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Fred Kelly
A nun and teacher at St. Jerome’s school, described by Saul Indian Horse as being a cruel, narrow-minded woman. Ignacia is perhaps the most vocal proponent of the cultural genocide that Saul and other Indigenous Canadians experience during the book: she openly claims that Native Americans should be prevented from speaking their own language or celebrating their own culture. As such, she’s the embodiment of an evil and destructive ideology.
Sister Ignacia Quotes in Indian Horse
The Indian Horse quotes below are all either spoken by Sister Ignacia or refer to Sister Ignacia. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 11 Quotes
She smiled again with the same ghastly lack of feeling. “At St. Jerome's we work to remove the Indian from our children so that the blessings of the Lord may be evidenced upon them.”
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Explanation and Analysis:
In this grim passage, Wagamese introduces readers to Sister Ignacia, one of the nuns and instructors at St. Jerome’s, the school where Saul is sent under Canadian law. Ignacia is typical of the faculty of St. Jerome’s: she’s cruel, humorless, and believes that she has a divine mandate to force her students to embrace Christianity, English, and white Canadian culture. What Ignacia is describing in the passage could very well be termed cultural genocide, the deliberate elimination of an ethnic group’s culture. Ignacia seems to think that all Indigenous culture is heathen by virtue of the fact that it’s not Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam c
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Sister Ignacia Character Timeline in Indian Horse
The timeline below shows where the character Sister Ignacia appears in Indian Horse. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 11
...Then he’s taken downstairs to meet the two heads of the school, Father Quinney and Sister Ignacia . Quinney and Ignacia are impressed that Saul already has a Biblical name. However, the...
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Father Quinney and Sister Ignacia continue to instruct Saul and the other children how to behave at the school. Ignacia...
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Chapter 19
Although Father Quinney and Sister Ignacia protest, Father Leboutilier is able to convince them to allow Saul to join the hockey...
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Chapter 24
When Father Leboutilier mentions Fred Kelly’s idea to Sister Ignacia , Ignacia is disgusted. She claims that hockey is a “soulless game,” even after Father...
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