Richard Wagamese was an Ojibwe Canadian author and journalist from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in Northwestern Ontario. He was renowned for his novel Indian Horse (2012), which received critical acclaim and won the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature in 2013. This notable work was also chosen as a competing title in the 2013 edition of Canada Reads and was later adapted into a feature-length film, Indian Horse (2017), which was released posthumously.

Wagamese's career spanned across various mediums, having been a newspaper columnist, reporter, radio and television broadcaster and producer, as well as a documentary producer. Throughout his prolific career, he authored twelve titles from major Canadian publishers, establishing himself as one of Canada's foremost Native authors and storytellers.