confides to the reader, “Books had been my safe place all the time I’d been in the school and they still represented security…”(158). This mechanism too, is only temporary because Saul uses reading throughout the novel to escape into an imaginary world, yet inevitably will always have to come back to his life. Even as he aged, Saul still fell back into this way of coping to try to find solace.

His once warm, full skin was stained and wrinkled by the harsh climate of Afghanistan. Father’s eyes were cold and hollow, sunken like his dreams and ideas about war. After the war, father didn’t want to read princess stories anymore. He declared that there was no such thing as a happy ever after, and placed the book back onto the shelf. Father quietly left the room, forgetting that his absence meant that I now slept with a nightlight.

Over 150,000, Indian, Metis and Inuit Children within ages of 4-16 attended Residential Schools ( Indian Residential Schools Commemoration Project, 2013 ). These Schools were torture, they wanted to suck the indian out of the children. They neglected them, They ripped the children from their parents and taught them the Christian way of living. This Era lasted through the 1870s and the 1990s. There were Residential Schools all across Canada, except in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

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.

In “Legend of the Sugar Girl”, written by Joseph Boyden, the effects that residen-tial schools had on First Nations People in both their adolescent and subsequent years, are brought to light. They were taught new traditions, languages, and ways of life which ultimately lead to a loss of identity and an unimaginable future. As shown in the re-search, from the late 1800s to 1996, over 100,000 First Nations children were enrolled in residential schools in Canada. At these institutes, the children experienced emotional, sexual, and physical abuse; with punishments for reasons such as simply speaking their own language. Likewise, in the story, the “Sugar Girl” lost her identity as all of her tradi-tions that were native to her before were simply