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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Five Little Indians, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Resilience and Redemption
Cruelty and Trauma
Family
Finding Home
Summary
Analysis
Lucy starts her nursing program, but two months in, her morning sickness has become so bad that the matron in charge notices. She gently tells Lucy that she can’t stay in the program, lest her out-of-wedlock pregnancy harm the program’s reputation. Lucy is disappointed, but at least the matron is kind. Clara finds out about the pregnancy—and Lucy’s leaving the program—a few days later when she drops by Lucy’s apartment. When Lucy, having lost the nursing program’s small stipend, loses her apartment, she moves in with Clara.
Lucy’s pregnancy puts her at yet another disadvantage in the 1970s, when society had harsh views about babies born out of wedlock. But she doesn’t have to face this alone. In Clara, she has a chosen sister to help her out. The schools may have deprived Lucy of her own parents and brother, and they have made it hard for her to form a traditional family with Kenny. But still, she finds a way to get the support she needs.
Themes
On the day that Lucy’s baby girl is born, Clara goes to visit the pair in the hospital. When Clara finds out that Lucy hasn’t seen her baby yet—she was born by C-section and Lucy was anesthetized—she brings it into the room. Lucy says she hadn’t asked to see the baby because she was afraid that she wouldn’t be allowed to have it, she’s so used to the powers that be depriving her of “anything good.” Lucy decides to name the girl Kendra, after her father, Kenny.
It’s a sign of how successfully the schools—and the racism and prejudicial policies of society broadly speaking—succeeded in destroying Indigenous children’s sense of belonging to their families and their culture that Lucy can’t quite imagine the hospital willingly allowing her to parent her own baby. She’s come to accept their view that Indigenous people like her don’t deserve the good things in life.
Themes
When Clara comes to visit the next day, she finds a panicked Lucy clinging to Kendra and weeping. The “welfare lady” stopped by and told the new mother that she would have to prove her fitness as a parent if she wanted to keep her baby. She doesn’t know if the nurses don’t trust her or if welfare comes after every Indigenous person. Calmly, Clara walks down the empty hallway to a supply closet, where she stuffs diapers and other things into her backpack. She asks the nurse if she can take her friend outside for some fresh air and the nurse says yes. Clara loads Lucy and Kendra into a wheelchair and the three escape the hospital. They go back to Clara’s place.
It seems that Lucy’s suspicion that “they”— the society that sent her to the mission school and then consigned her to a life on its fringes—won’t let her have anything good is well founded. Historically speaking, welfare officials in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s did take many Indigenous children from their parents based on a presumption of ineptitude. But Lucy’s fears also speak to the intergenerational violence of the residential school system: having been taken from her own family, how will Lucy know what to do with her own child?
Themes
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Clara had the foresight to give the hospital a fake address when she checked Lucy in, so she’s not worried about the authorities finding them. But there are other struggles. The next day, Clara comes home to find Lucy trying to calm an inconsolable Kendra. The two women become increasingly anxious until Clara thinks to look through the booklets they brought back from the hospital. Reading about how to care for a newborn, they think to burp Kendra, and as soon as Lucy does, Kendra calms down. Later that night, Kendra shows Lucy the fake ID she’s just gotten. Money is a problem. Lucy has no income and Clara makes irregular money selling black-market salmon. They need something more regular to count on if they’re going to take care of Kendra.
Clara and Lucy don’t know what to do with Kendra because neither of them grew up in their families, where most people pick up their ideas about caring for children. Because the government stole her from her own family at such a young age, all she has is the literature provided by the hospitals. Nevertheless, the love she and Clara have for Kendra and their determination to care for her mean that they figure out what to do, even if it’s harder for them than it should be.
Themes
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The next day, “Carey St. Marie” (Clara) and her sister-in-law, “Bunny St. Marie” (Lucy) and niece “Honey St. Marie” (Kendra) to the welfare office. It takes a few meetings, but eventually, both Clara and Lucy are awarded welfare stipends. They look for a bigger place, eventually finding a decrepit and disgusting two-bedroom house whose landlord doesn’t automatically turn them away for being Indigenous women. Some of Clara’s friends from the Indian Centre, including George and his wife Vera, help the women clean up the house and make it habitable. Life seems easy for a while, and Lucy is happy. But soon Clara becomes restless. One morning just a few days after Kendra’s first birthday, Lucy wakes to find a note saying that Clara has taken off for a few weeks.
The effort and love Clara and Lucy pour into raising Kendra testifies to their strength and resilience even when the odds are stacked against them. Renting the house marks a turning point for Lucy and Kendra: they’re finally putting down real roots and claiming a place to call their own. Notably, they don’t do this alone: turning the squalid building into a warm and welcoming home is the work of an expanding community of friends that now includes George and Vera.
Themes
