Indian Horse: Foil 2 key examples

The book casts Naomi—the matriarch—as a bulwark of Indigenous wisdom and knowledge. Saul’s grandmother leads the family to Gods Lake, where she teaches them to harvest rice in canoes and braid hair ties from willow bark. She assembles makeshift shelters when they get caught in the winter storm and shares stories, too. Naomi’s tales about Star People and Gods Lake meanwhile offer Saul a glimpse of the people to whom he belongs. Through her nurturing resourcefulness, Naomi connects Saul to his heritage.

These very values become a source of conflict with Mary, who represents a departure from Indigenous tradition as much as the matriarch embodies it. Worship for Saul’s mother involves praying with a rosary where it means harvesting rice for Naomi. When Benjamin dies, Mary scoffs at the un-Christian burial that Naomi proposes. Indian Horse reveals the influence of the residential schools in the religious rift that gathers between Mary and Noami.

The differences also show in their relationships with Saul. Shortly after Benjamin gets abducted, Mary takes to alcohol. Following Benjamin’s death, she all but abandons him—“at that moment my parents seemed like strangers to me,” Saul recounts. Naomi fills the gap instead, sheltering Saul and journeying with him through the cold until she literally cannot. Naomi “found a way to keep me with her,” Saul recalls. His mother “slid out of my view forever.” The contrasts in Naomi and Mary’s parenting demonstrate their far greater differences in identity.

The pair’s treatment of Saul filters down to their relationship with the game. If Father Leboutilier and Virgil make different to Saul, they use hockey to similarly inverse ends. Hockey for Virgil is a form of liberation—it gives him opportunities that his suffocating mine job otherwise fails to provide. The Moose team captain accepts games against far more professional white teams in hopes of representing his people. Virgil plays for the sheer love of the sport, understanding it as a source of joy, solace, and resilience. “You owe me the game,” he tells Saul after the talented center meets with the Maple Leafs’ scout. By pushing Saul to the join the NHL, Virgil hopes to celebrate hockey in a way he never could himself.

Father Leboutilier meanwhile wields hockey as an instrument of control, winning Saul’s favor through his “sense of adventure” only to ruin his dignity. Father Leboutilier’s grace is transactional: he allows Saul to clean the rink and protects him from Sister Ignacia’s wrath in exchange for sexual acts. Hockey is a kind of “alchemy” in hands of Saul’s “captor,” something beautiful—if magical—but also deviously dangerous.