Richard Wagamese has exhibited his immense talent by writing the novel 'Indian Horse'. The book tells the story about an Ojibway boy named Saul Indian Horse who is taken from his family and put in St. Jerome's Residential School. After being at the school for over a year, Saul begins to fall in love with the game of hockey seeming to have been introduced to the sport by his guardian angel... or so you think. Father Leboutillier, a new priest at St. Jerome's has a friendly personality with all of the children at the school, he seems like he would never want to hurt the children. Which ends up being far from the truth. Father Leboutillier and Saul have a mentor-son relationship. It appears as though Father Leboutillier is Saul's savior until chapter 49 when we find out that Father Leboutillier was nothing but a disgusting pedophile.
As a young child Saul did not know how to comprehend what Father Leboutillier was doing to him. Richard Wagamese weaves details throughout this book, giving you an insight into Saul as a little boy, as an adolescent and a grown man. Saul describes understanding the horrors he went through not only at the school but in his hockey seasons. How Father Leboutillier told Saul that "he was a glory" while Saul was being sexually assaulted and raped, Wagamese wrote this so that the reader would understand that this was Leboutillier's way of saying "keep quiet". "You are a glory Saul", as a kid, we want to feel loved and seen by our families. Father Leboutillier would say this to tell Saul that this was okay, when it was far from it. Leboutillier shows this love and affection for Saul as a mentor and father figure but really he is manipulating Saul. Richard Wagamese did not just write Saul's past trauma and the emotional manipulation that Saul was going through with Father Leboutillier, he wrote about the discrimination and prejudice he and his teammates faced was reflected not only when he was on the Moose but even when he was playing for the Toronto Marlies.
They were pissed on, beaten, and mocked. Richard Wagamese told the story with historical accuracy with how Indigenous peoples were treated not only in general but also in sports. In chapter 32, Saul and his teammates on the Moose are playing in a tournament against the North Bay Nuggets, and Wagamese writes in detail of the resentful comments coming from not only players but also the grown adults in the stands. "You guys are gonna need an Indian herse to get outta here!” and “We’re taking your scalps, Chief!” are just two examples of rude commentary the Moose received just by showing up to play a hockey game. It was not just grown adults that Wagamese wrote about in this novel, but also children. He demonstrated how historically it was normalized that white people discriminated Indigenous peoples no matter the age. In chapter 32 we are given an example of a young boy who spit at Saul and called him a "fucking chicken" for not fighting back during a game. Richard Wagamese wrote an effective understanding that Saul did not want to buy into white people views of Indigenous peoples, he described the frustration of how Indigenous peoples wanted to play sports without having being judged and slurred at the minute they walked onto the rink. Saul had good composure and I felt emotionally connected to how Wagamese wrote when Saul had enough of it, when Saul had finally fought back when he reached his breaking point. Wagamese reached deep down inside all of the readers and athletes when writing about Saul's time on the Toronto Marlies "That was the end of any semblance of joy in the game for me", which hit close to home. I felt empathetic for Saul losing his composure, because I have been at that breaking point. Where people ruin the sport you love, people can make or break the sport you play, and last year I began to hate soccer. It hurts I am not playing this year, because of one person's hateful words. To Saul, it was one hundred hateful words.
It could be that Saul did not want to fight back based on the fear of repercussions from white peoples' normalization of discrimination against Indigenous peoples or how he was raised at the residential school, or maybe even both. Richard Wagamese has written a comprehensive novel that shows what it was like for Saul before, during, and after St. Jerome's. The details he has given us about the hockey game, being Saul's escape, from not only the trauma from St Jerome's, his abandonment from his family and how that affected him later, but also Father LeBoutillier's sexual assault and rape. Wagamese communicates his ideas fluently and by doing so he made an emotionally gripping novel full of insight as to the last effects of children forced into residential schools and the view society had on Indigenous peoples.
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