Summary
Mitch and Frenchie are two Native Métis boys hiding out in a treehouse on the outskirts of the city formerly known as Toronto. Currently, the city no longer has a name and the environment is hostile, with constant rain and abandoned infrastructure. They are hiding out from Recruiters, school truancy officers who work for the Canadian Government. Just after Mitch excitedly finds a rare snack—a bag of Doritos—they realize they are surrounded by Recruiters. Mitch sacrifices himself, screaming loudly as Frenchie follows his instructions to escape out of the back window and into a pine tree.
After waiting until the Recruiters leave and night falls, Frenchie goes on the run, headed northeast. He faces hunger, cold and bodily pain as he moves from an abandoned suburban landscape to the woods. As he travels, he recalls his former life with his family in the city. He recalls how they were forced to travel north due to power outages and increasing danger. He recalls how he was separated, first from his father who never returned from a meeting with the Governors in the capital, and then from his mother, who never returned from a trip to forage for provisions.
Roaming through the woods, Frenchie is cold, in pain, thirsty, and starving. A motley group of Native people led by a man named Miigwans find him. They give him food, wrap him in blankets, and tell him they can travel north together. Miigwans—Miig for short—is an older man who doesn’t speak much and uses many metaphors. He travels with Minerva, an old woman who is also very quiet, and a group of youth not related by blood: Chi-Boy, Frenchie, Tree, Zheegwon, Slopper, Wab, and Riri.
Each week Miig gathers the older youth together around a fire for Story. He shares information about their past and present in an effort to preserve memory and educate them for survival. In the first part of the Story, Miig explains how the Anishnaabe people, who inhabited the lands later called Canada, were warriors who defended their territory from the newcomers. However, they lost a lot due to disease. Once the Anishnaabe were weakened, the colonizers opened the first schools, where native youth lost their language and their innocence. But the schools were eventually shut down and Native peoples managed to rebuild their communities and cultures.
However, these communities again suffered when the Water Wars raged for ten years. Humans polluted the Great Lakes until they were poison. They sold rivers to the highest bidder, diverting bodies of water to the south and the east. At the same time, earthquakes and hurricanes led the ocean to swallow up coastal lands like California. The North melted and was flooded. The world entered a darker era, as half of the population died and most people stopped reproducing and dreaming. Miig explains that they are heading north because according to the tales the tough northern people are doing okay.
After Story, Ri asks Frenchie to share the information with her, since she is too young to attend. Frenchie decides it is okay to share a limited version of the story, but before he can finish a warning whistle draws him from the tent. Frenchie joins the others and prepares to defend their camp from Recruiters. But the intruder turns out to Rose, a lively and rebellious young Native woman to whom Frenchie feels immediately attracted. Rose joins the camp, frequently expressing her dissenting voice and her desire to fight against the government rather than run.
The camp divides into two groups that alternate every three months: Hunting and Homestead. The hunters, including Frenchie, follow Miig into the forest to learn to hunt. Meanwhile, the homesteaders stay with Minerva to tend to the campsite and prepare for the next day’s journey. One day Miig tells the hunters they will practice hunting alone, with each participant walking in a different direction for an hour. Frenchie has an encounter with a large moose. He is in a position to kill the animal, which would provide them with food for a week as well as hide for tarps, blankets, and ponchos. But he ultimately decides not to, since they would have to leave at least half of the meat behind to rot. The others catch turkeys and they return to the camp.
Analysis
In the first sections of The Marrow Thieves, the author Cherie Dimaline uses vivid imagery to establish the novel’s setting in a dark and destroyed world. Cities no longer have individual names, only directions. The streets are filled with abandoned and looted buildings, darkened windows, cracked sidewalks, and burnt cars. Even the weeds are described as “menacing,” as they have adapted to a changed climate characterized by constant rain.
This world is so altered that for Frenchie and Mitch, finding a bag of Doritos is a very special event. Dimaline highlights this using a simile, which compares the popped Doritos bag to “cheese-scented fireworks.”
As Frenchie escapes from the Recruiters and travels alone in the woods, he experiences physical suffering. Yet it is his emotional suffering and the separation from his family that is most painful for him. Author Cherie Dimaline highlights this through Frenchie’s encounter with a pack of wild guinea pigs, which symbolize the importance of family. Frenchie notes that the baby animals are not so afraid of him because their father is protecting them. He feels that while they are all facing harsh conditions, the guinea pigs are better off, since they still have their nuclear family. In contrast, Frenchie is all alone.
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 way the author does this is through the logos on the Recruiters’ shirts, which read: “Government of Canada: Department of Oneirology.” Oneirology refers to the scientific study of dreams.
In The Marrow Thieves, dreams are not simply imaginary, insignificant visions. Rather, they are central to the main characters’ identity and to one of the novel’s main conflicts. As Frenchie travels northward with Miigwans's group, he begins to dream of his lost family members. One dream of the Recruiters taking his brother is so vivid that he feels the dream's fingers grasp his lower back, even after he wakes up. Dimaline personifies dreams in order to demonstrate the very real power they exert in the novel.
Dimaline also explores the theme of cultural identity and the related themes of memory and language. Miig tells the youth that Story is essential because knowing and remembering is “the only way to make the kinds of changes that [are] necessary to survive.” The youth themselves long to connect with the cultural identity that most of them have lost. One way this is expressed is through braiding their hair like their ancestors did. Braiding thus becomes a powerful symbol of the desperate effort to preserve their lineage, as Frenchie says that he braids his hair to “remind myself of things I couldn’t quite remember, but that, nevertheless, I knew to be true.”
Frenchie is a member of the Métis people, and says he comes “from a long line of hunters, trappers, and voyageurs." For his people hunting and traveling through the natural landscape was a central part of their way of being. Yet as the rivers and forests have been cut into pieces, so too has Frenchie’s history and identity, such that “my own history seemed like a myth along the lines of dragons.”
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 connections with their history and culture.
