Saul’s Life In Two Realities In Indian Horse By Richard Wagamese
Indian Horse was written by Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe from Minaki from northwestern Ontario. The book is about the story of a young boy named Saul Indian Horse and his journey through his life from childhood to adulthood in northern Ontario while residential schools were being run by the church in the 1960s in Canada. Saul seems to be stuck between two worlds of Ojibwe culture and western Canadian life. Saul has encountered hardship and friendship in his life. Nonetheless he doesn't seem to fit into one and the other, and the treatment he felt trying to live in both realities.
Firstly, Saul was a young boy living with his family. He lived with his father, mother and grandma matriarch Naomi. When their first son was taken to St Jeromes they settled into Redit. Life is improved which causes his parents to start to drink less which in turn causes the quality of life to improve. After Saul's brother comes back his family rejoices to see their son. He was very skinny and sick because after he escaped the school because of how they treated him there. Naomi takes the family to the ancestral homeland to help improve her grandson’s health. Then overnight, at the campsite, he dies. His catholic mother and his spiritual grandmother get in a fight. “Those gods are dead. We need to take my son to the priest so that he can be returned to the bosom of Christ, “your grief has blinded you”, my grandmother held sacred medicines but my mother slapped it away”. Saul's mother wants his son to be blessed by the priest so his soul can go to Jesus. However, grandma Noami prefers his body to return to the land of their ancestors. This shows a great example of how the theme of two world theme begins right away with the divide of family members. Saul is taken to St Jerome’s a Catholic school for indigenous children to suck the “savages” out of them. This Reinforces that one group of people wants to suppress another group of people. Also,by cutting their hair and assaulting them if they speak in their native tongue. “Hockey Night in Canada was the personification of magic. Ten men hurtling around a fenced perimeter with glorious speed”. When Saul was introduced to Hockey on the television screen his life changes.
Secondly, Father Leboutiller is the priest that allows Saul play for the school team. Saul practices on an outdoor arena with no roof and no heat. He is an outsider. When playing the “white man game”, Saul is not used to the arenas in towns. His team is not used to a high quality rink. “We were used to suiting up in the full chill”. Saul is an exceptional hockey player because he uses his spirituality to predict what the other player will do before they even think about. When Saul gets on the ice “the crowd howled when they saw me skate to the centre line to take a faceoff”, he was ridiculed for being short and being an Indian. The crowd laughs at him “is he the the mascot” someone in the crowd said. Saul proves them wrong by showing his true feathers and flew across the rink with the puck scoring and winning the crowds cheers. Saul was invited to play for the Moose by Fred Kelly. Saul was shocked to be asked to play for the older boys’ team. Fred was a friend to Saul.He treated him like an equal and as an individual, not as something to be fixed. Saul has a new family now with the Moose, They traveled in a broken bus with the gear on the top. They were a good team. They were always winning and having fun. However, the world of hockey changed for Saul and for the team. As conditions got more competitive, something snapped in Saul. He was not a small boy who played for fun, he's a man with the urge to win no matter what, if he even hurts people in the process. An agent was at his game to get him to play for the maple leafs farm team. His teammates supported him to get out of the deadbeat town and received a decent life in Toronto. This is a major two world difference of poor town to a rich city.
Lastly Saul goes to Toronto to further his career in Hockey: “We were just unfamiliar to the world of around the NHL”. He was the rookie for the team. The other players were tough and fast and ignored him. Saul gives in the action of an NHL hockey player, he would body check and destroy other player. He craves the attention of the crowd and was given the nickname of the “Raging Red Skin” Sadly Saul is only knows as angry Indian then a good Hockey player, he has encountered plenty of racism with plastic Indians dolls littered onto the ice if he scores a goal. Also people through horse turds in front of the bench and a player tape feathers to his helmet applying the stereotypes of Indian headdress. “I sat alone in that territory of emptiness, eight inches on either side of me announcing to everyone that i was different, that i was not welcome even among my own. Finally, it changed the game for me” Saul finally had enough so when he played he dropped the gloves and swung his fist with the other players. Later on they let him off. A few years later he was in Winnipeg a broken man that is an alcoholic. He later had a seizure and was taken to the New dawn centre outside of the town “But the doctor told me what a mess I’d made of my body and how another bout drinking like I did would likely kill me and some for a strange reason I listened”. He later improved in health his thoughts get clearer. He went back to his old family town to revisit his old life to set peace back into himself. Saul went canoeing back to his family's ancestral lake to relax. He went from a hopeless loser to a peaceful man again, and the two worlds he lives stop colliding Into each other and merged into one big one of family, friends and hope.
Saul went through a lot in his life. Gets push and shove in both worlds like ball getting toss into a baseball glove. Through thick and thin Saul is at his best with friends and family like Fred Kelly and Virgil and rest of the Moose. His is truly at home with them. Even though his stuck in both worlds of the westerners and the Indians he knows who is as an individual. Richard Wagaseme (the Author) truly understands what the native peoples of Canada have felt in the past decades and given the reader a chance of what they felt. Fictional or true we can learn a little bit more about Saul Indian Horse.
