Re-Creation, Re-Membrance, and Resurgence: Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse
Abstract This article examines the novel Indian Horse (2012), written by Ojibwe Wabaseemoong Independent Nations member Richard Wagamese (1955-2017) at the height of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission era. Wagamese finds inspiration in the testimonies and experiences of hundreds of victims of Canada’s residential school system, including those of his own family members. The article contextualizes the novel in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission era and explores Saul’s narrative journey to recover his suppressed memories of personal and collective abuse at St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School through the lens of Indigenous resurgence and grounded normativity. Thus, the paper draws on Michi Saagiig scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s writings on Indigenous radical resurgence to explore the retrieval of Indigenous ways of existing in the world as the way towards decolonization and Indigenous sovereignty. The paper argues that Saul is able to overcome his trauma-induced amnesia, born from the necessity to endure and adapt, and to escape the spiral of shame, isolation, and self-destruction in which he engages only after he embraces discursive Indigenous ways of healing. Wagamese therefore constructs a narrative in which the protagonist’s development mirrors the ideal that the author sets for Canada, in which reconciliation with Indigenous truth will not take place unless the whole story is acknowledged.
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—. “Returning to Harmony.” Speaking My Truth. Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential School, edited by Shelagh Rogers, Mike Degagné, and Jonathan Dewar, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012, pp. 157–67.
Wiese, Doro. “Nighttime Invasions, Colonial Dispossession, and Indigenous Resilience in Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse.” American, British and Canadian Studies, vol. 38, 2022, pp. 54–75.
Amagoalik, John. “Reconciliation or Conciliation? An Inuit Perspective.” Speaking My Truth. Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential School, edited by Shelagh Rogers, Mike Degagné, and Jonathan Dewar, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012, pp. 35–43.
Battiste, Marie, and James Youngblood Henderson. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: a Global Challenge. UBC P, 2000.
Bratina, Bob. Covid-19 and Indigenous Peoples: From Crisis Toward Meaningful Change. Report of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. Reports from Committee presented to the House of Commons, 2021.
Coleman, Daniel. “The Two Row Wampum-Covenant Chain Treaty and Trans-Systemic Resilience.” Glocal Narratives of Resilience, edited by Ana María Fraile-Marcos, Routledge, 2019, pp. 21–38.
Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. U of Minnesota P, 2014.
Cyrulnik, Boris. Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from the Past. MJF Books, 2009.
Fraile-Marcos, Ana María. “The Turn to Indigenization in Canadian Writing: Kinship Ethics and the Ecology of Knowledges.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 51, no. 2, 2020, pp. 125–47.
Fraile-Marcos, Ana María, and Lucía López-Serrano. “Stories as ‘med-sins’: Lee Maracle’s Ravensong and Celia’s Song.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 57 no. 6, 2021, pp. 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2021.1934517.
Government of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Government of Canada Publications, https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.800288/publication.html.
Jewell, Eva and Ian Mosby. Calls to Action Accountability: A 2023 Status Update on Reconciliation. Yellowhead Institute, 2023.
Katz, Alan, et al. “Changes in Health Indicator Gaps Between First Nations and Other Residents of Manitoba.” CMAJ, vol. 193, no. 48, 2021, pp. E1830–E1835.
LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles For Land And Life. South End Press, 1999.
Maracle, Lee. Memory Serves and Other Essays. Edited by Smaro Kamboureli, NeWest Press, 2015.
McLeod, Neal. Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times. Purich Publishing, 2007.
Million, Dian. Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights. U of Arizona P, 2013.
Miroux, Franck. “Richard Wagemese’s Indian Horse: Stolen Memories and Recovered Histories.” ACTIO NOVA: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada, no. 3, 2019, pp. 194–230.
Prime Minister of Canada. “Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.” Prime Minister of Canada, 15 Dec. 2015, http://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/backgrounders/2015/12/15/final-report-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-canada.
Robinson, Jack. “Re-Storying the Colonial Landscape: Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse.” Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature Canadienne, vol. 38 no. 2, 2013, pp. 88–105.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Duke UP, 2014.
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. U of Minnesota P, 2017.
—. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Arbeiter Ring, 2011.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Calls to Action. 2015.
Van der Kolk, Bessel A., and Onno Van der Hart. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” American Imago, vol. 48, no. 4, 1991, pp. 425–54.
Vizenor, Gerald Robert. “Aesthetics of Survivance.” Survivance: Narratives of native presence, edited by Gerald Robert Vizenor, U of Nebraska P, 2008, pp 1–24.
—. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. U of Nebraska P, 1999.
Wagamese, Richard. Indian Horse. Douglas & McIntyre, 2012.
—. One Native Life. D & M Publishers, 2009.
—. “Richard Wagamese on His Novel Indian Horse”. Interview by Shelagh Rogers. CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, 2012, https://www.cbc.ca/archives/author-richard-wagamese-on-his-novel-indian-horse-1.4673401.
—. “Returning to Harmony.” Speaking My Truth. Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential School, edited by Shelagh Rogers, Mike Degagné, and Jonathan Dewar, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012, pp. 157–67.
Wiese, Doro. “Nighttime Invasions, Colonial Dispossession, and Indigenous Resilience in Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse.” American, British and Canadian Studies, vol. 38, 2022, pp. 54–75.
Cores Antepazo, C. (2025). Re-Creation, Re-Membrance, and Resurgence: Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 14, 27–43. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v14i27-43
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