Wenjack

This exposition establishes the story’s narrative backdrop: a cruel and disciplinarian school on the fringe of a forest. By extension, it establishes the institutionalized Abuse in the Residential School System. Wenjack reacts to this by vowing, “[O]ne day I will run. One day they won’t hurt me anymore” (3). This statement illustrates that Wenjack’s desperation to escape is motivated by a desire to escape pain. This abuse takes the form of cruelty and humiliation, constant beatings, and deprivation of food and water. It is also insinuated that sexual abuse occurs in a basement that “scares the life out of [students]” (1).

Wenjack sees evidence that his classmates are being beaten during bath time. The systematic nature of the boys’ physical abuse is illustrated by the “long red marks” on their backs. Wenjack observes that there are “ever a lot of red marks” on the students (3); this shows how widespread and normalized corporal punishment is for the student body. In particular, the school is constantly beating the boys for running away: “A dozen children had run away from the school that week but all had been captured and returned and beaten” (6). The fact that these children are attempting to escape despite the threat of such painful consequences shows just how abusive the school is.

The violence to which the school subjects students is not random but rather intertwined with the project of white supremacy. For example, Wenjack’s teacher cruelly brands him “the slow one” due to his struggles with the English language (2). In doing so, the teacher ignores the fact that Wenjack wasn’t exposed to the English language until two years ago, at the age of nine, when he was forcibly removed from his home by Canadian authorities. The boys are also abused for speaking in their native language. Wenjack says that “the Fish Belly who teaches us doesn’t let us drink any water when we answer words wrong” (30). Furthermore, Wenjack states, “[I]f the Fish Bellies hear me speak my words they beat me with a stick and make me eat soap” (2). These punishments reveal how fiercely white schoolteachers, and the governing bodies that economically support their work, believe that First Nation languages are unsanitary, profane, and inferior to English. By contrast, the boys are given food, water, and praise (in the form of being moved to higher grade levels) when their English improves. Wenjack thus reports, “Fish Belly says I get to go to a new class soon. I’m learning my English, me” (2). Within this system of punishment and reward, white colonizers have positioned English as a prestigious, sanitary, and morally proper language.

The young boys’ Loss of Indigenous Language and Culture results from this inherently abusive program of forced assimilation. The owl mournfully points out the consequences of this when he observes that the three boys “will feel the shame of having touched one another, if even just for warmth” upon awakening after a cold night (22). The moral impropriety of touching is a belief imparted to the children by white Canadian culture, a “lesson not taught by their own but by others” (22). The owl mourns how the boys’ loss of their own culture leads to the internalization of shame. The boys’ shame at having touched one another further suggests that they survived sexual abuse while at the residential school. They express this shame and embarrassment by perpetrating violence on each other: The older brother kicks his younger brother, who in turn kicks Wenjack. This illustrates the cyclical nature of colonial cruelty, in which the boys were first subjected to systematic violence by their residential school, and they in turn enact cruelty on others. It is an implicit warning of the generational cycles of abuse and pain to come.

Forcible separation from one’s own family and communal roots for the purposes of involuntary assimilation into a foreign culture is a clear-cut case of systematic abuse and cultural genocide. Despite this, many of the boys, including Wenjack, demonstrate admirable resilience in their determination to remain connected to their own culture. For this reason, the novel opens with the phrase, “Gimik-wenden-ina? Do you remember?” (1). It hence establishes memory—in particular the memory of language and cultural practices—as an important and recurring motif. Wenjack remembers his father’s advice to whisper their words so he can retain his culture while still avoiding punishment: “Nindede said not to speak my words out loud but only to whisper them when they couldn’t hear. Daddy. Nindede. Mama. Nimaamaa” (2). Resistance and Resilience is thus established as a pivotal theme in the lives of the boys.

Wenjack’s view of the forest further sets up his determination to maintain his cultural belief system. He sees hummingbirds and owls and interprets their presence as positive or negative omens for their journey: “I tell them I saw a hummingbird and it’s a good sign for us” (15). Wenjack smells the spruce pines that they sleep on, and these remind him of his home and family: “[T]hat smell makes me want my home and my nindede and my sisters and dogs” (15). Parts of the boys’ journey are also told from the perspective of the forest’s spirits, which “perch on limbs and look down at the shivering children” (20). Their presence forges an additional link between the boys and their culture, for the animals act as allies in the boys’ opposition to the residential school system. To this end, the owl offers a scathing reflection that Wenjack’s “real name is Chanie. But the ones who forced him to that school can’t pronounce or don’t care to listen and so say it with sharp tongues instead” (20-21). The pike likewise intentionally swims into the uncles’ weir to provide food for the approaching boys, who he recognizes are hungry after their terrifying journey.

Foreshadowing is present throughout these chapters. Wenjack’s tragic death is alluded to by his sickness, which the text mentions numerous times in statements like, “Charlie had a lung infection” and “Charlie coughed and spat phlegm, his breathing a whine” (8). An ominous symbol is also present in the fact that there is a cemetery beside the school. Joseph Boyden explains, “Tuberculosis and similar diseases had taken thousands of Indian children’s lives […] in these strange schools, [which were] always built with a cemetery beside them to bury those the attendants knew would not make it to the final grade” (7).

The weather is also a source of foreshadowing. The boys feel fear as the night sets in, sensing that with it comes danger. Even so, they are firm in the fact that “none of [them] wants to go back even though [they] now understand how cold the night is going to be” (13). The chill of the early morning hours is of particular concern, with the owl referring to this time as “the coldest part of North October night” (21). The younger brother’s refusal to interpret the hummingbird as a good omen and his warning that it will freeze to death allude to Wenjack’s future death from the nighttime cold. Like the hummingbird, Wenjack is too weak to survive the rapidly arriving winter weather. The pike spirit likewise reflects on how “the weather will change […] by this time tomorrow, carrying first winter on its spine” (34). In this way, the text sets up a rivalry between Wenjack’s intention to return home and the impending onset of extreme cold. Winter thus amplifies the deadliness of the residential school system.