Miig Character Analysis

"But we sang our songs and brought them to the streets and into the classrooms—classrooms we built on our own lands and filled with our own words and books. And once we remembered that we were warriors, once we honored the pain and left it on the side of the road, we moved ahead. We were back."

"Like how we are motivated to run because of the Recruiters?" Rose jumped in. "And the Recruiters are motivated to run after us because of the schools?"

"Almost," he answered. "We are actually both motivated by the same thing: survival."

"But isn't it just us that's trying to survive? No one's trying to kill those jerk-offs."

"But, nevertheless, they are dying. Mostly killing themselves, mind you. And so they are motivated by the need to be able to survive. And they see that solution in us."

"And all those pipelines in the ground? They snapped like icicles and spewed bile over forests, into lakes, drowning whole reserves and towns. So much laid to waste from the miscalculation of infallibility in the face of a planet's revolt."

"Soon, they needed too many bodies, and they turned to history to show them how to best keep us warehoused, how to best position the culling. That's when the new residential schools started growing up from the dirt like poisonous brick mushrooms."

Isaac didn't have grandparents who'd told residential school stories like campfire tales to scare you into acting right, stories about men and women who promised themselves to God only and then took whatever they wanted from the children, especially at night. Stories about a book that was like a vacuum, used to suck the language right out of your lungs. And I didn't have time to share them, not now.

He'd lost someone he'd built a life with right in the middle of that life. Suddenly, I realized that there was something worse than running, worse even than the schools. There was loss.

The schools were an ever-spreading network from the south stretching northward, on our heels like a bushfire. Always north. To what end? Now we'd lost RiRi. Now I'd shot a man. Would I even be welcome in the North? I couldn't even protect a little girl.

"I mean we can start healing the land. We have the knowledge, kept through the first round of these blasted schools, from before that, when these visitors first made their way over here like angry children throwing tantrums. When we heal our land, we are healed also." Then he added, "We'll get there. Maybe not soon, but eventually."

I took off running, away from camp, the Council, my family: running toward Rose, who was somewhere beyond the birch-beaded edge of the woods, running towards an idea of home that I wasn't willing to lose, not even if it meant running away from the family I had already found.

I heard it in his voice as Miigwans began to weep. I watched it in the steps that pulled Isaac, the man who dreamed in Cree, home to his love. The love who'd carried him against the rib and breath and hurt of his chest as ceremony in a glass vial. And I understood that as long as there are dreamers left, there will never be want for a dream. And I understood just what we would do for each other, just what we would do for the ebb and pull of the dream, the bigger dream that held us all.

Anything.

Everything.

"But we sang our songs and brought them to the streets and into the classrooms—classrooms we built on our own lands and filled with our own words and books. And once we remembered that we were warriors, once we honored the pain and left it on the side of the road, we moved ahead. We were back."

"Like how we are motivated to run because of the Recruiters?" Rose jumped in. "And the Recruiters are motivated to run after us because of the schools?"

"Almost," he answered. "We are actually both motivated by the same thing: survival."

"But isn't it just us that's trying to survive? No one's trying to kill those jerk-offs."

"But, nevertheless, they are dying. Mostly killing themselves, mind you. And so they are motivated by the need to be able to survive. And they see that solution in us."

"And all those pipelines in the ground? They snapped like icicles and spewed bile over forests, into lakes, drowning whole reserves and towns. So much laid to waste from the miscalculation of infallibility in the face of a planet's revolt."

"Soon, they needed too many bodies, and they turned to history to show them how to best keep us warehoused, how to best position the culling. That's when the new residential schools started growing up from the dirt like poisonous brick mushrooms."

Isaac didn't have grandparents who'd told residential school stories like campfire tales to scare you into acting right, stories about men and women who promised themselves to God only and then took whatever they wanted from the children, especially at night. Stories about a book that was like a vacuum, used to suck the language right out of your lungs. And I didn't have time to share them, not now.

He'd lost someone he'd built a life with right in the middle of that life. Suddenly, I realized that there was something worse than running, worse even than the schools. There was loss.

The schools were an ever-spreading network from the south stretching northward, on our heels like a bushfire. Always north. To what end? Now we'd lost RiRi. Now I'd shot a man. Would I even be welcome in the North? I couldn't even protect a little girl.

"I mean we can start healing the land. We have the knowledge, kept through the first round of these blasted schools, from before that, when these visitors first made their way over here like angry children throwing tantrums. When we heal our land, we are healed also." Then he added, "We'll get there. Maybe not soon, but eventually."

I took off running, away from camp, the Council, my family: running toward Rose, who was somewhere beyond the birch-beaded edge of the woods, running towards an idea of home that I wasn't willing to lose, not even if it meant running away from the family I had already found.

I heard it in his voice as Miigwans began to weep. I watched it in the steps that pulled Isaac, the man who dreamed in Cree, home to his love. The love who'd carried him against the rib and breath and hurt of his chest as ceremony in a glass vial. And I understood that as long as there are dreamers left, there will never be want for a dream. And I understood just what we would do for each other, just what we would do for the ebb and pull of the dream, the bigger dream that held us all.

Anything.

Everything.