The Marrow Thieves (Marrow Thieves #1)

by Cherie Dimaline

“Then the wars for the water came. America reached up and started sipping on our lakes with a great metal straw. And where were the freshest lakes and the cleanest rivers? On our lands, of course. Anishnaabe were always the canary in the mine for the rest of them. Too bad the country was busy worrying about how we didn’t pay an extra tax on Levi’s jeans and Kit Kat bars to listen to what we were shouting.

In light of the wars and the rush to adapt and survive, no one really gave a shit about tourism, gross domestic profit, or low-level jobs for rurally located folks. Though they cared enough to kick everyone out when the former employees tried to bunk down in the once-plush rooms and make use of the supplies and heat. They fenced them off, boarded them up, and some even hired security firms to walk around the perimeter and make sure no one was looking to survive on corporate-sponsored vacancy.

“At first, people turned to Indigenous people the way the New Agers had, all reverence and curiosity, looking for ways we could help guide them. They asked to come to ceremony. They humbled themselves when we refused. And then they changed on us, like the New Agers, looking for ways they could take what we had and administer it themselves. How could they best appropriate the uncanny ability we kept to dream? How could they make ceremony better, more efficient, more economical?

“We go to the schools and they leach the dreams from where our ancestors hid them, in the honeycombs of slushy marrow buried in our bones. And us? Well, we join our ancestors, hoping we left enough dreams behind for the next generation to stumble across.”

Suddenly, I realized that there was something worse than running, worse even than the schools. There was loss.

For the first time in several years I missed my parents as physical pain at the bottom of my stomach and under each kneecap. That’s where the loss lived, in those strangely normal spots on my body. I didn’t think I deserved to rub them, so I fell into dreamless sleep with a throb and a pull in my body.

“They’re allies, real allies. They put their lives on the line. It’s not just talk. You heard them,” Clarence insisted.

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.