The Marrow Thieves
By Cherie Dimaline
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Fiction
Genre: dystopia, post-apocalyptic, young adult
Read on 2020-09-05
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2020 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
Mid-way through this book I thought how I would’ve preferred if the story unfolded like a mystery, where Frenchie slowly uncovers why Indigenous people were being kidnapped and the insidious villainous institutions behind it all in the vein of The Golden Compass. But then I thought about it some more and actually the way this story and conspiracy is actually unveiled - as a series of oral histories and memories from Frenchie’s adoptive father Miigwan - is much more impactful.
As much as this book might appear like an alternate history and dystopia, it’s important to recognize that for the Indigenous peoples of North America and other settler colonial states, the apocalypse has already happened, and there is actually no mystery as to how and why. This book only transforms the range of resources and land systematically extracted from Indigenous peoples in real history into bone marrow. The idea of extracting the bone marrow of Indigenous people is so chilling. But Indigenous people having the unique ability to dream in this post-apocalyptic future is a beautiful counterpoint, and something that is given several incredibly evocative narrative moments. Anyways - kidnapping Indigenous people, placing them in residential schools, and extracting their bone marrow to allow white and other non-Indigenous settlers to “dream” is barely a metaphor - most of this is factual, and it is this post-apocalyptic world’s proximity to reality that makes it so chilling. It reveals the basic logic of settler colonialism wherein the essential life-giving resources of the peoples indigenous to a land is systematically extracted from them to be used to fuel the dreams of non-native settlers. This, in effect, is the “American dream” - so again, this notion is barely a metaphor, pretty much just word play.
So now going back to the way the history of the apocalypse is told - Frenchie’s first person perspective is not written as a historical figure discovering the settler colonial agenda for the first time, but rather represents the experience of contemporary and future generations of Indigenous descendants who learn the stories and histories of the apocalypse after the fact. And so even though there is a lot of the “action” we don’t experience first-hand, this narrative structure and story telling style is very intentional and best suits the central themes of survival, transmission of traditional/cultural knowledge, and solidarity.
As a protagonist, Frenchie is the anti-chosen one and a breath of fresh air. He has no special qualities even within his group, but he is nuanced and flawed and grows through the stories of his elders and his family. He is very much a teen coming of age, and his actions and characterization modulate between brazenly macho and earnest/innocent in a tenderly childlike way. At times he is irritatingly protective of his female love interest in a very patriarchal way, but at other times he is moved to tears by the deep love he has for his family. Through his eyes, we see how deeply he mourns the deaths and disappearances of his family members, longs for his culture and language, and develops a more nuanced understanding of love and community and hope.
I knocked off a star because it took me a while to really sink into this book, but it was beautifully written from the get-go. I think this book is so unique and quite groundbreaking not just for its subject matter and bald-faced representation of violent settler colonialism, but also for the way it tells its story and its firm commitment to centering the strength of a family and community over a lone hero. It also centers the diversity of contemporary Indigenous populations and each individual’s unique relationship to culture, language, knowledge - something I relate to as a child of immigrants. The solidarity seen between characters of all different backgrounds and Indigenous tribes and cultures against the same colonizing force is also a constant theme - as is the shock and pain of betrayal from other people of colour or other Indigenous people. Almost every single character in this book is Indigenous or of mixed Indigenous heritage, with white people and other non-Indigenous people of colour sidelined as villains or very minor side characters - a total reversal of pretty much every other story in book or TV/film that I’ve encountered! This focus really allows the book to explore a range of Indigenous experience and Indigenous solidarity.
Finally, as is tradition, I like to note when a book has moved me or made me cry on the subway - which this book did like three times!
