Richard Wagamese (October 14, 1955 – March 10, 2017) was an Ojibwe Canadian author and journalist from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in Northwestern Ontario.

[3] He was best known for his novel Indian Horse (2012), which won the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature in 2013, and was a competing title in the 2013 edition of Canada Reads.

[6] Wagamese later described his family by saying "each of the adults had suffered in an institution that tried to scrape the Indian out of their insides, and they came back to the bush raw, sore and aching.

"[2] His parents, Marjorie Wagamese and Stanley Raven, had been among the many native children who, under Canadian law, were removed from their families and forced to attend government-run residential schools, the primary purpose of which was to assimilate them to European-Canadian culture.

[8][2] The beatings and abuse he endured in foster care and his adoptive home led him to leave at 16,[6] seeking to reconnect with Indigenous culture.

[2] On March 10, 2017, two days after Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations was nominated for a BC Book Award, Wagamese died at his home of natural causes.

[6] Throughout his writing life, Wagamese was renowned for his riveting live readings, consisting of passages from his works, traditional stories, anecdotes, and even stand-up comedy.

In 2013, he won the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize and the inaugural Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature for his novel Indian Horse.

[19] In the same year, Canada's Super Channel announced that it was funding a film adaptation of Indian Horse, to be directed by Stephen Campanelli and written by Dennis Foon.