Trauma, Identity, and Pride Theme Analysis

The world presented in The Marrow Thieves is one in which Indigenous people have been reduced and flattened—in the eyes of the white government—to be nothing other than a commodity. Those who are on the run must contend with the horrific, dehumanizing fact that to many, they're something less than human. As the novel unfolds, Dimaline highlights the many forms of trauma that the Indigenous community is forced to shoulder, from physical violence to emotional pain. Despite this bleak picture of life for the Indigenous community, Dimaline ultimately argues that Indigenous identity deserves to be celebrated, and that having pride in one's identity as an Indigenous person can be a powerful thing.

Frenchie and his friends are reminded in a variety of ways and instances that their bodies are both extremely valuable and constantly at risk. This creates an environment in which Indigenous people must consistently protect their bodies and their minds from trauma of all sorts, and the effects of the traumatic experiences that they're unable to prevent ripple outwards through the community. For some, the trauma is mostly emotional. Miig and his husband, Isaac, were tricked by other Indigenous people who were in cahoots with the government—and for most of the novel, Miig believes that he lost Isaac to the residential schools. In this situation, Miig must reckon with two types of emotional trauma: first, the trauma and the sense of a fractured community that came from being betrayed by people who by all accounts should have been his allies; then, he carries the pain of having lost his only family member, a specific experience that many of the children in his group share.

Others, Wab in particular, have experienced intense physical trauma on top of their emotional strife. Wab grew up in a situation in which it was almost impossible to avoid sexual abuse and was ultimately tricked, gang raped, and suffered horrendous physical violence that left her with a huge scar across her face and neck and only one eye. For Wab, her scar is a constant reminder of the violence and trauma that she experienced because of who she is as an Indigenous person. Her identity and sense of pride as an Indigenous person is taken away from her and perverted into the very thing that is used to target and oppress her. This also isn't an experience unique to Wab—Miig explains to Frenchie that the twins, Zheegwon, and Tree, were strung up and cut into by people desperate to extract their marrow, but with no knowledge of how to effectively do so. In this way, the physical scars that many of Frenchie's family bear make it impossible to ignore or forget that within the world of the novel, Indigenous bodies and the scars they bear are the sites of intense trauma, as well as reflections of the destruction being wrought on the world at large.

The way that Miig rations out Story and controls who hears it suggests that he understands that one doesn't need to directly suffer violence or betrayal to experience trauma: simply being told that, in the eyes of others, a person is belittled to the status of an inanimate, harvestable resource is earth-shattering and traumatic enough. Dimaline illustrates this by allowing the reader to follow seven-year-old RiRi's journey as she transforms from innocence, to being forced to grow up before she's ready because of this information, to her brutal death as she sees Story come to life in front of her eyes. Prior to hearing Story for the first time, RiRi is a generally happy kid: she knows her life is in danger, but she's blissfully unaware of why exactly this is the case. Miig chooses to tell Story to RiRi after RiRi secretly listens in on Wab's traumatic "coming-to story," the story of how Wab left the city because of violence and ultimately found Miig. Put another way, Miig believes that once RiRi becomes aware of the violence in the world and the ways in which she's susceptible to it, she must know the whole truth. Being Indigenous is, in this sense, inherently traumatizing—Riri’s initiation into the narrative of her own culture is unavoidably painful. Hearing Story and learning that others want to harm her and profit off of her body visibly shakes RiRi, and she's murdered less than a week later. RiRi's death, which is senseless and benefits nobody, not even the Indigenous double agents who killed her, drives home the precarious state in which the novel's Indigenous characters find themselves: even among people like them, there's always a chance that they'll be viewed as commodities, not members of a community with a shared history of trauma.

Despite all the ways in which the novel shows the dangers of being Indigenous and the ways that Indigenous bodies bear the scars of trauma, Dimaline also suggests that Indigenous identity can—and should—be a source of pride and an antidote to the dehumanization of Indigenous people in general. Frenchie pays particular attention to the ways in which traditional Indigenous hairstyles, such as his long braid and Miig's Mohawk, make him feel proud to be Métis and, as he suggests of his braid, make him "a better Indian." He also fixates on the buffalo tattoo on the back of Miig's hand (his "wedding ring" with Isaac) and sees the tattoo as a reminder not just of Miig's grief, but of the happiness, love, and culture that he and Isaac shared. Similarly, Minerva's ability to destroy a residential school merely by singing traditional songs shows how Minerva's pride in her identity and in her language, as represented by the Cree song she sings, has the power to completely decimate oppressors.

This sense of pride in one's identity as an Indigenous person is what the novel suggests will ultimately provide the tools and the knowledge necessary to effectively stand up to the government and to the Recruiters, and to stop the harvest of Indigenous bone marrow altogether. In this way, the novel itself stands as a mirror through which Indigenous readers can see themselves, their past trauma, and their resilience reflected back to them—they are encouraged to feel empowered by their cultural identity and its associated struggles, rather than defeated by it. For non-Indigenous readers, the novel creates the space to feel empathy and compassion, and to recognize the importance of not replicating this dehumanizing trauma in the future.