I was almost late for my morning bike ride to work because I HAD to finish this book and wow, I can't praise this story enough.

In the near-future dystopia of The Marrow Thieves , where global warming has ravaged the planet and humans have lost the ability to dream, we follow a group of Indigenous people on the run from Recruiters- members of an organization who kidnap Indigenous people and harvest their bone marrow, the key component that allows people to dream again. There's a LOT to process in this book: not only the horror of harvesting people for their bone marrow, but uncovering the layers of persecution and generational trauma that haunt the last groups of Indigenous people as they try to save their history, culture, and their lives. Instead of being stolen away and sent to Quaker schools for "re-education", this time, First Nations and Indigenous people are sent to factories to die.

As a white reader, there's a lot that I don't know and need to learn about First Nations and Indigenous people of North America and Canada. There's a lot that I can't ever understand about the guilt of not knowing a word for "family" and feeling a fundamental disconnect between myself and my culture because my elders, the keyholders to language and culture and history, have died. Dimaline conveys that pain and heaviness and it's stifling. I hope this books does the same for other white readers and encourages all of us to take a step back and do the work to learn about the history of First Nations + Indigenous people. Dimaline is an incredible writer and I can't wait to see what she crafts next.