Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse: Stolen Memories and Recovered Histories

• Published in: ACTIO NOVA: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada
• Main Author: Miroux, Franck
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 2020
• Subjects: Wagamese (Richard); Residential schools; Memory; History (rewriting; Aboriginal literatures (Canada); Literatura; Canada; Indian; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10486/689701; https://doi.org/10.15366/actionova2019.3.009

This paper purports to explore the narrative devices which enable the Anishinaabe Canadian author Richard Wagamese to compel the reader of his novel Indian Horse (2012) to experience the same violence as that faced by the young protagonist when the repressed memory of the terrible abuse suffered at an Indian residential school resurfaces decades after, disrupting the apparently linear course of the story. This study also seeks to show that Wagamese offers a major contribution to the rewriting of the history of residential schools in Canada by reclaiming Aboriginal narrative forms as a means to recover stolen memories, and thus to reconstruct both the fragmented (his)story and the shattered self Este artículo pone de manifiesto las estrategias narrativas mediante las cuales el autor anishinaabe canadiense Richard Wagamese somete al lector de su novela Indian Horse (2012) a la misma violencia sufrida por el joven héroe cuando la repentina resurgencia del recuerdo traumático reprimido acaba rompiendo la linealidad aparente de su historia. Asimismo, este estudio pretende demostrar que la reapropiación de la memoria robada, y por la tanto la posibilidad de reconstruirse tras el traumatismo vivido, pasan por una reapropiación de las formas aborígenes del relato gracias a las que Wagamese contribuye de manera significativa a la reescritura de la historia de las escuelas residenciales autóctonas de Canadá