We'd never seen anyone so composed, so assured, so peaceful. Something in her bearing reminded us about where we'd come from. We surrounded her like acolytes and that enraged the nuns. They thought Sheila was thumbing her nose at them and they set out to break her.( chapter 12)
In the above quote, Saul is remembering an Indigenous girl who was taken from her parents and placed in St. Jerome’s school. Sheila entered the school a beautiful, confident, young woman... a young woman represented the courage, strength, and pride of the Indigenous population. Her experience at St. Jerome’s school, however, represents the oppression and loss of culture that was enacted by the Canadian government on the Indigenous peoples. According to Saul, the school's teachers did not educate Sheila, nor did they prepare her for life after the school, and they never intended to. The teachers' goal was to break Sheila down, something they accomplished with physical beatings and emotional abuse.
Indian Horse
