...Indian Horse, the protagonist Saul’s journey mirrors this sentiment. Amidst a plethora of trauma, discrimination, and struggles to forge his identity, Saul discovers hockey as not just a game but a refuge. However, this refuge proves to be unsuccessful due to severe limitations. Saul’s journey demonstrates that sports can provide an immediate escape from reality. But they ultimately fail to offer lasting refuge from trauma, systematic racism in sports, and personal identity struggles....
Words: 3069 - Pages: 13
...Racism can negatively impact the perspective of one’s life, due to the discrimination that is used against individuals. In Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, the protagonist Saul Indian Horse experiences love for hockey, but eventually endures racial issues in which he vacillates between playing and quitting. Initially hockey gives Saul a sense of freedom and self-esteem which motivates him to seek a career in hockey, however, due to the racism he faces while playing causes him to give up his love for the game. Saul’s love for freedom and his self-esteem while playing hockey motivates him to seek a career in hockey in the future. First of all, hockey gives Saul a sense of freedom that he never experienced. When the Moose are in Espanola and...
Words: 886 - Pages: 4
...Acts of violence are common for many individuals who experience racism and discrimination, purely due to skin colour, heritage, or culture. These acts of violence are known to strip culture, identity, sense of self-worth, and dignity among the individual. Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese portrays exactly how one can lose culture due to the acts of violence. The acts of physical violence and psychological violence that Saul Indian Horse goes through allows the audience to make sense of the racism that has existed, and still can exist, in Canadian society; furthermore, this piece allows readers to understand the effect that racism has on one’s identity. The effects that the Canadian Residential School System’s brutality had on Saul, and even more so on Saul’s classmates, undoubtedly altered Saul and his identity. As soon as Saul arrives at St. Jerome’s Residential School, he is exposed to countless instances of traumatic situations. Saul recalled Lonnie being strapped by a Sister; this is the first of many counts of...
Words: 726 - Pages: 3
...While the harmful behaviours caused by racism, such as drug and alcohol abuse, are often discussed by media, not all the consequences of racial prejudice are always apparent. The novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese demonstrates the destructive emotional and mental effects that discrimination can have on an individual. These consequences can start taking their toll even from an early age. This is shown when the Aboriginal children at the residential school refuse to speak their native language after a boy dies when he is punished for speaking his mother tongue. Here, the fear of being physically abused causes the children to gradually believe their native language is wrong and undesirable. This is an example of internalized racism, which...
Words: 344 - Pages: 2
...Saul’s root causes are his trauma. “All that I knew of Indian died in the winter of 1961, when I was eight years old” (Wagamese 8). In the novel Indian Horse written by Richard Wagamese, a young lad named Saul has faced a lot of traumas throughout his life. In this essay I will be sharing with you what I believe are the root causes of Saul trauma. Sauls main cause of his trauma is the loss of his families/communities, the loss of them brought forth even more trauma like; his time spent at St. Jerome’s residential school, his time with the game of hockey and, the alcohol that destroyed his life. Those three events stand out the most when talking about the root causes of his trauma. The loss of Saul, the Indian Horse family, leaves him alone...
Words: 1428 - Pages: 6
...In addition, Saul escapes from his early childhood, although has is never able to see his family again. He realizes, “I’d never heard from my parents.” (73). Saul’s connection with his family is broken forever, along with the fading memories and Ojibway culture his parents taught him. Moreover, escaping from the nightmares of the residential school gives him the opportunity to be a professional and famous hockey player. He is able to achieve the freedom he deserves. He thinks, “I would not let go of my dream of it, the freedom, the release it gave me, the joy the game gave me. It wasn’t anybody else’s game to take away from me….I knew for a fact that the game was my life.” (143-144). Saul has a better and happier life than the lives of the miserable students at the residential schools. He is able to take advantage of his amazing skill somewhere else. Lastly, Saul moves away from his hockey career. He leaves to find a different occupation, where he decides to forget about his past life and binge drink. He describes his addiction as, “In alcohol, I found an antidote to exile….I 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…I’d move on to a new crowd in a new tavern, a new place where the Indian in me was forgotten” (180). (186). Saul has found a new escape, where he...
