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Summary
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
Clara hikes on the familiar trails around Mariah’s cabin. When she returns, Kendra greets her and leads her into the cabin. Mariah lights a smudge and leads the other women in prayers in the Cree language. Clara brags to Mariah that Kendra is the “[f]irst Indian doctor in Canada.” And she tells Kendra that Mariah is a healer, too, a kind of soul doctor. Soon afterward, they hear a truck pull up with Lily’s casket. The women and their helpers gently lower the casket into a freshly dug grave, singing honor songs as they do so. Then, Clara and Kendra follow Mariah into the sweat lodge. Clara tells Kendra to get ready for “some doctoring” as the helpers close the door.
Although it’s clear that all three women are Indigenous, Kendra’s lack of familiarity with the rituals Mariah and Clara know intimately suggest that something has compromised their transmission through the generations. The Prologue thus hints at the abuses of the residential school system by demonstrating its success at separating Indigenous people from their heritage. And it foregrounds the important players of Clara’s chosen family—Mariah, Lily, Kendra—although it will be many chapters until readers see how all these threads come together.
Themes
