Medicine Walk Study Guide

Richard Wagamese was a Canadian Ojibway author. Wagamese’s childhood was troubled: when he was two years old, he and his three siblings were left at home while their parents went to a nearby town to drink. After running out of food, the children wandered to a railroad station where a policeman found them. Wagamese then spent his childhood in a series of Ontario foster homes before being adopted by a non-native family in St. Catharines. The family abused him and didn’t allow him to contact his birth family. At 16, he left home in hopes of reconnecting with his native culture. While living on the streets, he abused drugs and alcohol and spent time in jail. At the same time, he took refuge in public libraries, both for shelter and for his growing love of reading and learning. He reunited with his First Nations family when he was 23, and he finally began to experience more of his native culture. Wagamese’s first writing job was for the First Nations newspaper New Breed. He won numerous awards for his journalism. He wrote his first novel, Keeper ‘n Me, in 1994. He went on to write five other novels, a volume of poetry, and nonfiction works, including two memoirs. Married and divorced three times, Wagamese had two sons and was estranged from one of them. At the time of his death at 61, he was engaged to be married again. Wagamese was the recipient of many honors for his literary contributions, including the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature.

The Ojibway (also spelled Ojibwe and sometimes anglicized as Chippewa) are the second-largest First Nations grouping in Canada, after the Cree. They are part of a larger grouping of indigenous people known as the Anishinaabeg. Though the United States has the largest Ojibway population, Ojibway people can be found across Canada, from Quebec to British Columbia. In the 17th century, many Ojibwe people were congregated around the Great Lakes in Ontario, but they began to disperse northward and westward. The people survived by hunting large game, gathering (especially wild rice and maple syrup), and fishing. Ojibway spiritual beliefs were (and are) strongly focused on the spirits which are understood to fill the natural world. From the 18th century onward, the European fur trade disrupted traditional Ojibway life in various ways, with traditional hunting activities marginalized as more people survived by hunting for fur to trade. Canadian residential schools also contributed to the loss of Ojibway cultural knowledge (a subject Wagamese addresses in Indian Horse). Today, Canada has a population of at least 160,000 Ojibway in about 200 bands.

Anishinaabe writer Waubgeshig Rice, author of the 2018 dystopian novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, received personal encouragement from Wagamese early in his writing career. Another recent novel tracing themes of fatherhood, cultural identity, and storytelling is Paulette Giles’s News of the World (2016). Wagamese’s best-known novel is Indian Horse (2012), the story of a First Nations boy who becomes a talented hockey player after surviving Canada’s residential school system. His last—and unfinished—novel was Starlight (2018), a sequel to Medicine Walk.