Warrior Girl Unearthed

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023

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Parts 3-4

Parts 5-6

Parts 7-8

Parts 9-10

Character Analysis

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Themes

Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism; the kidnapping, murder, and rape of Indigenous women; sexual abuse and “grooming” of underage people; and mistreatment of human remains.

The novel represents this theme in diverse ways. Perry recognizes that her situation—as someone who speaks fluent Ojibwemowin, has a permit for ceremonial hunting and fishing, knows many generations back in her family, and knows many Anishinaabe stories and history—isn’t universal. Many Elders have emotionally complex relationships with Anishinaabe knowledge and tradition because of their history with boarding schools. Erik, who wasn’t raised immersed in Anishinaabe culture, doesn’t understand what certain cultural items, and the knowledge and tradition they represent, mean to Perry, who has extensive knowledge of her Tribe’s history. Together, this diverse representation of approaches to their Tribe’s knowledge and traditions shows that no single, correct way to be Anishinaabe exists.

Perry isn’t academically ambitious, like Pauline is. Instead, Perry is deeply connected to learning about and practicing cultural knowledge and tradition. She explains to Waabun that “books are wonderful. But so is learning directly from Gichimanidoo. Creator gave us helpers to teach us things even before books were invented” (25). Anishinaabe folks, like many other Indigenous people on Turtle Island, the Indigenous name for North America, practice oral traditions rather than written ones. Later, Perry laments to Web that the Mackinac anthropologists, trained in this written framework, “disregard our oral history as folklore” (250). The novel develops a tension between academic knowledge and Indigenous knowledge, a real tension in the history of fields like anthropology that have historically discredited and destroyed Indigenous knowledge.

Perry knows that not everyone has her level of knowledge about their cultural practices. When she meets Web and addresses him as “Aanike-Ogimaa,” Ojibwemowin for his title, “subchief,” she suddenly hopes that “he knew Ojibwemowin. Not all elected leaders do” (144). Elders were “taken away and placed in boarding schools” where they were “[b]eaten for speaking Ojibwemowin or for doing anything considered ‘Indian’” (163). In the 19th and 20th centuries, the US had over 500 boarding schools, most of which received federal funding. Some institutions, like Carlisle Indian Industrial School, had almost 8,000 children. At Carlisle, children were “renamed and stripped of their tribal clothing and hairstyles”; before and after pictures were disseminated in promotional materials to show their forced assimilation (Zhang, Christine and Taylor Johnson. “The Native American Boarding School System.” The New York Times, 2023).

Even one generation’s break in knowledge can perpetuate in future generations. Erik, for instance, says that he knows “literally nothing about the Tribe” (32), though he slowly learns throughout the novel. Meeting Erik and listening to Elders makes Perry say a “silent prayer of thanks” to her parents for teaching their traditions to her, Pauline, and Lucas (163). However, access to cultural traditions doesn’t make any of these characters less Anishinaabe. Even when Perry realizes that Leer-wah is the wiindigoo and is unenrolled Anishinaabe through his mother’s side, she says “[y]ou’re still Ojibwe […] The ancestors are yours” (370). While cultural knowledge and tradition play a large role in Perry’s and others’ lives, it isn’t a prerequisite for being Anishinaabe.

The Cultural Importance of Repatriation

Repatriation is the return of an item to its original caregivers or country of origin. Just as westward expansion was used to ideologically justify the displacement of tribes and Indigenous nations, US institutions like the government, museums, and universities treated both Indigenous people and their cultural artifacts as objects of study. Perry still feels this way, imagining herself displayed in a box with the label “INDIAN MAIDEN.” The 1990 Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was the first effort to repatriate items to their tribes. Perry learns about the history of repatriation and NAGPRA as well as the ways that institutional red tape prevent her Tribe’s access to their ancestors and cultural items, which are deeply important to them but which university anthropologists dehumanize.

