Ragged Company

Content Warning: This section discusses substance use disorder, child endangerment, and abuse.

Wagamese, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), the author of Ragged Company, was an Indigenous writer from Canada. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award in 1995 for his debut novel, Keeper’n Me, and the Canadian Authors Association Award in 2007 for his novel Dream Wheel.

Like much of Wagamese’s work, Ragged Company addresses the socioeconomic issues affecting Indigenous communities in Canada and explores questions of identity and culture. Three of the four unhoused main characters in the book have Indigenous ancestry. The experience of being unhoused is an issue that Indigenous communities in Canada disproportionately face—a direct result of rampant colonization, followed by racism and oppression, that took place in the country (“Indigenous Peoples,” Canadian Observatory on Homelessness). In addition to historical trauma, personal issues such as substance use disorder and family dysfunction among the people of these communities contribute to and exacerbate the problem of homelessness. The characters in Ragged Company reflect these circumstances.

Wagamese’s personal life and experiences strongly influenced the book as well. His family followed the traditional lifestyle of the Ojibway people (“Richard Wagamese.