Spiritual Home

Spiritual Home: Dreaming in Our Hometongue 

Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves
Cormorant Books, 2017
Climate Fiction Collection 
Vanderbilt University Library 

Guided by the Ojibwe culture, The Marrow Thieves centers dreaming as a spiritual practice. In the wake of mass climate disaster, the non-Indigenous world is left unable to dream. The state extracts the stories of Indigenous people, housed in their bones, to secure a future. By learning to dream in the language of their ancestors, the Métis characters resist exploitation and reclaim their own sovereignty. 

“And I understood as there are dreams left, there will never be want for a dream. And I understood just what we do for each other, just what we do for the ebb and pull of the dream, the bigger dream that holds us all. Anything. Everything”.  

(231)

Here, Frenchie, the main character, contends with the idea that dreaming is a form of resistance passed on by his people. Collective dreaming is the making of community despite disaster and loss, a recognition of our shared survival as one humanity.