YA fiction
"Our ancestors' bodies and funerary objects have been written on with markers and pens, handled, and studied by professors, researchers, and students for far too long. Their bodies, laid out in cardboard boxes, on metal shelves, is your university's shameful reminder of the disrespect for human dignity...We ask, would you want your grandmothers and grandfathers to be this way?"
These "Remarks from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe to the University of Michigan Board of Regents" in 2008 are quoted in Angeline Boulley's Warrior Girl Unearthed. In her powerful novel Boulley brings a timely topic--the reluctance of white institutions to return precious items to Indigenous tribes and the tricks they engage in to stall--to life. A truly engaging plot and relatable characters will leave young adult and savvy adult readers more informed (and hopefully angered) about this social justice ⚖️ issue than just about anyone else.
Perry Firekeeper-Birch would be content to stay on Sugar Island forever. Forget about college. Fishing is her dream vocation. Unlike twin sister, Pauline, she can find all she wants and needs in her close knit family and tribal community.
Perry's plans to spend the summer ☀️ before her junior year fishing is over before it starts when she crashes the Jeep she and Pauline were given as a sixteenth birthday gift with many strings attached by their Auntie Daunis. A mother bear gets in her path. Speed was involved. Auntie Daunis pays the $3,200 in damages. In return Perry is to join the Kinomaage internship program Pauline is in and turn over all her paychecks until the debt is paid.
At first Perry considers this a major imposition. She'd much rather be fishing 🎣 with her father and 🐕. She even tries to find alternative jobs by which she can pay her debt. Then she meets Warrior Girl at Mackinac State College.
"This was a person.
I've seen and heard the term human remains at least a hundred times today. But it registers differently now. The remains of a human being who lived and breathed."
Perry becomes passionate about repatriating Warrior Girl's remains. She also begins to recognize the enormity of Indigenous loss.
"I stare at random tourists and wonder how they would react to their ancestors being stolen for research. I'm guessing they would see it as sacrilege. So why were my relatives fair game?"
One day Perry makes a horrific discovery. She will need the cooperation of a number of people, all of whom could get in serious trouble if caught, to rescue forty Indigenous remains from a collector's silo. On this nighttime 🌃 mission they quickly run into peril.
And Indigenous remains are not the only bodies being mistreated. Indigenous girls are going missing only to be discovered too late. One day Perry's friend Shense, the mother of a baby, is on the missing posters.
Warrior Girl Unearthed will quickly hook readers while raising awareness of an important social justice issue. It belongs in all high school and public libraries. I highly recommend it to YA and adult readers. I plan to track
On a purrrsonal note, Perry asks why tourists don't see the harm in using remains of Indigenous peoples for research when they would consider similar abuse of their ancestirs to be sacrilege. Earlier in the book she is told that remains are usually disarticulated and stored by category. It's the othering that allows collectors and researchers to not see Indigenous people and remains as fully human. It's like the rationalizations slave owners made for kidnapping and abusing people. It's like the Nazi practice of branding Jews ✡️ with the numbers that became their identity. Once long ago I saw a large group of neglected grave stones. They bore no names, just numbers. I learned that they were the final resting places of women and girls who had died in a mental institution. For years after that I had nightmares about being buried without my name. Dehumanization and othering give people ways to do awful things while still being respected in their communities. As this book illustrates, it's still going on today.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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