Hey, wanna hear a good story? Supposedly it's a true one. It's a long story but it goes something like this...
Somewhere out there, on a Reserve that is closer than you think but still a bit too far to walk to, lived a young Ojibway boy. Though this is not his story, he is part of it.
As all good tales do, this one begins far in the past, but not so far back that you would have forgotten about it.
The novel begins with a direct address to the reader: Hey, wanna hear a good story? The language is informal and intimate - "hey" and "wanna" are conversational, and opening with a question immediately involves the reader in the narrator's tale. This could be read as the author speaking directly to us, or perhaps the Trickster luring us in with a good yarn.
Sister Agnes had christened the girl Lillian. As soon as she had arrived, they told her that her Anisnawbe name was not to be uttered anymore. Her old name was a secret that she kept close to her—so close, she would seldom speak it aloud. Her grandmother had given it to her a decade and a half ago. In this place, words other than English or Latin were unchristian and those who used them were punished severely. So, she became Lillian.
In these few lines we see the truly evil ways that the Canadian government and the Catholic Church stamped out Native children's culture, history, and identity. They do not get to bear the names their ancestors gave them. They do not get to speak their language. They do not get to study their history or culture. They do not get to be themselves, unless those selves are fully acclimated to Western norms (and even then, the color of their skin and their heritage will never let them fully assimilate). It's no wonder Sam succumbed, and why Lillian's relatively healthy life after the school was so remarkable.
So this is what he'd become. Once a mighty battler of monsters, creator of creatures, teacher of tales and both chief troublemaker and champion of Canada's Native peoples, he was now... pathetic.
It's no wonder Nanabush heeds the call from Lillian. His life is a misery. He's reduced to an slovenly drunk, striking disgust in the Native woman who sees him. He's not powerful, influential, seductive, or clever right now—he's just a mess, and as far away from the Trickster as he can be. It's Lillian's love that wakes him up, but it's the memories of who he was that motivate him to transform and get out of the hotel room.
The crow, having enough of this weird business, decided to put a few treetops between himself and this creature. So it took to the air. Whoever or whatever it was that might be "back," the crow didn't want to stick around to watch.
There are several parts in the text where animals are observing what is going on in the human world, such as this quote in which a wary crow sees John on the motorcycle arrive in Otter Lake and decides it doesn't want to stick around to see what happens next. Taylor lets us hear animals' thoughts, which isn't just in order to provide a bit of humor or even to let the reader see or understand the action from a different lens, but rather to open up the world beyond just humans, to (re)place the animals alongside humans as creatures who act and are acted upon. In older eras of Indigenous history, animals had a primacy and a power that has since diminished, and though they aren't main characters by any means (even the raccoons), Taylor's occasional nods to their thoughts and feelings helps the world feel fuller, richer, and fairer.
"What about all that residential school stuff? What about Sammy Aandeg? Look at what the Bible did to him."
"No, the Bible didn't do that. Men did. Don't confuse the two. The other side of the tracks has its flaws too, Maggie. Remember your old Buddy Jimmy."
Lillian brings together both her Christian and Native faiths, encouraging her daughter to realize that it's the people practicing them that cause the harm, not the teachings of the faiths themselves. Here she calls attention to a Native man who did terrible things to women in the same way that priests at the residential school abused Sammy. Her practical, wise, and fair view of the world makes it very clear why her family is going to miss her so much.
Maybe that was why Maggie was such a good chief. She had been forged within the anarchy and chaos of a large family. Each brother and sister had made her stronger, both by love and by torment.
This quote sums up one of the most endearing parts of the novel, which is Taylor's creation of a large, loving Indigenous family. There are matriarchs, children, grandchildren, cousins, and family friends, all living on the land that means so much to their tribe. They squabble with and annoy each other sometimes, but their ties are strong. They support each other regardless of what happens and always have open doors and open hearts. This family is what allows Maggie to be a good chief, as she ruminates wryly here, and it is also a sharp rebuke to the belief of the Canadian government and residential schools that Indigenous children belonged in their schools and not on their reservations with their family.
Oddly enough, the two men had much in common, though both would deny it. Each had been born of a human mother, and had had a father with a less-than-corporeal presence in their lives. There was, however, one big difference.
"At least I got the chance to beat the hell out of my father," said John, more to himself.
In this quote, John refuses to fully admit he has anything in common with Jesus, whom he is jealous of for dividing Lillian's attention. But the narrator sees their commonalities, which bear some elucidation. Jesus's mother was the Virgin Mary and his father was God, and Nanabush's mother was a human woman and his father E-bangishimog, god of the West Wind. It's unclear what he means by beating up his father, but it is likely that he has tussled with the wind before given the fact that he is an irascible Trickster. Regardless of what he means exactly, he clearly prides himself on not taking shit from anyone, on being his own man, and on having broken free from any ties, familial or otherwise, that bind him.
"But I don't care for the Arctic. I try never to go above the treeline. Not my kind of place."
This is an example of foreshadowing in the text, because the treeline is exactly where John/Nanabush will fight with Wayne. They take their fight to the trees because presumably they are closer to nature up there, because they are both imbued with divine or near-divine power from their Indigenous roots and being in the trees activates those powers more.
"What did he say?"
"I'm not sure yet. First of all, there was something about it being wintertime and some people were discontented. I kind of lost track after a while. He sure talks in a funny way. But after some prodding, I found out that your mother isn't here. She went off with some guy named Caliban."
All encounters with Sam in the text are filled with allusions to Shakespeare, as he was forcibly immersed in the playwright's work at the residential school. As his brain became more addled by psychological trauma and, later, alcohol, Shakespeare and real life fused together. In this quote, for example, he is referencing Richard III's first few lines: "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York; / And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried," as well as a character from The Tempest. But whereas the Richard III reference doesn't seem to explicitly connect to Sam and the events of Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, the Caliban reference is a lot more on point. After all, Caliban is the wild son of a sorceress, a primitive half-human who contemporary literary critics see as an emblem of Indigenous suffering under colonial powers.
"I like Native people, Kait. My parents used to have a lovely Algonquin lady clean our cottage once a week. I think she was Algonquin. I know she was Native. I've eaten deer. I have that leather vest. I've been to a powwow. I know the score."
This is an eye-rolling, unintentionally ironic comment on the part of Crystal Park, an MP dealing with Maggie on the land issue. She thinks she is in tune with the needs of the Native community, that she "gets" them, that she is an in-touch White person. She trots out some of the most tiresome cliches of White people dealing with people of color, such as knowing a random individual (in a servant capacity, naturally), attending a cultural event (as an outsider), and having the right outfit (sartorial appropriation).
