Mitch was smiling so big his back teeth shone in the soft light of the solar-powered lamp we’d scavenged from someone’s shed. “Check it out.” He held a bag of Doritos between us—a big bag, too.
“Holy, Mitch! Where’d you get that?” I touched the air-pressurized bag to confirm it was real. My dirty fingers skittered across the shiny surface like skates. It was real. My mouth filled with spit, and a rotten hole in one of my molars yelled its displeasure.
Dimaline uses dark, apocalyptic imagery and an anxious, devastated mood to establish the novel’s setting in a future world destroyed by climate change and contamination. This world is so altered that for Frenchie and Mitch, finding a bag of Doritos is a very special event. Dimaline highlights this by using similes to compare the experience of the Doritos to events that are commonly exciting for children in our world: ice skating and fireworks.
I saw both of the Recruiters now: high-waisted navy shorts, gym socks with red stripes pulled up to their knees above low, mesh-sided sneakers, the kind that make you look fast and professional. Their polo shirts were partially covered with zip-front windbreakers one shade lighter than their shorts. The logo on the left side was unreadable from this distance, but I knew what it said: "Government of Canada: Department of Oneirology." Around their necks, on white cords, hung those silver whistles.
From the outset of the novel, Dimaline presents dreams as a central theme. Miig explains to the youth that dreams are woven into the marrow of their bones from the day they are born. “That’s where they pluck them from,” he explains ominously. While the reader does not yet know the precise relationship between the capacity to dream, bone marrow, and the hunting of Native people, Dimaline foreshadows that society is waging a war against Indigenous people in a violent effort to regain the capacity to dream. One moment of foreshadowing is the logos on the Recruiters’ shirts, which read: “Government of Canada: Department of Oneirology.” Oneirology refers to the scientific study of dreams.
I came from a long line of hunters, trappers, and voyageurs. But now, with most of the rivers cut into pieces and lakes left as grey sludge puckers on the landscape, my own history seemed like a myth along the lines of dragons.
This quote highlights how the destruction of the land has meant the destruction of identity for Frenchie and his people. For the Métis people, hunting and traveling through the natural landscape was a central part of their way of being. Thus, because the rivers and forests have been cut into pieces, so too has Frenchie’s history and identity.
"Nishin. It means good."
I kept my eyes on the trail ahead. I didn't mean to, but I said it anyway. "So?"
"Sooooo," she said. If you want to know what Minerva tells us, I'll share."
I took three strides before I could answer. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah, okay."
She punched my arm. I couldn't help but smile. I wanted to say her name, to feel it rumble past my teeth.
"Yeah, Rose. That sounds nishin."
Here Dimaline highlights the budding romance between Rose and French. She also draws attention to a central theme in the novel: the power of language. At first Frenchie feels the Homestead group is useless. He tells Rose that he feels bad for them since they have to stay back at the camp with crazy old Minerva while the Hunters get to learn practical skills from Miig. However, Rose proves that Minerva’s lessons are essential by using a word from their old language, "nishin," which means good. Their language represents one of their last connection with their history and culture.
Every year the world was making us more aware of change. After the cities crumbled off the coastlines, after the hurricanes and earthquakes made us fear for a solid ground to stand on, even now we were waiting for the planet to settle so we could figure out the ways in which we would be safe. But for now there was just movement, especially for us: the hunted trying to hunt.
The Marrow Thieves can be described as a work of speculative climate fiction. This is because it uses fantastical elements to speculate about a future in which the climate crisis has destroyed the world as we know it. In this quote, Dimaline draws a parallel to the increasingly frequent environmental disasters that readers around the world are facing in real life. In this way, she makes clear that while the novel includes fantastical elements, it also seeks to reflect on the future we may actually face if the climate crisis deepens.
Time is slow in that vacuum space. In this new space, I had time to aim squarely between the moose’s eyes, watching his muscles contort and his skin wrinkle as he bent to take another mouthful of grass…I lowered the rifle. He blinked once more, then crossed his legs, one over the other as if at the start of a curtsey, then turned back into the trees. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let it come to this, not for him and not for me.
French is in a position to kill the large moose, which would provide his group with food for a week as well as hide for tarps, blankets, and ponchos. But he ultimately decides not to do so, since they would have to leave at least half of the meat behind to rot. In this way, the moose comes to symbolize a respectful relationship with nature. Frenchie feels it would be unjust to kill this grand animal only to waste a large portion of its meat. He chooses to respect nature rather than waste its resources. In so doing, he chooses to be different from those—like the Recruiters—who extract resources from the land and from Native peoples in a short-sighted, destructive manner. As a result of his respectful decision, Frenchie “gets” the moose in a different way, since the animal visits him in his dreams, perhaps to share insights.
"I really need you to trust me on this. This is our home. They can't just come in here and do what they like. Now, I'm not sure what all of this is really about, but that stuff we heard? Miigwans, that's just too ridiculous to be true."
As the Recruiters bust open their door, Isaac still believes that the rumors about the schools are false, and that he will be able to reason with the agents of the Canadian Government. Miig, whose family passed down tales of the abuses of the old boarding schools, knows that this is not the case. Throughout The Marrow Thieves, author Cherie Dimaline uses characterization to explore the way different characters and groups respond to persecution and violence. Isaac, as well as French's father and the Council, believe there is still hope for dialogue and reason. Miig's group, and later, the resistance group in Espanola, believe dialogue is impossible. They arm and train themselves to actively defend their communities and save people from the schools. And Travis and Lincoln ally themselves with the Recruiters for their own personal survival and benefit.
Suddenly, I realized there was something worse than running, worse even than the schools. There was loss.
French reflects that while being on the run or being captured by the schools is horrible, it is actually loss that represents the most difficult aspect of the inhospitable world they live in.
"But why? Aren’t these supposed to make noise?" Slopper was confused. We’d been told over and over that silence was the only way to move out here, the only way to stay alive. It was Chi-Boy who answered, out of character. "Sometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you’re not the one that’ll be alive to live it."
When the Recruiters take Minerva, the group finds improvised jingles that Minerva made from can lids. These jingles used to hang from women’s dresses to make noise during powwows. But currently, the only way to survive is to remain as silent as possible. Yet Minerva made the jingles to hold on to her beloved culture. The jingles also symbolize the hope of a future in which they will once again be able to fully practice their culture and to dance and make noise joyfully. Even if Minerva does not get the opportunity to see this future, she is nourishing this hope for future generations.
And I understood that as long as there are dreamers left, there will never be want for a dream. And I understood just what we would do for each other, just what we would do for the ebb and pull of the dream, the bigger dream that held us all. Anything. Everything.
In the moving final lines of The Marrow Thieves, author Cherie Dimaline uses parallel language to deepen the reader's reflection on the theme of survival. Earlier, Miig explained to Wab and the rest of the group that they have the same motivation as the Recruiters: survival. He helps them to see that in order to keep themselves and their found family safe, they must be capable of doing “anything” and “everything”—including ugly, violent acts. But at the end of the novel, Dimaline portrays the more positive side of survival as a motivating force. As he witnesses Miig and Isaac’s emotional reunion, French realizes that humans are capable of incredible feats to stay alive, to find their loved ones, and to follow their collective dream of building a better future.
