What does the book/text reveal about the informal or indirect ways in which colonialism impacts Indigenous people’s lives?

Assimilation, or the loss of group identity in favor of the dominant culture, is central to Saul’s story. While assimilation can happen gradually due to primarily economic and social factors, Wagamese emphasizes that the assimilation of Canadian Indigenous people into White settler culture was forced and violent. This is accurate to Canadian history—residential schools were built with the explicit purpose of “killing the Indian” in Indigenous people. The violence Wagamese details at St. Jerome’s illustrate how literal that “killing” could be; policies that prohibited Indigenous language, religion, and dress could be enforced only through brutality. Yet even without the physical abuse that surrounded these policies, Indian Horse also emphasizes the tragedy of the loss itself. Wagamese uses poetic language and evocative emotional phrases when he describes Saul and his peers’ fishing trip, and the tension between their longing for their old way of life and the nuns’ assumption that they are happily embracing Christianity.