NAGPRA gave institutions five years to inventory their human remains and cultural objects. However, “as of September 2022, more ancestors remain in collections (52 percent) than have been returned (48 percent)” (389) because of the designation “culturally unidentifiable,” which exempts items from repatriation. Susanville Indian Rancheria citizen and Indigenous Studies scholar Mark Minch-de Leon writes that when NAGPRA passed, the category of “culturally identifiable” was created as a “legislated notion” (Minch-de Leon, Mark. “Speaking of Bones.” Return of the Indian: Bone Games, Transcription, and Other Gestures of Indigeneity, 2014). Minch-de Leon argues that institutions’ treatment of remains and artifacts as “‘neutral’ objects of scientific discourse […] sets the terms for recognition” (Minch-de Leon), and in the case of NAGPRA, Western institutions set the terms. The institutions’ creation of the legislated category “culturally unidentifiable” means that the objects “were identified” (Minch-de Leon); that is, institutions determine that Indigenous knowledge and tradition isn’t sufficient to provide “scientific identification” (Minch-de Leon) of tribal belonging, making them “culturally unidentifiable.” Perry grows frustrated about this phenomenon, angry that anthropologists “disregard our oral history as folklore” (250), positioning Indigenous cultural knowledge as subpar to Western academic knowledge. Cooper is visibly distressed when Leer-wah calls Warrior Girl “my girl” (49). The possessive pronoun he uses labels Warrior Girl as the property of himself and the institution rather than her own people. Repatriation is important not only so that tribes have rightful say over their own ancestors and cultural objects, but also to recognize that Indigenous knowledge and tradition have merit and are owed respect.

The systemic loss of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition makes an urgent case for repatriation within the novel. In addition to having their tribal language and names forced from them, many Indigenous children had their parents’ guardianship rights revoked and were adopted out to white families and forced to do manual labor (Zhang and Johnson). When Perry interviews Elders for her internship, she realizes that “[c]hildren weren’t home to learn basket making, beadwork, wood carving, and porcupine-quill art from their families” (163). Although Erik is initially mad at Perry for stealing the black ash basket from Lockhart’s store, after hearing these stories he says he’s “starting to learn what [the basket] means” (165). One’s relationship to cultural artifacts sometimes symbolizes greater historical injustices. Thus, repatriating cultural objects isn’t just about the principles of ownership but also about addressing past injustice and moving forward with respect.

The Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People

Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people represent a disproportionate number of the missing and murdered individuals in the US. Although only women are missing and murdered in the novel, a presenter from Uniting Three Fires Against Violence “makes a point of using MMIWG2S to include all those who face disproportionate rates of violence” (212), pointing out how not only “women” are objects of this phenomenon. The novel explores this issue through the actions of both major and minor antagonists: Chief Manitou, Grant Edwards, and Leer-wah.

Perry calls Chief Manitou a “showman” and implies he became chief by “grifting.” Eventually, Chief Manitou makes Pauline his personal intern. Although she excuses his actions in the moment, Pauline later reveals to Perry the disturbing hints that Chief Manitou was “grooming” her, including taking her alone in his car to deserted places and asking her questions about her “loyalty” to him. His behavior shows how Indigenous women are vulnerable to abuse not only from people outside their community but from within it as well.

Grant Edwards, a white man, is a serial rapist of Indigenous women, including Daunis. She tells Perry how the only way she could “flee the situation” was to go “numb” and let it happen (135). Daunis’s response is emblematic of the larger, institutional helplessness of Indigenous girls, women, and two-spirited people. Like many non-Indigenous men who abuse Indigenous women, Edwards commits his crimes on “Tribal land” to exploit the legal distinction afforded to the area and avoid punishment, knowing that “the federal government couldn’t bother prosecuting the case” (136). While Edwards doesn’t actively contribute to the epidemic of MMIWG2S in this novel, he admits to playing a role in the death of Robin in the previous novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter. Edwards’s use of legal loopholes represents a larger historical tendency toward using the law to abuse Indigenous people.

While Chief Manitou preys on underage girls and Edwards takes advantage of legal “loopholes” to sexually abuse women on tribal lands, a plot twist reveals that Leer-wah is the cause of the uptick in missing and murdered women over the course of Perry’s internship. Ironically, Leer-wah considers Edwards a “monster” who doesn’t value Indigenous women. Leer-wah adopts a fetishistic and objectified view toward Indigenous women. Both his and Edwards’s styles of dehumanizing Indigenous women are dangerous frames of mind. Within the context of the novel, they each want to consume Indigenous women as objects, tying them to the symbol of the wiindigoo. Although these MMIWG2S cases are fictionalized, they represent a real phenomenon that plagues tribal communities across the US.