The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Targeted once more, Indigenous characters struggle to avoid being
processed into medical supplies.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/dont-ask-forever
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On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 7:57:39 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:
> The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
>
> Targeted once more, Indigenous characters struggle to avoid being
> processed into medical supplies.
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/dont-ask-forever

People desperate to survive will of course be likely to be
willing to do just about anything. And it's not surprising that
the people of the First Nations will be regarded as less
valuable for the project of rebuilding, being disadvantaged
and thus less well-educated and so on.

This is not to excuse the villains of the book; clearly what
they're doing is cruel and wrong. But, sadly, it's highly
unsurprising given the choices they have.

The situation is contrived to make white people look bad,
so clearly the target audience is people who aren't threatened
by that.

Now, if the author had applied his talents to a novel where
Russia is faced with a disaster that supplies poetic justice
for what it's done to Ukraine, I might be in the target audience.
But lacking a single drop of First Nations blood in my veins,
or even some circumstance in my ancestry that would
permit me to make a plausible false claim to Indigenous
ancestry (not that I'd be inclined to do this, but it seems to
be all the rage these days in Canada) it's just not the sort of
revenge fantasy that would appeal to me.

Of course, it isn't exactly a revenge fantasy. Instead, the
protagonist just keeps on suffering, once again. Unlike a
historical novel, science-fiction is used to make the past
seem more relatable, I guess.

Have we learned anything from the horrors of the past?

Well, if the question means, have we learned not to value
our own survival more than that of other people, then the
answer would be no. For a real example, we can look at
Ron "territorial dispute" De Santis.

But I'm not opposed to spending a few more dollars of
my taxes on ensuring that First Nations people have safe
drinking water. Why that isn't being done, given all the
strange feel-good things (indigenization of our institutions
of higher learning, land acknowledgements...) that _are_
going on is a mystery to me.

I would think that if Trudeau cared about First Nations people,
he would do things to help solve their problems, instead of
doing things likely to spread panic among white people that
could get a real bigot elected next time.

John Savard