The Importance of Family In Richard Wagamese's novel Indian Horse

The novel, "Indian Horse" by Richard Wagamese, takes its name from the family name of the protagonist, Saul Indian Horse. This makes family traditions one of the central themes in the book. Saul Indian Horse is a member of the Fish clan, that is an Indigenous Canadian tribe living in the Winnipeg River. The novel is set in the 1970s when Indigenous Canadian traditions experienced an attack in Canada (Wagamese, 2018). Wagamese showcases how Saul is in a constant struggle to retain his family ties and culture despite being taken from his family and sent to school. At a tender age, Saul's family is torn apart by the Canadians that steal his brother Benjamin, his sister Rachel and force him to join a Canadian school system. In the canadine school system, Saul endures brutality and sexual abuse, but he also becomes a talented hockey player. Saul is adopted by an indigenous Canadian man that sees his potential (Wagamese, 2018). In the middle of all these, Saul finds a way to embrace a new family, new customs and his longstanding traditions. Saul begins a journey that of obtaining love through distinct individuals who become like family members to him, including the Ojibway family and the Moose hockey team. This essay focuses on discussing the importance of Saul's Ojibway family and the family that he finds with the Moose hockey team, and how the values in these two families make Saul view family as essential in enabling happiness and success in life, as discussed.

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Ojibway Family

Saul's Ojibway family is rich in tradition and principles. This family goes through incidents of prejudice and racism and depend on their blood to be strong throughout the struggles they battle. Saul mentions that "our people have rituals and traditions that are intended to bring us visions, and the loss of the gift is my very best sorrow" (Wagamese, 2018). This statement illustrates that the Ojibway family teaches Saul about being a Seer within vast amounts of electrical power. Saul describes his sorrow in dropping this gift that represents him losing a vital part of his lifestyle. Through this quote, Saul is taught the essence of family and belonging in one. He uses the word "our people" when speaking about his traditions and rituals, showing that each individual in the Ojibway culture thinks of each other as family.

Naomi gives Saul comfort and makes him feel safe. In the novel, one of the most prominent loved ones is Saul's granny, Naomi. Based on the fact that Saul's mother is always distant from him, as a result of his kids taken away from her, Naomi acts as an essential character in Saul's life by signifying relatives in the book and being a woman that loves and supports Saul. In the novel, Naomi's caring and comforting aspects are illustrated in the text, " like that, they eased the canoes away into the shallows, grandmother ripped me near her and set her hands on my head" (Wagamese, 2018). Naomi teaches Saul family principles including providing safety, comfort and care to those around him. Naomi attempts to ensure that Saul feels secure from the challenges he faces through family abandonment.

Saul conflicts with the Canadian tradition and its culture due to the value he places on his strong beliefs in the Ojibway family, about the importance of the family structure. In the novel, Saul emphasizes on the significance of his culture in stressing respect for elders and women, and respecting and living in harmony with the natural world. Whenever Saul feels lonely and depressed, he seems to be losing the touch of his family and traditions. As he explains, "he loses the ability to have confidence and a sense of purpose through the vision he sees of his grandfather, Slanting Sky, telling him to keep Gods Lake" (Wagamese, 2018). Saul is unable to cope with life in the Canadian school, due to the burden of traditions that he cannot forgo, that he bears through his concept of proud traditions.

Based on his Ojibway family background, Saul faces a lack of guidance form his parents due to their traumatic encounters at the residential school. Saul's parents were raised away from their families, and they knew little about their culture (Wagamese, 2018). Saul decides to partake on a lifelong challenging journey in search of his identity. Despite his parents being present, they could hardly raise Saul and his siblings emotionally. Paul can scarcely look at life as meaningful and fulfilling, due to lack of parental guidance, and based on his traumatic experiences of racism and inequality.

Ojibway family creates in Saul a sense of extended kinship that he carries with him to adulthood. When Saul returns to his adoptive home, he reclaims the Anishinaubae model of relationship that the residential schools had tried to erase. In one instance, Sauls illustrates erasure of his culture and how bad it made him feel when he says, "when your innocence is taken from you when the family that you came from is denounced, and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced to be backward, savage and primitive, you see yourself as less than human, a sense of unworthiness, and that is what they had inflicted on us" (Wagamese, 2018). The most definite way of countering the indigenous manhood as the violent foil for the white conquest is through putting the image of the native male black into his proper context, that is the context of family. Putting Saul back into the context of his family enables him to partake on specific responsibilities, including nurturing children. In the Ojibway family, each individual has a right to duty that is the tribal way of kinship rights and responsibilities. Kinship in the Anishinaubae tribe was portrayed in the context of a good life, good health, longevity, and freedom from all forms of misfortune. It also involved an establishment of associations of interdependency as widely as possible that included an extended family, relationships with animals and plants, and with spiritual entities.

