Fred Sasakamoose's autobiography, Call Me Indian, follows the author from his idyllic early years in the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation in Saskatchewan through the hardships of residential school at Duck Lake to his career as a player in the elite National Hockey League and beyond. Perhaps the most natural and topical subject for a research essay would be the system which forced Indigenous children in Canada to attend residential schools in the 1940s and the abuse that they suffered there.

Although residential schools had existed in some form since the seventeenth century, the system expanded significantly at the time when Sasakamoose was a pupil, and the ways in which the residential schools undermined Indigenous life have been described as a form of cultural genocide (see source material attached).

Another promising topic for a research essay would be the way in which Sasakamoose spent most of his career outside the NHL, playing in local leagues and later serving as chief of the Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation. The latter part of the book explores why the author felt that he could accomplish more working with young Indigenous people than he could as a high-profile player for the Chicago Black Hawks.