Richard Wagamese. (NA). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagamese
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The Author, Richard Wagamese, with his book Indian Horse
Richard Wagamese was a Canadian author and journalist. An Ojibwe from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in northwestern Ontario, and best known for his 2012 novel Indian Horse, which won the Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature in 2013. Wagameses parents, Marjorie Wagameses and and Stanley Raven, had been among the many native children in Canada, who were taken from their families and forced into government run residential schools to separate them from their cultural roots per Canadian law.
Wagamese was also removed from his family by the Children's Aid society and was raised in foster homes throughout Ontario. There he was adopted when he was 9 by a family that would refuse his contact with this First Nations heritage and identity. The beatings and abuse he endured throughout his foster care life led him to leave at the age of 16 to live on teh street where he began to abuse drugs and alcohol, and was imprisoned several times.
He was reunited with his family at the age of 23, where he was given the name of Mushkotay Beezheekee Anakwat - Buffalo Cloud - from an elder and was told to tell stories. This began his new journey, where he received his first job as a journalist with the First Nations publication New Breed.
He later became the columnist and music reviewed for Calgary Herald. His debut novel Keeper'n Me was published in 1994. He has since published five other novels, books of poetry, and five non-fiction books, including two memoirs and an anthology of his newspaper writings. He was 61 years old when he passed away on March 10, 2007.