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.

In this text, Joseph Boyden exposes and explores the myriad ways in which the residential school system neglected, mistreated, and abused untold numbers of children. In his Author’s Note, Boyden refers to the stories of thousands of residential school survivors collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2007-2015). Rather than serving as an accurate biography of Wenjack’s escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, Boyden’s retelling of Wenjack’s story stands as a source of symbolic truths. Wenjack’s inner reflections and the exact nature of his passing are lost to history. Through Boyden’s narrative, though, Wenjack’s suffering and death double as a symbol for the suffering and deaths of countless other Indigenous children, who remain unnamed and unknown.

Throughout Wenjack, white schoolteachers severely beat and punish the boys in their care. This is made clear when Wenjack describes washing the backs of his peers. He notes how there are “long red marks” on one friend’s back and reveals that there are “ever a lot of red marks” on other boys’ backs as well (3).