Words: 743 - Pages: 3
...about the racist taunts directed at their teenage hockey players. Treena Amyotte filed a grievance in January about other players hurling slurs at her 14-year old son. “One kid will say something like, ‘go back to the res’, or call them a ‘dirty Indian’ or something”, Amyotte told CBC News. Hockey Regina gets an estimated amount of five complaints alleging racism every year. (cbc.ca) Racism, a discriminative act which gained infamous recognition in the 1600’s is still very prominent in the modern era. Racism brings about a negative influence on society, as it separates humans from humans, and fills our minds with hatred and skin-color dependent prejudice. Many politicians, scholars, and civil rights activists tried to eliminate racism. A few personalities, like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr. succeeded to reduce racism in most parts of the world. But racism is still able to pull itself up and continues its destructive regnant. (Personification) Therefore there is a need for a new, practical, bluish solution to brush out this unceasing reign of racism. Michael Jackson, famous pop-star, had a skin disease called Vitiligo; which causes his skin pigments to turn white. Hence many people thought Michael Jackson, who is genetically black, is white. (Interrupted Movement) (todayifoundout.com) What if our bodies were painted? (Rhetorical Question) If everyone’s skin color is the same, it challenges the existence of racism. (Balanced sentence) White, black or brown colored...
Words: 702 - Pages: 3
...novel, when his Ojibway identity was challenged, his experiences in residential school and his new formed hockey identity. In result, these cultural collisions caused Saul to question his identity. Saul’s Ojibway identity has been challenged through the difference of opinion and/or...
Words: 766 - Pages: 4
...11/21/11 “News and Analysis” Summary Racism is a big factor in today’s sports. They say the only reason why it is a big factor is because the media was the reason why. ESPN and other sports outlets making it a bigger issue than it really is. We have racism in sports today is not because of sports in general, but we have racism in sports now because of the media covering them. In the article it tells us about how the media can say and tell us a lot of misleading things that may not even have to do with racism, and how that we should stop paying attention to each and everything the media are telling us, and start believing in what we think in our own perspective. Further along the article one stated on why most whites play hockey and most blacks play basketball. Are white more skilled at playing hockey? And are blacks more skilled at playing basketball? “Because the kids play the sports that dominate the area in which they grow up in. “I grew up in Milwaukee (which is a very segregated city) and can figure out why the above questions are asked”. Analysis For the analysis, as a sociologist perspective this article can be various concepts of sociology. This article can be seen as culture Stereotypes. Mainly because some may say that black African Americans is not just labeled as a football player, basketball player, or a baseball or many more because they say that black African Americans are just pure athletes. One reason why they might think black African Americans...
Words: 778 - Pages: 4
...begun to pursue her dream of becoming a talented female hockey player at the age of five years old. Brigette is someone to look up to, she is an amazing role model and an outstanding defenseman, her instincts, abilities and fluid play make her a key player in all aspects of the game, she is a leader and a role model for many reasons and accepts this responsibility with pride. When Brigette was younger, she hadn't only faced bullying, but rasicm as well. Brigette shares that when she was at her first summer league hockey tournament, she was called a dirty Indian and was told that she should go back to her reserve. The situatiion upset Brigette dearly, Brigettes father had told her "Just beat her on the ice, and be the better person." After those words of encouragement, Brigette was able to move forward, and Instead of allowing racial taunts to negatively impact her life, she chooses to rise above it....
Words: 575 - Pages: 3
...Deborah Termini 5768858 CANA 1F91 Dr. Brian De Ruiter Heidi Madden January 28, 2016 Indian Horse and Hockey Saul Indian Horse is a Ojibway child who grew up in a land which offered little contact with anyone belonging to a different kind of society until he was forced to attend a residential school in which children were being stripped away of their culture with the scope of assimilating them into a more “civilized” community. Saul’s childhood in the school, greatly pervaded by psychological abuse and emotional oppression, was positively upset once one of the priests, Father Leboutillier, introduced him to the world of hockey, which soon become his sole means of inclusion and identification, mental well-being and acknowledged self-worth in his life. It is though universally acknowledged how, for every medal, there are always two inevitably opposite sides. Although hockey itself became his medium of escapism from psychological oppression, it also harvested feelings of exclusion and peer pressure. The attempt to accomplish his idea of cultural acceptance and mutual respect while trying to find his sense of worthiness and mental freedom in the rink was challenged by a discriminatory Canadian society possessing the brainless idea of hockey being “their game” (Wagamese 94). Abandoned by his parents, Saul’s sense of loneliness was reinforced at St. Jerome’s residential school and his beliefs, as well as his innocence, became compromised by the staff’s attempt to...
