This beauty and horror of this book caught at my heartstrings. Told in first person by a northern Ojibway man, Saul Indian Horse, who has reached the absolute bottom. An alcoholic, his last binge nearly killed him and brought him to a residential treatment center. He must revisit his past before he can move forward. He recalls when he was abandoned by his parents and left for a grandmother to raise. When their home can no longer support them, she takes him away but dies in the effort. He is then forced to attend a residential school. There, he discovers hockey, and the game opens a way for him to deal with the harsh life in the school.
Richard Waganese’s prose is breathtakingly spare, easy to read, yet each word is fraught with emotion and often with deep spirituality. I am not a sports fan by any means, but I was drawn into the game. I could clearly see the game and envision what Saul saw and how he was transformed by playing. Additionally, the lush descriptions of the land and the Ojibway connections with it are delightful. Waganese neither over- nor underplays the horrors the children endured at the residential school but writes with unflinching candor of these evils. Despite the Bible’s exhortations about love and mercy, the nuns and priests at the school are demons. Even after leaving the school, Saul endures outright racism and the internal conflicts caused by cultural alienation and displacement from his family and lifestyle.
I am surprised this book hasn’t made it to someone’s “banned book” list. Indian Horse should be required reading in the upper grades of high school, especially in light of the recent residential graves discovered in Canada and the migrant crisis at the southern border of the United States where children were torn from their parents. Indian Horse deals with difficult topics but handles them beautifully. It would be great in a critical race theory classroom. History is selective when written by the “winners,” but all sides of an issue should be taught and the plights of the “losers” shouldn’t be ignored. American and Canadian treatments of Native Americans is genocide, no less than what Hitler did to Jews and other “undesirable” races. Like Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Indian Horse will haunt me, and I’ll think of it often in years to come.
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Indian Horse (Milkweed Editions, April 10, 2018) is available through:
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The Kite Runner is available through:
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