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.

“Gimik-wenden-ina? Do you remember?”

The opening line of the novella refers to the recurring motif of memory. Wenjack’s determination to remember his language, his family, and his culture illustrates his efforts to resist his residential school’s program of cultural erasure. He whispers to himself in Ojibwe to avoid being beaten by white schoolteachers who want him to speak only in English. This introduces the novel’s major themes: Resistance and Resilience, Loss of Indigenous Language and Culture, and Abuse in the Residential School System.

“He has a room in the basement that scares the life from us.”

Through this line, Wenjack hints at the horrific sexual abuse that he and the other boys experience in this basement. In a later chapter, Wenjack remembers how Fish Belly dragged him by his hair to this room and then brutally raped him. This connects to the theme of abuse in residential schools.

“I’m learning my English, me. But I won’t lose my tongue. I pretend to be the slow one so I won’t forget my words.”

Wenjack learns stilted English during the two years he spends at the residential school. He demonstrates resistance and resilience by retaining his native Ojibwe language while simultaneously acquiring the ability to speak English. He shows a clever capacity for subverting the colonizers’ program of cultural genocide by pretending to lack the mental capacity to speak English well.