Connections

Hi,

Firstly, there was a lot of elements in Indian Horse that I recognized in the workshop that we did. The workshop represented pretty well the same feeling of isolation (I was one of the kids in the workshop) as the kids in Indian Horse must have felt when being torn from their parents. Also, there was a lot of silence in the workshop, as the kids we were apart from the others and we couldn't really talk, just like in the movie, where the kids were not allowed to speak the  language, and if they did they would get punished by violence. 

Next, my novel and the movie had even more in common. A very sad theme was suicide. In the beginning of Indian Horse, a girl kills herself by stabbing herself with a knife. That's probably due to the oppression she was under, and she couldn't support it. A similar thing happens in close to the end of Kindred. Dana, after Rufus hit her for the first time, felt like he betrayed her and that their promise was broken. Dana then tries to kill herself, once again with a knife. Another sadly common point in obviously racism. The white people in Indian Horse are very racist towards indigenous people, going as far as raping them at some point. In Kindred, it is mentioned a couple times that some black women can become sex slaves for their master, which is pretty much the same level of disgust for me. 

And finally, to be fully honest… I did not like the workshop at all. I understand that the point was to make us feel how the indigenous people felt, but during the whole workshop I felt like I was losing my time. The women presenting the workshop seemed bored herself and seemed to have no energy, she talked way to low, we couldn't understand what was happening at all. There was not enough explications, only questions on how we felt, which I think is ridiculous because we are not indigenous people! We knew that it is just a workshop, we didn’t feel anything because we were pulled apart, we knew that in an hour it’ll be over. We could just make up answers so she would keep the presentation going. I think she could at least explain a bit more, explain the sociocultural context before throwing us at one or other side of the room. As a teacher, I would not do this workshop again, and as a student I would rather having a regular english class. The only interesting part were the nice traditional objects and the dance she showed us at the end with the hula hoops, because she finally looked like she was enjoying what she was doing.