He's affected by the gradual dissolution of his cultural and traditional way. He's affected by an over-abiding sense of entitlement on the part of settler folk and settler culture and certainly settler government. 'I don't know, in this novel, if Saul Indian Horse is affected by politics,' Wagamese said. Wagemese explained the story isn't about politics, because the roots of the residential school system are far deeper and more tangled. However, Wagemese's parents and grandparents were both residential school survivors, and soon that legacy became a central focus of the story. It was very much a 'Shoeless Joe-does-hockey' kind of story, with a residential school as a very, very nebulous kind of background.' 'There was an actual dream, alternate-reality sequence in which Saul Indian Horse faces off in a one-on-one shootout with Vladislav Tretiak. 'I just wanted to write a hockey novel,' explained Wagamese, who died just over a year ago, in a 2012 interview with the Calgary Herald. When he set out to write the novel, acclaimed Ojibway writer Richard Wagamese wanted to write a hockey book it wasn't until later that it veered into far darker territory. Richard Wagamese's novel started out as a hockey story The film opens in theatres across Canada April 13, so we've gathered 10 fascinating facts - from the novel's inspiration to the elder actress who experienced the residential school system first-hand. Indian Horse is the highly-anticipated film adaptation of the novel by acclaimed Canadian author Richard Wagamese, and one that has already won multiple awards - including the People's Choice Award at the Vancouver Film Festival. But still, his past continues to haunt him. His only solace comes on a sheet of ice, and his love of hockey eventually carries him to stardom. It's a fictional film, but delivers a story that's all-too real: in the 1950s, a six-year-old Ojibwe boy is torn from his family and forced into a residential school, where he is forbidden to speak his language and faces brutal punishment for the tiniest transgressions.

Indian horse novel