Tran 1

Kailyn Tran

Mr. Wrestch

NBE3U1-2

November 26, 2022

Indian Horse

What would you do if you were stuck in a mentally and physically abusive institute?

How would you cope with the aftermath? In the novel, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese,

illustrates a story about an Anishinaabe boy named Saul Indian Horse, as he finds his talent

for hockey while suffering abuse in St. Jerome's Residential School. Throughout this novel, it

showcases the positives and negatives of escapism in reality, and how it is different for

everybody. Saul uses different coping mechanisms to cope with his traumatic experiences,

such as hockey, expressing his outward emotions, and alcoholism.

My name is Kailyn Tran, and I identify as a 16 year-old straight cisfemale who lives

in Toronto, Ontario. I am a Vietnamese individual, but I was born in Canada. From reading

the novel, Indian Horse, I am able to understand and sympathize with Saul about the

hardships that he has been through. Although I have not gone through Saul’s experiences, I

am able to realize how it has affected him throughout the book. What I do not understand is

the thought process behind the people who made residential schools. Why did they think it

was okay to force someone into leaving their culture and traditions behind? I believe that

nobody should have to go through such an absurd thing, and that everybody should be able to

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express and keep their culture and tradition. Exploring more about this topic reveals the

hardships the Indigenous people have faced in the past.

One of the first coping mechanisms that Saul uses is his passion and talent for hockey.

He uses hockey to escape from the mental and physical abuse that he has to go through at St.

Jerome's Residential school. Hockey is an important symbol throughout the novel. When

Saul plays hockey, he is able to find a source of enjoyment and fulfillment, even though he

was in a difficult situation. Throughout his journey with hockey, he faced many challenges

and discriminatory remarks because he was not an average white hockey player. “Soon,

players on other teams were following suit. I was taunted endlessly. They called me Indian

Whores, Horse Piss, Stolen Pony. Elbows and knees were constantly flying at me.”

(Wagamese 95). These remarks of racism made Saul feel not welcomed to the new hockey

team, but nevertheless, he endured the racism by ignoring it to play hockey. As the book

continues, Saul explained that “I wanted to rise to new heights, be one of the glittering few.

But they wouldn’t let me be just a hockey player. I always had to be the Indian.” (Wagamese

95). Saul did not enjoy hockey like he used to before joining the new team. His happiness

while playing hockey ended up disappearing due to the discriminatory and racist comments.

Saul was never seen as a hockey player by the outside world, but rather an Indian and an

outcast of the team. This had deeply affected his mental state, as he felt lonely and looked

down on. Even after the racist hate speech Saul faced, he still continued to play hockey,

because it made him feel safe and at peace, forgetting the trauma and abuse that he had gone

through.

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As Saul kept his rage and anger on the inside from the racist remarks, he ended up

emotionally lashing out at other individuals. Saul tried his best to maintain his emotions, and

to not let the comments impact him. As time went on, he eventually let it out and he

expressed his outward anger to the people around him. In the text, Saul expressed that he

“flipped my right glove off at the last second and drove my fist right into his face. I fought

three of them before they hauled me off the ice. That was the end of any semblance of joy in

the game for me. I became a fighter. If an opposing player directed any kind of remark

towards me, I dropped the gloves and started swinging.” (Wagamese 96). Saul found no joy

in hockey as he did before. The negativity made Saul hate the sport that he once loved, one of

his main coping mechanisms that helped him escape from a harsh reality. As Saul’s hockey

journey expanded, the anger inside of him kept spilling out. When Saul was in a bush camp,

he was left with all the hard work to do. He never complained or said a word about it, while

the others had fun. Saul complied to the work without a word, until “Jorgenson stood up and

swung a meaty fist at my face. I blocked his punch with my forearm and reached out with my

other hand and latched onto his throat. I squeezed. Hard. I walked forward slowly with the

man’s throat in my hand, wordlessly, lifting and pushing and squeezing at the same time.”

(Wagamese 101). This was when Saul had enough of the mistreatment from other people. He

expressed his anger and frustration through violence, and it led to Saul pushing people away

and isolating himself from them to run from the complications that he has been through.

During his expressions of rage, Saul began his addictions to alcoholism.

The last coping mechanism that Saul used was alcohol. In the beginning of Indian

Horse, Saul was seen to be at a mental hospital or rehabilitation facility. He suffered from

large intakes of alcohol, due to the past trauma he has been through. He drank away his

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problems to escape from them. Saul had discovered that “being someone you are not is often

easier than living with the person you are. I became drunk with that. Addicted. My new

escape sustained me for awhile.” (Wagamese 104). When Saul drank alcohol and got drunk,

he found himself having a new personality - a new version of him. Although alcohol seems

like a solution for many individuals, it began to deteriorate his health, as it would for anyone.

He became extremely addicted to it, and ended up being hospitalized. “The seizures hit me

and I collapsed on a sidewalk in Winnipeg. They had to strap me down because the

withdrawal terrors got real bad.” (Wagamese 109). This shows how severe the alcohol had

affected his mental state and his body. If Saul kept drinking without a problem, he would

have died from it, as stated in the book “But the doctors told me what a mess I’d made of my

body and how another bout of drinking like I did would likely kill me.” (Wagamese 109).

Alcoholism widely affects many individuals, and can be seen as an easy way out of problems,

which is never the case.

In conclusion, the choices of coping mechanisms used in Richard Wagameses’ Indian

Horse were negative in the aspect of escaping his problems, as he used hockey, expressing

violence, and alcoholism. Everybody goes through different experiences and has different

coping mechanisms, and it does not matter if they are painted as positive and negative, we are

all different in our own ways. This book should be read by other individuals who have little

knowledge of Indigenous peoples and their hardships, because it gives a storyline about what

happened in the past, and how it is important to learn about it instead of disregarding the

problems of residential school.

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