By Angelica Haggert. February 20, 2020 Link to original article on Canadian Geographic
Canadians are becoming more and more familiar with the story of what went on inside residential schools, but little attention is paid to what happens to residential school survivors after they’ve left those locations.
Michelle Good’s new novel Five Little Indians aims to change that. The story follows five residential school survivors as they struggle to find safety in Vancouver after they are finally released. Alone and without any skills, support or family, the characters cling to each other as they each attempt to find their place in the world.
“I think this is the story I was intended to write,” says Good, a Canadian author, lawyer and member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. “I’ve been thinking about residential schools and their impacts in many ways since I was a child.”
Both her mother and grandmother were residential school survivors, so Good says she grew up hearing stories of their time in the schools.
“It really is something that possessed me, if you will,” says Good. “[Residential schools] were a key component in the destruction of a culture. It’s something that has captured my psyche since childhood.”
Good says that although she did not attend residential school herself, the experience was “imprinted” in her DNA, and that the effects of residential schools are intergenerational.
“Even though I didn’t go to residential school, I know I’m impacted by my mother’s experiences,” says Good. “Our communities are suffering because of the harm inflicted in these schools. People need to understand that.”
While she doesn’t look at the writing of the book as a form of healing, she does look at the novel as something unique: a love letter to everyone who suffered and survived in residential schools.
Good hopes the novel will help everyone who thinks reconciliation has been achieved in Canada understand that there’s still a long way to go.
Prologue from Five Little Indians
Clara stood behind Mariah’s cabin, the late summer warmth rising from the soil. She looked down the hill and watched Mariah’s helpers readying the sweat lodge.
She turned and headed toward the cabin door, a silvery glimmer distracting her. She looked east and saw the beginnings of the many trails she and Mariah had walked so many years ago. She thought she saw her dog, now long dead, a ghostly image running ahead of her as he had done then. She made her way toward the beginning of the trail she and Mariah had often walked to set snares, a faint tinkling rising on the breeze from the grove around the lodge. She walked, oblivious to time, only turning back when the sun was high and the birch leaves shimmered all around her. It was just after noon when she got back to the cabin. Kendra stood in the doorway, looking this way and that, smiling, when her eyes fell on Clara. “I was wondering where you went. You okay?” “Lot of memories out there.” Clara reached out and hugged the young woman.
Five Little Indians is now available on shelves everywhere.
Five Little Indians is also available at GoodMinds, a wonderful indigenous independent book purveyor.
Michelle Good’s new novel ‘Five Little Indians’ explores what happens when survivors leave residential schools.
Cover image: HarperCollins Canada