I wanted to change that story, to show them a future where they were heroes.”Īs dystopian as it sounds, “it is really a story of hope,” says Dimaline, a member of the Georgian Bay Metis community. “Indigenous youth didn’t see themselves in the future, they didn’t see themselves in this idea of Canada.

Therefore, the government wants to round up the Indigenous, hold them in re-opened residential schools, and then extract their bone marrow which, it is believed, contains the key to recovering dreams.ĭimaline says she was inspired to write the book while working in Indigenous communities facing a suicide epidemic. The Marrow Thieves is set in the near future, in a world that has undergone cataclysmic change and the total breakdown of the political system, law and order.Īll of that is bad enough, but the real issue is that all but Indigenous people have lost the ability to dream - which causes mental illness and would result in chaos: a populace that has gone insane cannot be governed. Black is “Canada’s Queen of R&B”, gregarious, funny, and a natural-born show-person Dimaline lives in Toronto and toils in the solitary universe that houses all writers.Īnd yet the “click” between them is palpable, and Black will be the voice with the perfect pitch to ensure Dimaline’s remarkable novel The Marrow Thieves is defended with passion and exuberance. “We were stitched together in our mothers’ wombs,” says Black, though on the surface, they couldn’t be more different. They were introduced to one another as the author and the book-champion in the running for Canada Reads, the CBC’s annual battle of the books. Cherie Dimaline and Jully Black are soul sisters who met for the first time just days ago.

Author of the marrow thieves