Once in a while there happens along a piece of art, maybe a book or a song or a picture, in this case a movie, that snaps everything into its place and makes me think “OK, now I get it.”
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This adaptation of Richard Wagamese’s novel sheds light on the dark history of Canada’s Residential Schools.
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There has been a lot of talk the last few years in Canada about First Nations and Aboriginal Peoples. The topic sort of lingers in the air as I hear it come and go in the news. Much as I have no direct experience with Rohingya refugees or South African apartheid, my life did not feel touched directly by the legacy of Indian residential schools in Canada. Sure, I knew that some 150,000 indigenous kids were taken from their families by force, but it seemed about as relevant to my daily life as the battle of Stalingrad or the siege of Sarajevo.
That is, until I saw Indian Horse, the movie.
A grand old Nunnery called The Mount, in Peterborough, Ontario, served as the residential school, but the shoot was challenging: there were times with no heat or light in the old rooms and many of the bathrooms were not in working order. When the weather plunged to -15 the school was an icebox. There were about 50 extras (plus their parents) at any given time, as well as a large cast and crew to keep warm. Heaters blowing in every room and generators running 24/7 could not keep up. But the location was perfect.
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Adapted from Richard Wagamese’s novel, the story of Saul Indian Horse is that of an Ojibwa boy who ends up in one of Canada’s notorious Catholic residential schools in the late 1950’s. He is forcefully separated from his family and his language (as well as his long hair) and subjected to some very nasty abuse by people who should know better. At the school he discovers a love for hockey and turns out to be very good at it. When he finally leaves the school and embarks on a promising career in the game, the ghosts of his past haunt him until he must confront what he went through as a kid. Saul then draws on the spirit of his ancestors and the understanding of his friends to begin the process of healing.
Edna Manitowabe, who played Naomi, Saul’s grandmother, is originally from Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island. At 76 years of age she had never acted on film before.
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The film is not without humour, like the frozen horse turds he uses instead of pucks. And it can be experienced in different ways at the same time. It deals with two great motifs in Canada: Hockey and Aboriginal Peoples. So on the one hand I cheered for a talented, hard luck kid struggling to make it to the big leagues, while on the other hand experiencing alternating waves of shame, guilt and anger as I was confronted with images of terror and abuse that happened close to home, recently, not far away.
As I watched this movie I started to understand what it might have looked like and sounded like to, as Wagamese put it …
“… pull Indian kids from the bush and from the arms of their people.”
It would have been easier to watch if it had been an NFB documentary something like Nanook of the North. I could have detached intellectually. But Indian Horse swept me up like the full-blown Hollywood-style film that it is (Clint Eastwood is an Executive Producer). I identified with the characters like I did in Brokeback Mountain and The Revenant. It carried me away emotionally and as a result was that much more personal.
This movie brought home to me that this terrible stuff happened in my country and in my time, some of it just down the road from me, here, at this moment. The survivors are still living today, still telling their stories. Indian Horse is one of those stories. Now I get it.
Indian Horse director Stephen Campanelli started his career as a steadicam operator. He has worked with Clint Eastwood and other great story-tellers for over 20 years.
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Killarney Provincial Park at Sunset. – Photo by Rebecca Rogge, courtesy of Ontario Parks
Killarney Provincial Park produces spectacular fall colours and the Indian Horse crew raced with very little prep behind them to capture as much of it as they could. Shooting on the waters around here was a challenge especially on the uneven craggy rocks with special and highly sensitive equipment. The short daylight shooting day meant they were scrambling from start to finish.
This review is making me think twice about actually going to see the movie. I had decided I did not want to hear any more about the harm and atrocities my fellow Canadians inflicted on our native people. When I was in school during the 50’s and 60’s we were not taught anything about what our government and churches were doing to aboriginal kids. I now feel we would all benefit from having a closer look at our “crimes”. Gord Downey would appreciate our interest and caring. Maybe this movie should be shown in our high schools and a copy should be sent to the Pope! Thank you Glenn for your review.
Thank you Steve. Perhaps it will be shown in schools. I think that’s a great idea.
Your review makes me want to go see this film. And, as a Canadian, makes me feel like I should see this film.
Thanks Claire. I hope you love the movie.
Your review of Indian Horse has inspired me to see this film. I also hope that this book/film will be used as teaching tool in high schools. Each generation needs to learn from the mistakes made by the previous one.
I hadn’t heard about the movie Indian Horse, but now I am going to go see it. Excellent review Glenn. Each of the stories I hear about the native schools run by the cruel, racist religious makes me angry and ashamed, but we need to know the truth to prevent such atrocities against any segment of Canadian society again.
