Indigenous Memory in the Decaying World: Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and Hunting by Stars

Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun

doi:10.18290/rh247211.2s

Published : 2024-06-06

Vol. 72 No. 11 Zeszyt specjalny (2024)

Indigenous Memory in the Decaying World: Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and Hunting by Stars

Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9764-3744

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh247211.2s

Abstract

The aim of this article is to read Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021) in the context of Indigenous ways of relating to memory that challenge the limitations of conventional settler modes of remembrance and are crucial for Indigenous survivance. Situating the setting of the narrative within the framework of Native Apocalypse, I move on to examine the novels as acts of sovereign memory—a distinctly Indigenous conception of remembrance that is land-based, embodied, relational and future-oriented. Construed as survivance narratives directed at YA readership, Dimaline’s novels firmly ground a possibility of Indigenous future in the memory of past persistence, resistance and adaptation. Simultaneously, they are meant to unsettle the settlers’ conceptualization of the future, which is characterised by the avoidance of responsibility and the tendency to relegate the Indigenous people to the past.

Keywords:

indigenous memory, indigenous literature, Canadian literature, young adult, speculative fiction

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