Wenjack

Content Warning: The source text and this guide depict the sexual violation, traumatization, and abuse of an Ojibwe child by a residential school, as well as scenes of cultural erasure and its resultant physical and emotional distress.

This chapter is told from the first-person perspective of Chanie Wenjack, who has been renamed “Charlie” by the staff at his white Canadian residential school.

Wenjack and his two friends are scared by their teacher, a white man whom they call Fish Belly or Sucker Belly. This teacher calls Wenjack “the slow one” because he is slow to learn English (2). However, Wenjack merely pretends to be slow because he fears forgetting his own language, Ojibwe, which he constantly practices in secret. He must be careful about doing so because the Fish Bellies (white teachers) beat the students or make them eat soap if they are overheard speaking in their native tongues.

The boys bathe, each washing the back of the boy in front of them. While doing so, Wenjack sees red marks on another boy. This means that the child tried to run away earlier that week but was brought back by the Fish Bellies, who are good at catching runaway Indigenous children.