Over 130 residential schools were located across the country, and the last school closed in 1996.
Residential schools for Aboriginal people in Canada date back to the 1870s. As described on the website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada:
While Canadians celebrate their multiculturalism and openness to immigrants from around the world (although, obviously, these characteristics are idealized in problematic ways), they have only recently begun to engage with the devastating impact of the forced abduction and cultural assimilation of generations of Aboriginal children. the Potlatch or certain dances) while using other physical activities as form of assimilation.Ĭanada’s residential schools are a huge stain on the country’s history. This was part of a broader effort to restrict the ways in which Aboriginal children could engage in particular physical cultural practices (e.g. As Courtney Szto has explored previously on Hockey in Society, hockey was used in residential schools as part of an effort to forcibly and violently assimilate First Nations boys into European-Canadian culture. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibway man.Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012 Douglas & McIntyre) is a harrowing, yet ultimately uplifting, novel that explores the impact of Canadian residential schools on generations of Aboriginal Canadians.Why, then, is it being reviewed on a hockey blog?Īlthough not necessarily a novel about hockey, Indian Horse centrally features hockey, and offers important insights about the culture of the sport. Indian Horse unfolds against the bleak loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displacement. For Saul, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he’s sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player.
With compassion and insight, author Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. With him, readers embark on a journey back through the life he’s led as a northern Ojibway, with all its joys and sorrows. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling his story. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him.
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