Interconnectedness
This collection is a series of interconnected stories and that narrative structure is thematically mirrored by the interconnectedness of the bloodlines of important families: the Lazarres, Pillagers, Morrisseys and Kashpaws. The treatment of familial ties is strongly connected to the concept of establishment of identity while that identity is impacted upon by the mixing blood and race. The concept of interconnected is also thematically display through the structure of the narrative sections told from the perspective of Nanapush. While technically, the book has only two narrators, the sections related by Nanapush use the device of dramatic monologue to allow the layering of multiple storytellers through Nanapush retelling stories experienced by others.
Survival
The Native American tribes are the center of the story are beset by a seemingly never ending series of setbacks and obstacles which must be overcome simply to survive. These range from health and medical issues to political threats to their homes and the very land they live on. Other dramatic impacts upon characters vary from the intensely physical and individual like rape to the more abstract and universal like the consequences of Catholic missionaries seeking to obliterate the very spirituality of a foreign culture.
Magical Realism
Traditionally, the literary genre of Magical Realism is associated with the collision of pagan and Christian cultures below the southern border of the U.S. But this same collision also dominates the enforced assimilation of North American indigenous tribes to the north of that border and into Canada. The term relates not to imaginative literature where magic is accepted as a normal and integral part of the social order, but rather reflects that cultural collision with the introduction of usually inexplicable supernatural elements into conventionally realistic setting. Magic interconnects with reality through a variety of means in the stories: Native American dream catchers are juxtaposed with the image of a Virgin Mary statue shedding tears, sermons about Satan are paralleled with the legend of the Manitou monster of Lake Matchimanito.
