Indian Horse

 

I hear from a fellow teacher that the kids in grade 8 are now reading a book titled “Indian Horse,” by Richard Wagamese. Not a part of the literary canon when I went through. Apparently it is a fictional account of a First Nations child’s life in one of the Indian Residential Schools.

It is fiction, of course, so Wagamese is free to make things up, and cannot be called on it. However, I’m not sure eighth graders are sophisticated enough to realize this. To be honest, I’m not sure the average high school teacher is sophisticated enough to realize this. They are all going to think it is an accurate description. 

It is chock full of accusations against the residential schools and the Catholic Church. In a sane society it would be recognized as “hate speech,” and would not be allowed in the school library, much less taught there.

A representative passage:

At St. Germ’s the kids called me “Zhaunagush” because I could speak and read English. Most of them had been pulled from the deep North and knew only Ojibway. Speaking a word in that language could get you beaten or banished to the box in the basement the older ones had come to call the Iron Sister. There was no tolerance for Indian talk. On the second day I was there, a boy named Curtis White Fox had his mouth washed out with lye soap for speaking Ojibway. He choked on it and died right there in the classroom. He was ten.

And then, of course, he was thrown into an unmarked grave.

This is almost at the level of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda. It is likely to end in violence.

It is perhaps worth noting, and perhaps significant, that Richard Wagamese, the author, never went to an Indian Residential School. Although ethnically Indian, he was also not raised as an Indian. Abandoned by his birth parents at age two, he was raised by “white” adoptive parents in St. Catherines. He has no more knowledge of the reality of residential schools than the next Canadian.