Indian Horse

The legacy of the residential school system which afflicted generations of First Nations children still reverberates today.

A problem with taking religion too seriously, as noted by many others I'm sure, with institutionalizing it and using it to guide governmental policy, is that the people operating within such a bureaucracy don't think they derive their power from fallible mortal men and women, they believe it comes from an all-knowing supreme being, and if they think that they are correctly acting in the interests of a supreme being, that somehow they logically figured out what that being actually wants them to do, it's a completely different kind of managerial ego, because everything they do is sanctioned by perfection, and if their interpretation of his or her omnipotent designs is legally and politically considered to be nothing less than perfect, they tend to believe their actions are irrefutably just.

No matter how cruel.

The residential school presented in Indian Horse doesn't even teach the students real world skills like mathematics or logic, rather it focuses on meticulously studying the bible as if its compelling stories will help them learn how to become accountants or lawyers or doctors.

Thus, as multiple other sources have noted, many students didn't have the skills to find any job whatsoever after graduating, and since many of them had been systematically abused throughout their formative years, many fell into a dire cycle of drug addiction and alcoholism on the streets.

And were plagued afterwards by uninformed cultural stereotypes which developed.

It's not something you just shake off and forget about.

Indian Horse examines a colonized people doing their best to play with a deck stacked against them.

Racism ubiquitously assaults them as they boldly compete, as they regularly face daunting challenges.

One student is gifted athletically and seems poised to make a name for himself in the NHL (Sladen Peltier, Forrest Goodluck, and Ajuawak Kapashesit as Saul).

But he faces internalized demons and mass cultural characterizations that turn the most thrilling time of his life into a harsh struggle.

He would have made a huge difference for any team that had signed him.

If the goal is to win hockey games, why does anything other than one's ability to help teams win matter?