"We go to the schools and they leach the dreams from where our ancestors hid them, in the honeycombs of slushy marrow buried in our bones. And us? Well, we join our ancestors, hoping we left enough dreams behind for the next generation to stumble across..."
— The Marrow Thieves
The Marrow Thieves is a 2017 Canadian dystopian Indigenous dark fantasy novel by Cherie Dimaline.
The book's plot revolves around a futuristic North America ruined by climate change, where the few remaining Indigenous people are at risk because, as the only people left who can dream, they are being forcibly taken and having their bone marrow harvested in suspicious factories by "recruiters". As the bones are removed from the "donors", they are murdered in the process. One teenage Indigenous boy, Frenchie, gathers a small group of dissidents to resist the practice altogether. While the bone marrow is supposedly the cure the world needs to reconcile the planet's ecological issues, Frenchie believes that there must be a better way.
This book contains examples of the following tropes:
- Allegory: Canada's residential school system, which recruited (or in many cases just took) Indigenous children from their homes and attempted to forcibly assimilate them, often with abusive and deadly results.
- Badass Native: Frenchie. He stands up for what he believes in, for his life and for the lives of others, even though he's only young.
- Crapsack World: Canada might not be an overly populous or industrial country, but the plight of climate change destroyed most of the country and left a dystopian hellhole where a group of people are harvested for parts based on their race.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: The government and scientists believe so, at the risk to North America's remaining Indigenous folks.
- Green Aesop: The plight of climate change would never have ravaged North America if not for those pesky corporations and lack of positive change.
- Organ Theft: The Indigenous "donors" of the marrow harvesting don't have much choice and are ultimately killed by the process.
