Whole Class: Indian Horse Discussions

NOTE: I just want to point out that the majority of my heritage is not Indigenous, and even though these characters are fictional, it is not my place to speak on another's behalf for their feelings, as I have not been through their experiences. In saying that, all of my analysis here is based on what I have experienced or noticed in real life or throughout my academic career.

I think in this scenario, there are two types of people who "twitch in their seats" when they hear difficult stories:
1. They are ignorant and refuse to believe what they haven't experienced with their own eyes or;
2. They simply cannot fathom the reality of the story, because it is so difficult to grasp without having experienced it themselves.
For example, many people are ignorant when they refuse to believe that the Holocaust was real or they believe it was way over-exaggerated. (Those people dishonour the dead that lost their lives in that Genocide, but that's a whole different topic.)

The novel doesn't mention whether they are all there for the same reason as Saul, so when those younger people were uncomfortable, again, it could be for 1 or 2 different reasons:
1. Perhaps some of them are not Indigenous, cannot relate to Saul's issues, and become uncomfortable because they refuse to believe Saul, or;
2. Perhaps they have indigenous roots and cannot fathom that Saul went through this experience and they did not. (Or perhaps they are not Indigenous and again, cannot fathom that Saul and other Indigenous children had these experiences, and because of their own privilege, they did not have the same upbringings.)

(Many people in the world refuse to acknowledge that residential schools even existed and some think that they were exaggerated. I know from my own experience, my Godmother and I have gotten into fights because I would tell her that I had learned about these schools, and she would say that some of her family members lived in these schools "and had a GREAT time!" She would refuse to acknowledge that some people had worse experiences than others because it was beyond what her experienced relations to them were. We see this happen in real life, all the time.)

Overall, the younger people were probably made uncomfortable by Saul's story because simply put, it was something they couldn't relate to. This either made them get angry because they were so mad at the system for harming Saul the way they did, or it made them angry because they hold the ideology that "If I haven't heard/seen/imagined/experienced this before then there's no way it really happened. So he must be lying."

Saul provides two rationales for why he thinks the younger ones are twitchy in their seats.
"Maybe they don't believe me or, maybe something about when I'm saying pisses them off."

Saul's voice seems to be indifferent, but I imagine he would be hurt by the young people's unwillingness to listen to his story. Saul explains that he was the first generation that, "stepped beyond the influence of our legends," and that he, "pines for a return that has never come to be." Things would never be the same after the irreversible ramifications of the residential school system. Saul's generation is the last that remember the horrors perpetuated against them, so people have a duty to hear him out and educate themselves. As the last generation of Holocaust survivors pass away, people understandingly worry that those stories will be forgotten. I think, fundamentally, Saul also worries that his story will be forgotten.

When I first came to Canada, I had no idea what the residential school system was, or even the implications of the word. There were residential schools in the states too, we just don't learn about them. I think there is a historical pattern that the farther away we move from atrocities, the more inclined we are to be apathetic. Growing up, my mom would always try to tell me and my brother about her experience as a refugee, and this same twitchy feeling resulted. We don't know how to act when someone shares a story this deep like Saul does; it puts the listeners in an uncomfortable position. Few want to recognize how lucky they really are.

The younger people at the rehab centre may have major psychological barriers in accepting the existence of such terrible abuses as the ones that occurred in Saul’s story and in residential schools. Although they may not have experienced residential schools themselves, intergenerational trauma still exists for many communities and families so I would imagine that these conversations would make them uncomfortable ("twitchy") in that regard.

The residential school system and 60s Scoop was a case of widespread human rights violations that has had lasting effects on Indigenous peoples, but until recently there have been few efforts to address the damage. I’m embarrassed to say that the first time I heard about this cultural genocide was when I was in high school (many Indigenous children were stolen from their communities at a much younger age than this, which is perhaps why it is so hard to learn about). Indian Horse is a heartbreaking story but it is one that we all need to hear, no matter how difficult it is to listen. As Saul notes in the first chapter, “I can’t understand where I’m going if I don’t understand where I’ve been." In my interpretation of the novel, this means that Canadians have an obligation to acknowledge our past.