Thanks for your comment Pat. Always good to hear from you.
Given my family’s history with residential schools (my great grandfather, Rev JW Tims established the first residential school amongst the Blackfoot in the 1880’s, Anglican, but that was at best just marginally better than the Catholic ones) I feel morally obligated to see this movie, just to see the damage that was done in the name of God
Thanks Doug. We would love to hear more about that situation. Wow.
Gchiimiigwetch for putting forth a good review that truly encompasses the truth of residential schools and how honour did help in healing. My family are from Killarney area and I had many friends work on this movie and I had crew reach out to myself for some insight into some cultural traditions.
This story was well made and it even brought to light more of what my grandfather and his brothers and sisters went through at the hands of the Agents, Police and the so called Priest and Nuns.
Glenn,
Thank you for your review of Indian Horse. It brought me closer to comprehending some of the hard truths of our Canadian history. Having grown up in and around London Ontario, I find it astonishing how little I knew about our own First Nations people, over most of my seventy years of life in Canada.
Back in 1984, when I graduated from King’s College and Faculty of Education at UWO, I had decided to begin my teaching career in a remote, northern Manitoba (fly-in) Indian School. I applied to job postings through Indian and Northern Affairs (I.N.A.). How naive I was! Although I had already developed a love for our native peoples and their social struggles, with the best of intentions I wanted to work with them and for them – I wanted to know them and try to help them. I was disappointed not to hear anything back from Indian and Northern Affairs after a month, so I found a contact number and called their office, asking if they had received my application yet. I was told not to worry, because they would get to it soon enough. A month later I called again, with same question, explaining that I had a young family, wife and four children and had to be organized to prepare and move up to the location. I was given the same response as first call and told to be patient and wait. They would get back to me soon enough. This happened a couple more times. More months passed. So on the last call I made I insisted they go directly to their file system and locate my teaching application and confirm my teaching position for September. When they finally tracked down my application, I was told: “I’m sorry, but it was miss-filed in the wrong drawer, and now it’s too late, so you will have to try again next year.”
I was livid! With my young family, student loan, and a need to settle down and get to work, I couldn’t afford to “wait another year”, so I gave up and took a normal teaching position in southern Ontario.
Well, now, forty-two years later, I have learned a little bit more about some of the frustrations our first nations people have suffered. I have come to realize how well their problems were so hidden and covered up. I was fortunate enough to move my family to Osoyoos, B.C., in order to care for my elderly father-in-law, after he had a stroke. We met and got to know many people of the Osoyoos Indian Band.
Only after we worked together for years, some of them opened up with me about what they or their family members experienced in Residential schools. Most of the opening up happened after Kamloops residential school treasuries became public.
My sister-in-law only then opened up with me about her Kamloops Residential school experience, being taken from her family, having had her name changed, and then being shipped out to foster parents in the Banf area, all her siblings were sent to different remote areas.
Over the past eight years I have used most of my spare time to learn about our indigenous brothers and sisters. I have been moved to tears over and over again as I learn of the tragedies they have experienced and continue to suffer from. They are amazing people, with amazing culture, amazing knowledge of our world and nature. They have so much to share with us now that we are finally starting to listen to them and to respect them as amazing and beautiful peoples.
Thinking back to my childhood and our camping trips all over northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we had no knowledge of the residential schools operating. We didn’t know about the tragedies that were ongoing at the time, while we visited places like Killarney, North Bay, Ipperwash Beach, St. Thomas, in Elgin County, or while we travelled through White River, Ontario, south and western Manitoba and southern to central Saskatchewan. My mother only briefly mentioned, the “Home People” (street kids and orphans that were shipped by the thousands from England, to work as farm help in Saskatchewan (where she grew up in North Battleford, Redfield and Rabbit Lake. But that is another story, although related.
It seems that many Canadians, originally of European descent, were oblivious of the tragedies our indigenous people experienced.
We learned a little from authors like Farley Mowat, back in highschool. But we heard so little that the disappearing inland Inuit people were no more, like their disappearing herds of caribou.
I am humbled and my heart morns for our indigenous brothers and sisters. Thank you for speaking out about the harsh realities that so many of us mainstream Canadians, have had little or no idea about our First Nations people.
I hope we continue to learn, as a nation, to love and care for each other and all peoples on this, our shrinking world, that now has more tools to communicate with and opportunities to make our world a better place.
Wayne Henshaw