Motorcycles & Sweetgrass Study Guide

Drew Hayden Taylor is an Ojibway writer from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, where he still resides. In addition to his novels and short stories, he has written for newspapers, television, and theater. He writes non-fiction as well as fiction; in his 1998 non-fiction series Funny, You Don’t Look Like One, Taylor explores his experiences as a First Nations man in Canada through a collection of humorous essays and articles, and his 2006 book Me Funny compiles jokes and writings from other Indigenous humorists. Taylor has also worked on several documentaries related to First Nations and Indigenous experiences and issues, including the 2022 film The Pretendians and the 2021 APTN documentary series Going Native. He has served as the Writer-In-Residence at several institutions, including the University of Michigan, University of Luneburg, and a number of Canadian theater companies. His many awards include the Canadian Author’s Literary Award and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Award, and Motorcycles & Sweetgrass was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in Fiction.

Motorcycles & Sweetgrass emphasizes the effect of colonialism on modern First Nations communities, and it specifically references the lingering trauma of residential schools. Residential schools were federally funded institutions across the United States and Canada that aimed to exterminate Indigenous cultures by forcibly assimilating Indigenous children. These schools intentionally separated children from their families and communities, forced them to speak English and convert to Christianity, and taught them that their people’s cultures were “savage” and shameful. These schools were brutally abusive, and the character of Sammy in the novel demonstrates the lasting effect that abuse had on many of the children forced into residential schools. This trauma also impacts the younger generations in the Otter Lake community, since the kind of forced assimilation exemplified by the residential schools is why many members of this community have lost touch with their heritage.

Motorcycles & Sweetgrass is based on, and directly references, the Anishnawbe oral stories of Nanabush the trickster. The novel is also part of a rise in books contending with the history of Canada’s abuses of its First Nations population. Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach (2000) is a novel that uses supernatural and magical realist elements to explore themes of First Nations identity and the lasting trauma of Canadian residential schools. Eden Robinson is also the author of Son of a Trickster (2017), which is similar to Motorcycles & Sweetgrass in its depiction of a legendary trickster in modern-day Canada. The 2017 dystopian novel The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline, is another contemporary Canadian novel that highlights the abuses of residential schools, and it explores several of the same themes as Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, including land use and an Indigenous relationship to it. Other contemporary books with similar themes include Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians (2020) and Christy Jordan-Fenton’s Fatty Legs (2010).