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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cultural Maintenance vs. Loss
Grief and Trauma
Colonialism and Land Use
Stories and Religion
Humor
Summary
Analysis
A teenage Anishnawbe girl (Mizhakwan/Lillian) is swimming in a lake with a man. They converse playfully, and he tells her about the animals that live out west. He tells her that he arranged for the biggest thunderstorm of the summer to fall the following day, and that if she loves him she will spend it with him. The girl protests that although she loves the man, the Canadian government has decreed that she and other Indigenous children must attend residential schools. The man expresses jealousy over the presence of Jesus in her life, calling Jesus her “new boyfriend.” The man disappears in the water, and the next day the girl goes to school.
This opening scene does not name either character since both of them will be renamed later in the story. Residential schools were a federal project in both the United States and Canada that forced Indigenous children to assimilate to white colonial culture. When Mizhakwan goes to the school, she will become Lillian. She will also leave behind the man despite her desire to keep him (and Christianity) in her life. The man has yet to be named, but his power of thunderstorms and his view of Jesus as a peer hints at his supernatural nature. However, the man’s childish jealousy of Jesus also establishes his immaturity, suggesting that despite his power, the narrative is willing to poke fun at him.
Themes
