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The four-wheeler flattened the tall grass as Evan made his way back to the moose. He made a quick inventory of the meat they’d have for the winter: three moose, ten geese, more than thirty fish (trout, pickerel, pike), and four rabbits, for now — more rabbits would be snared through the winter. It was more than enough for his own family of four, but he planned to give a lot of the meat away. It was the community way. He would share with his parents, his siblings and their families, and his in-laws, and would save some for others who might run out before winter’s end and not be able to afford
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setting the community context. Evan isn't a superhero protagonist, nor is he perfect, but he's got his heart in the right place.
He took her small hand in his and looked down into her wide brown eyes and smiled. Her pigtails stuck out like antennas on the old TVs. But the little girl’s questions often lingered in Evan’s mind long after she asked them, and he believed she held the wisdom of countless generations, despite her youth. She was an old soul. He wanted her to question everything. He wanted her to grow up to be strong and intelligent. He wanted her to be a leader.
heart-achingly important. And prescient.
Only two years separated the brothers, but somehow Evan had landed on his feet in adulthood while Cam hadn’t yet. When Evan had been out on the land learning real survival skills with his father and uncles as a teenager, Cam had chosen to stay behind, learning simulated ones in video games.
BURN. We see where Cam ends up! Drifting and rootless.
“Well, you make sure you spend some time with her. Go for a walk in the bush. When the spring comes, ask her to show you some of the medicines. She’ll know a lot now, if she remembers all the stuff from when I used to take her and all the young girls out there. It will be important if we don’t get any new supplies in from the hospital down south.”
Elder's wisdom. Aileen rocks.
“You know, when young people come over, sometimes some of them talk about the end of the world,” Aileen said, breaking the silence and snapping Evan out of his woolgathering. He looked up from the plaid pattern on the vinyl tablecloth to the old woman’s face. “They say that this is the end of the world. The power’s out and we’ve run out of gas and no one’s come up from down south. They say the food is running out and that we’re in danger. There’s a word they say too — ah . . . pock . . . ah . . .” “Apocalypse?” “Yes, apocalypse! What a silly word. I can tell you there’s no word like that in
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Aileen really rocks! (According to the Globe and Mail article I mentioned in my review, this conversation is true to life one that he had with his grandmother when the white men came and evicted them from their land then stripped all the trees for lumber).
And when it became clear to them that they were never supposed to last in this situation on this land in the first place, they decided to take control of their own destiny. Their ancestors were displaced from their original homeland in the South and the white people who forced them here had never intended for them to survive. The collapse of the white man’s modern systems further withered the Anishinaabeg here. But they refused to wither completely, and a core of dedicated people had worked tirelessly to create their own settlement away from this town.
rebirth
