Voices of Healing: Embracing Indigenous Experience through ‘Indian Horse’ – The Cornwall Seeker

February 14, 2024

“when your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. that is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. that’s what they inflicted on us.”
 – Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse

When I was in the 11th grade, the Ontario school system began to roll out a new program to be seen in English classes across the province as an alternative to the traditional Canadian English curriculum. What was once ENG3U slowly became ‘English: Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis, and Inuit voices’ or NBE3U.

And in my life at the time, as a young teenager going from frequently making edgy racist jokes online to taking up an interest in progressive politics and social justice, what I’d come to learn in NBE3U would forever change my perspective on what it means to be an ethical member of society.

This all culminated in my reading of the topic of this article, the novel that my course was largely centred around, Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse(2012).

Read More: https://theseeker.ca/2024/02/voices-of-healingembracing-indigenous-experience-through-indian-horse/