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Husnain Ahmed

Mrs. Woolley

ENG4UE

21/1/2018

The Minority Struggle

Indian horse, created by Richard Wagamese, the name of the novel comes from the main

character Saul Indian Horse. The name represents his culture, that would soon be wiped away by

the oppressive residential school authority figures. Saul’s struggles shows Canadians the

struggles that the government once inflicted on these minorities. Through Saul’s story the readers

sees the various forms of racial prejudice either by the residential schools or by the spectators at

a game, the traume he endures, and how he gets over it.

One of Saul’s struggle presented in the novel is one of the many that minorities have to

endure. This struggle is known as racial prejudice. In the novel, one of the racial prejudice that

Saul and other people that are aboriginal face are residential schools. These residential schools

are known for having done many cruel things to the aboriginals, such as torture, not feeding, not

bathing them, beating them, and various horrific sexual abuse. Another type of racial prejudice

the main character faces is, the racial hatred he receives from the angered people at his hockey

games. One of these acts of racial hatred is when his team is ganged up one by one, and the

urinated on after winning one of the games in northern Ontario. Saul later faces even more

prejudice as he plays against white players calling him,”Brown face” or threatening to peel his

scalp. Though, Saul’s struggle is shown to be common amongst every one of his kind.
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Another, thing Saul shows us throughout his journey is the trauma he gains. One of the

many traumatic experiences that occur, is about Rebecca Wolf and Katherine Wolf. Saul recalls

the abuse that Katherine would face, stating,”Than they started putting her(Katherine) in the iron

sister(...) She began to wet her bed at night, and the nuns beat her for that.(...) And when Rebecca

tried to protect her sister she earned a trip to the basement herself. And while she was down

there,Katherine died”(168 Wagamese). Later Saul recalls the event when Rebecca kills herself

,”Her(Rebecca) agony was so pure, I felt my heart ripped out of me. I stood crying the in that

doorway(...) I never saw the knife. Not until the song was over. She knelt on the fresh-turned

earth of her sister’s grace and slipped the knife from her coat and plunged the knife into her

belly( 168 Wagamese). Just by reading this, the reader can understand how seeing things like this

could possibly mentally affect a child creating a horrible traumatic experience that they have to

carry.

Last of Saul’s struggles the reader sees is how he manages to get over his traumatic

experiences and the racial prejudice he faced. Saul decides to go to his old residential school and

let out his anger. Afterwards Saul returns to his adopted family and reveals to them the horrid

experiences he went through. The family comforting Saul shows the readers, how many of the

aboriginals had to witness these terrible cruel acts acted against them simply because of who

they are, and because of their different culture.

In conclusion, these paragraphs show the proof of Saul’s struggles in this country, that he

and many other minorities of other races,belief,and identities face. At the end we learned from

Saul’s experiences such as racial prejudice, the trauma he endures because of who he is, and

lastly having to deal with these circumstances and overcoming them

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Work cited

Wagamese, Richard. Indian Horse: a novel. Langara College, 2017.