Words: 1104 - Pages: 5
...When I was able to read all by myself I got a library card so I could sign out books that I wanted to read by myself. I usually signed out either sports books or adventure books. These books were usually fiction. At school there were times where we could read, so I read a lot at school. My favorite book as a child is the second thing that has impacted my reading career. As a child I would read a lot of different kinds of books, but one of my favorite book series as a child was the books Brady Brady. When I was growing up as a kid I loved to play hockey. I loved the book Brady Brady because it was about hockey and as a kid that’s all I thought about. I also liked many other sports books like Brady Brady but it was without doubt my favorite book as a child. Even though I got bored of just reading one book over and over again Brady Brady was my favorite because every book was different than the last one and they were always about hockey. The books that I read in grade 9 are the last thing that impacted my career as a reader. In grade 9 I didn’t read anything other than what...
Words: 509 - Pages: 3
...PrintPDFCite . “Brownies” is a story by ZZ Packer, a young African American writer. It appears in Packer’s short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which was published in 2003 to great acclaim. The story is about a Brownie troop of fourth-grade African American girls from suburban Atlanta, Georgia, who go to summer camp. At the camp, they encounter a troop of white girls and believe that one of the white girls addressed them with a racial insult. The African American girls resolve to beat up the white girls. “Brownies” is a story about racism as it is experienced by young girls, but it has a twist. The African American girls discover that the situation is not as clear-cut as they had believed, and as they return home on the bus, Laurel, the African American girl who narrates the story, tells them of an incident in her family involving a white Mennonite family. As she tells the story, she comes to an unsettling realization about racism and the nature of human life. Brownies Summary “Brownies” takes place at Camp Crescendo, a summer camp for fourth graders near the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The story is told in the first person by an African American girl named Laurel, known to the other girls by her nickname, Snot. Laurel announces that by the second day at the camp, all the girls in her Brownie troop had decided they were going to “kick the asses” of every girl in Brownie Troop...
Words: 668 - Pages: 3
...------------------------------------------------- SPO1007: Sport in Context To be submitted by Wednesday 23rd March, 2016. ------------------------------------------------- An annotated bibliography of sports history related to ONE of the issues discussed in the module (class, gender or ‘race’) * 1500 words individual assignment * Summarising and evaluating the quality of 3 relevant articles * Exploring how the past can help explain the present in sport * SUBMIT your assignment ONLINE “An annotated bibliography of sports history related to one of the issues discussed in the module” The issue I have selected is Race. I have chosen three articles the articles I have chosen are as followed. “The Myth of Racial superiority in sports” this article was taken from the week 8b seminar, the second article is “'Race', sport, and British society” this article was retrieved from a literature search on nelson. The final article is “Why Black People Are Good at Sports” this article was from a web search. * A brief description of how you found the article and why you selected it * A summary of the key content of each article, related to your chosen topic – ‘race’, class or gender (main arguments, key concepts used, sporting examples used, etc.) * A quote taken directly from the article highlighting one of the main arguments (correctly referenced) * Show how the historical knowledge from the article can help us understand contemporary sport *...
Words: 1130 - Pages: 5
...Abstract The track of homosexuality in sports has been long, twisting and for the most part, very restrained. There have been very few athletes blazing a trail for gay tolerance among the top four professional athletic associations; the top four being the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. In fact, the early athletes who openly admitted their sexual orientation were women, participants of individual sports or retired athletes. The more popular male sports as the top four, have seemingly been opposed in accepting a gay teammate in the locker room. With this being said, one can understand why the gay athlete’s path has been so difficult and private. The culture of sports has long been viewed as being extremely homophobic. Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender From the beginning of sports existence, athletes have been considered hyper-masculine and barbaric. Even women who participated in sports were often viewed as “manly”. However, the ever changing social climate and the sharp awareness of gay rights and same-sex couples, almost assures us that there will be a cultural shift in the sports world as we know it. The younger generation proves to be more accepting and laidback of homosexuality; thus, it will only be a matter of time until professional sports teams find a gay athlete on their roster. I ask you this, if gay tolerance is to be expected in the...
Words: 1827 - Pages: 8
