Ojibway author Richard Wagamese dead at 61

Award-winning author and journalist Richard Wagamese, an Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontariowhose work wasdeeply influenced by Indigenous experiences in Canada's residential school system, has died.

Wagamese, 61, called himself a second-generationsurvivorof the government-sponsored schools, attended byhis parents andextended family members.

In many ofhis 13titles from major Canadian publishers, he drew from his own struggle with family dysfunction that he attributed to the isolating church-run schools.

One of his many novels, Indian Horse, was a finalistin CBC's Canada Reads in 2013, bringing it to wider attention. It also was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

It tells the story of the intergenerational trauma that played out in the lives of those who attendedresidential schools in the 1960s and '70s.It's the story of Saul Indian Horse, a boy who finds release through his passion for hockey.

Two years after its release, in 2014, he spoke to Carol Off, host of CBC Radio's As It Happens,about the psychological impact ofbeing separated fromfamily and how the trauma is passed on to the next generation.

"The nature of their experience, their common experience in residential schools, really robbed them of their tribal and cultural ability to be nurturing and to be loving parents," Wagamese said.

"They had suffered the scrapes and woundings of their souls and their spirits that was not readily healable. And when we were born as children, we were subjected to the neglect and the pain that that generation had suffered, so intergenerationally, residentialschools infiltrated my generation in my family,and that's true across the country."

The film Indian Horse, adapted from the book, is currently in production,directed byDennis Foon(Life, Above All, Double Happiness).

Father-son themes

Wagamese's2014 novel Medicine Walk also addresses efforts to preservecultureand heal a divided family as a teenage son and dying father who barely know each other embark on a journey through the backcountry of the B.C. Interior so that the fathercan be buried according to Ojibwaycustom.

After its release, the author, who lived in Kamloops, B.C.,spoke to friend and CBC hostShelagh Rogers about Medicine Walk on B.C.'s GabriolaIsland, where she lives.

He said he saw Medicine Walk as the continuation of a story that started with For Joshua: An OjibwayFather Teaches His Son, his critically acclaimed and largely autobiographical 2002 novel.

Wagamesesaid he was reaching for an explanation for his problems, including "dropping out and dropping intoactive addiction," when he wrote For Joshua, dedicated to his youngerson.

A year after Joshuawas published, Wagameselearned he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, news thathelped himto start managing the trauma from childhood abuse.

"With the diagnosis of PTSD I suddenly had somethingthat was treatable, and if it was treatable it meant that it was manageable, and if it was manageable it meant that I needed to find ways to manage it," he said.

As one ofCanada's foremost Indigenous authors and storytellers, Richard Wagamese has been a professional writer since 1979. His body of work includes six novels, a book of poetry (Runaway Dreams) and five non-fiction titles, including two memoirs and an anthology of his newspaper columns.

Hewon the Molson Prize in 2013, a prizeawarded by the Canada Council for the Arts for achievement in the arts, humanities and social sciences. That same year, he picked up the inaugural Burt Award for First Nations, Mtis and Inuit Literature.

Wagamesehas twice won the Native American Press Association Award and the National Aboriginal Communications Society Award for his newspaper columns, which were collected in The Terrible Summer.

In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, in recognition of his lifetime of achievement in writing and publishing, and in 2011 he was the Harvey Stevenson Southam Guest Lecturer in journalism at the University of Victoria.