Canadian · 1955–2017
Richard Wagamese was an Ojibway writer from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario. As a small child he was taken into foster care, and he later lived on the street and spent time in jail before he began to write. He worked as a newspaper columnist and won a National Newspaper Award for column writing in 1991. His first novel, Keeper'n Me, appeared in 1994. He went on to write Indian Horse, Medicine Walk, Embers and many other books of fiction, memoir and essays. Indian Horse won the 2013 Canada Reads contest and was made into a feature film in 2017. His work deals with residential schools, the loss of family and culture, and the way storytelling and the land help people heal. He received the Order of Canada in 2021, after his death, and he remains one of the most widely read Indigenous authors in Canada.