Indian Horse

White society's treatment of the original aboriginal residents of North America constituted variations on two themes: assimilation or annihilation, a process that came close to succeeding. The Christian Church was more than complicit in abetting this process. In their missionary zeal Jesuits brought Christianity to the heathen and with it European disease. In their hubris missionaries failed to understand that a people's theology is tied to their culture and way of life. The dislocation that these priests began was continued by the residential schools. Traditional life was hard and children were allowed to be children and physical punishment was unknown as was mental cruelty. Children forcibly removed from their parents were forbidden their own language and religious practices. Many were physically and sexually abused. Several generations of this system produced a cohort who had lost their traditional heritage, their language, culture, and myths; drank too much; ate unhealthy diets, and suffered from alcoholism, obesity, and diabetes.
The Old Ones, elders, who still remembered the traditional values were spurned by their offspring who shamefully rejected the Old Ways. Children were torn between their grandparents values and their parent's beliefs. Should the dead for example be buried in a traditional manner or be placed in expensive coffins and exposed to the ministrations of priests whose schools exposed them to the diseases that killed them in the first place.

Wagamese makes all this plain in an engaging manner in a story that makes compelling reading. The story is filled with tragedies and heartache, this is no child's fairy tale.