Moose Hockey Team

The spirit of competition in the Hockey family enables Saul to see past his racial prejudices momentarily. Saul says, "I discovered that being someone you are not is not easier than living with the person that you are" (Wagamese, 2018) In the hockey team, Saul seems to have identified a better path and a happier life. Based on his talent, Saul leads his team to compete in many matches around the country even against the with hockey teams that previously, refused to play against the indigenous team.in the text, Wagamese explains that "once, after winning the game, Saul and his teammates go to a local cafe to celebrate their victory" (Wagamese, 2018). In the Moose Hockey team, Saul bounces back from his adversities and utilises his experiences to become a better athlete.

The Moose hockey team generates hope for Saul. Saul can traumatic experiences in his life, as seen in the text, "Saul attempts to escape the emotional agitation into the self-forgetting of hockey" (wAgamese, 2018). Saul also says that, "that is why I played with abandon; to abandon myself" (Wagamese, 2018). For Saul, hockey is a method to increase his ability to fit in the community due to his unresolved misery. Saul is an unlikely athlete due to his short stature, but he has an incredible ability to grasp the motions of the game and to predict where the puck will go. Saul utilises his ability to control the movements of his teammates, and for the first time, this is the place he feels free from his memories and grief. In the team, however, Saul continues to experience violent racism where he begins to struggle again with darkness and hopelessness. Hockey for Saul is an essential escape from everyday violence because it is community-based. When Saul loses his elements in the game, he loses his hope and becomes an alcoholic.

Hockey gives Saul a chance to travel and feel equal to the individuals in the arena. In the novel, Saul says, " we were hockey gipsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, ploughing into the heart of that magnificent landscape in the North, and we never gave up the thought of being deprived as we travelled, to getting shut out of the regular league system" (Wagamese, 2018). In the hockey team, players form a brotherly bond that bound them together through their hockey games. Hockey gives Saul joy since in the teams, the teammate care for each other and celebrate their wins together. They also comfort each other through the losses that they make. Since Saul went through a difficult life in his childhood, he can find peace through hockey.

Through hockey, Saul can mingle with people of distinct cultures in Canada. In Canada, hockey is one of the events that make them prosperous, especially for young people playing it. Canada has people from distinct religions, races and ethnicities. Hockey represented Saul with a chance to unify with these people. Through hockey, Saul mingled with different cultures in Canada that showed him how various people in his team faced the challenges of inequality in multiple levels of their lives, including lower chances of attending school and always obtaining lower grades. In residential schools, a culture has been created to deter children from their family influences. Since Saul already had a sense of heritage from his cultural background, it helps him prosper in hockey (Wagamese, 2018). Saul discovers new customs and cultures that he incorporates in his identity since through playing hockey, Saul learns to read and speak English and manages to balance the lifestyle of the indigenous people with the white culture. He manages to exist in his present without losing a touch of his past.

Playing hockey gives Saul and his teammates a hope that one day, they will be free from the discrimination that they face. A further hope is given when he feels affection from father Leboutilier after succeeding in the hockey team, as seen in the text when Saul says, "father Leboutilier was standing at the open gate to our bench, as a skated over, his face was red with excitement, and he stopped and put his hands on my shoulder pads saying, that was beautiful, you were beautiful" (Wagamese, 2018). It offers them a chance to feel equal to the rest of the people in Canada. Saul says that "all of them were tied together, entwined to form an experience they would not trade for another" (Wagamese, 2018). Saul's Teammates create a family-like environment for Saul through only accepting and guiding him in the games, as their human interactions grow.

Through the joy Saul finds in hockey, he redefines masculinity as re-establishing the caring relationship with others, in his Anishinaubae community. Saul decides to give joy to the children of his community through devoting himself to be their coach. Saul embraces a non-dominative and nurturing vocation affirming indigenous manhood that serves the values of tribal continuance and communal health. One of the crucial parts of Saul's reconnection with his masculinity is when he reunites with the Kelly family and his adoptive parents Fred and Martha that had taken Saul into their family when the residential school authorities had removed him quietly from the embrace of father Leboutilier. The connection between Saul and the Kelly family is founded primarily on their shared history as a family.

Conclusion

Throughout his life, encounters, family and tradition play a critical role in the coming of age of Saul. Saul obtains a sense of purpose and is reminded that he is not alone in the universe, but is connected to his family members, including both the living and the dead. In most of the book, Saul feels lonely and depressed when he seems to be losing the touch of his family traditions. He explains...