Dystopian Novel by an Indigenous Author
By Calyssa Erb
June is National Indigenous History Month and on June 21 we celebrate National Indigenous Peoples’ Day. With over 2 million Indigenous people living within what is now called Canada, Indigenous people are a diverse group made up of many different cultures, thirteen different language groups, and more than sixty-five distinct dialects.
These languages and Indigenous storytelling have held and passed along cultural knowledge within communities for generations. Today, we have many Indigenous authors sharing not only these cultural stories, but also imagining new and distinct futures through stories.
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline is one of those stories that imagines a new kind of future. Alongside this ground-breaking work, we recommend a few other dystopian novels from Indigenous authors to encourage dreaming up possible futures.
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (Cormorant Books)
The Marrow Thieves was a national bestseller, Governor General’s Award Winner, and One Book, One Brampton winner for 2018, and named one of Time magazine’s top 100 YA novels of all time. It sparked powerful conversations on CBC’s Canada Reads about Indigenous issues in Canada. This novel also shifted the types of literature being read and discussed in Canadian schools. The Marrow Thieves is one of the FOLD’s 12 Books that Shaped the Way We Read.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (ECW Press)
A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Simon & Schuster Canada)
While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters—and it is up to one young woman to unravel the mysteries of the past before they destroy the future.
Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine.
Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.
As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive.
Welcome to the Sixth World.
Aquariums by J.D. Kurtness (Dundurn Press)
An intimate yet wide-sweeping story of a marine biologist working to save ocean ecosystems from climate change.
With the world’s oceans ravaged by climate change, Émeraude, a young marine biologist, works to preserve aquatic ecosystems by recreating them for zoos. When her work earns her a spot aboard a research vessel with an extended mission in the Arctic, it is the inescapable draw of the ocean that will save her when the world she leaves behind is irrevocably changed.
Stories of Émeraude’s ancestors — a young sailor abandoned at birth, a conjuror who mixes potions for her neighbours, a violent young man who hides in the woods to escape an even more violent war, and a talented young singer born to a mother who cannot speak — weave their way through her intimate reflections on a modest life, unknowingly shaped by those who came before.
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