It’s very easy to put myself in the “younger ones” place, understand their perspective, and argue that the two rationales that Saul gives; disbelief and anger don’t really encompass the entirety of the reason why those individuals are “twitchy”.
My grandparents lived through the 1947 Indo-Pak separation and witnessed and suffered horrors that I don’t think I will ever have the words to recount. They made sure to tell us their story because they feared that it would get lost in time and that their grandchildren, so enamored with the western world would forget what atrocities the white Europeans had committed. My maternal grandmother, the person who has been able to share most of her experience with me would completely agree with what Saul is told at the rehab center that, “If we want to live at peace with ourselves, we need to tell our stories.”
From personal experience, I can say that it's much more than feeling uncomfortable. It's feeling helpless at the hurt being caused by one’s own identity, heritage, and culture. It’s the discomfort of knowing that there are people in this world who consider me and my people less than human but more importantly, they advocate for our subjugation. The “younger ones” that Saul mentions could be from any race (Saul doesn’t specify) but if they are indigenous, then I think that the twitchiness has a lot to do with loss. Now, the loss can be anything: members of the community, rituals, culture, tradition, etc. But I believe that the loss of dignity and pride of their elders makes them uncomfortable. If a person’s communal and/or racial identity is the cause of their victimization then I believe, it's very hard to listen to your people talk about their suffering.
There is also hurt and sadness and the desire to live under the illusion that these horrors haven’t been committed against my people. My grandmother when telling me about the migration and trains full of dead bodies saw how uncomfortable and “twitchy” in my seat I was and said that what I felt was a complicated mixture of anger, hurt, sadness, and the desire to live a life where I am unaware of all of this because when someone becomes aware of it, they want to act on it but unfortunately, in these situations, nothing can be done about it.
NOTE: I must state that what I have written here is what I believe the young Indian individuals may have felt. I am by no means giving concrete reasons as to why some people might get uncomfortable when hearing about racial and generational trauma.

I agree with your points Emily and MInahil,
In the novel, Saul assumes that they are uncomfortable because they either don't believe him or are angered. In my perspective, with such a sensitive topic, some discomfort could stem from the mental state of the persons listening. It may be that the issue could be a trigger for them. Also persons may feel some guilt that they do not know how to display other than through discomfort. It may be guilt from belonging to the group that commit these atrocities, or guilt from not being able to help. The younger persons, possibly just having heard something for the first may not know how to process this information.

I think my thoughts mirror those of my classmates, however I would like to elaborate on this topic. I think there may be an element of guilt, in that the younger generation did not have to endure what their elders did, and perhaps this invokes a stigma that the challenges of the younger generation are not as important or detrimental as residential schools were. On the other hand, we see through Saul the first-hand generational effects of residential schools, and perhaps the younger members of the group get “all twitchy in their seats” because the stories Saul recounts are all too familiar.

I find the reference to Eichmann in Jerusalem particularly intriguing. I don’t think the lack of young people at Adolf Eichmann’s trial is indicative of their disinterest, but rather a lack of understanding. Furthermore, I think maybe a similar element may play into the fact that people who never experienced the war will never fully understand what it was like and perhaps feel they haven’t earned a seat in the courtroom.

Now I'm not 100% sure if the younger people in the rehab center are indigenous as the novel does not explicitly tell us, however, if they are not they could be uncomfortable because Saul is sharing an experience where he was more than uncomfortable , he was persecuted because of his culture, sexually, physically, and emotionally abused, and saw countless children die. These young people are experiencing a smithereen of what he felt and it's enough to make them squirm in their seats. These young people, if white and/or christian could also be hearing about what they as oppressors have done to these people from a primary source: Saul. They might have been under the belief that residential schools were nice and fun for these children but are now facing the truth of what they actually were, a nightmare. But these people could also be the ignorant type, and think he may be exaggerating how it really was or believe that he is making it all up. Either way, these younger people would not be able to relate at and would get extremely uncomfortable and/or angry at his stories.

However, if these people were Indigenous they perhaps might be uncomfortable because they relate too much. They would have seen the trauma their parents and grandparents had from the residential schools and thus brings to the forefront their own generational trauma that these schools inflicted on the children they kidnapped. They would have to face the very thing that put them into that rehab centre that they subconsciously knew was the cause.