Just as Saul, who is depicted in his growing up stages to young adulthood, is poised to become a hockey phenomenon, the ghosts of his past continue to haunt him as he experiences relentless racism in a white man's game. Gaston discovers the boy's hidden talent and recognizes his potential to be a hockey prodigy. Deemed too young to play by the school administrators, Saul, improvising with frozen horse dung as hockey slugs, self-trains in the early hours. Subjected to constant humiliation and multiform abuse in the name of God and Christianity, the children are living a hell-on-earth some are pushed to suicide in the face of harsh punishment and repeated psychological torture.Īn unexpected redemptive window opens for Saul in the form of ice hockey, a national sport of Canada Father Gaston, (Michiel Huisman), a young priest who appears to be more open-minded and caring than his colleagues, organizes a team to compete in inter-school tournaments. James Residential School, which is run by Catholic priests and nuns of the inhuman kind, is anything but a place that fosters faith and care. When the elderly woman dies en route, the authorities catch up with Saul and transport him to a residential school.

She and Saul are left behind and they journey to seek out their relatives through the unforgiving winter. 'Your Jesus never fished in these waters,' she retorts.

Heading north on the Winnipeg River on a canoe and through a rough trail on foot, the family navigates an arduous course while Saul's brother succumbs to what they describe as 'white men's disease.' Saul's parents, who are converts, insist on taking their dead son back for a proper Christian burial, but Naomi, who remains faithful to the ways of the ancestors, refuses to join them. It is the fall of 1959, a 6-year-old Anishinaabe boy by the name of Saul Indian Horse (Sladen Peltier and Forrest Goodluck) and his older brother (Skye Pelletier), with their parents and grandmother Naomi (Edna Manitowabi), are fleeing the threat of family separation and forced confinement to the residential schools.

Indian horse wagamese