Vocabulary
The Cree word for "good"
What is "Nishin"?
"Dreams get caught in the webs woven in your bones. That's where they live, in that marrow there."
Who is Miigwans? (Or Miig)
A sixteen-year-old Métis boy and the protagonist of the novel.
Who is Frenchie?
The necessary natural product that countries went to war over in the novel's backstory.
What is water?
The person Frenchie kills after RiRi dies.
Who is Travis?
What the characters call each others' backstories.
What is a coming-to story?
"Slopper was allowed to hear Story a couple years ago, when he was your age. He didn't even hear it all, and it didn't turn out so well."
Who is Frenchie?
A middle-aged Anishinaabe man who speaks the Cree language and becomes the father figure of a ragtag group of Indigenous children.
Who is Miigwans? (Or Miig)
The abandoned place where Frenchie's family stays between their trips through the woods.
What is the Four Winds Resort?
The person who is taken by the recruiters while the family hides in a barn.
Who is Minerva?
The name for the type of landscapes that Frenchie's family is moving through (HINT: the opposite of "urban").
What is rural?
"Minerva. Minerva has the language and us poor guys are stuck with her so we learn."
Who is Rose?
A female teenager around Frenchie's age who joins Miig's group at the beginning of the novel.
Who is Rose?
The animal that Frenchie is ultimately unable to kill while hunting.
What is a moose?
The name of the town where Minerva is being kept.
What is Espanola?
A Cree word meaning "you must always go home"
What is "kiiwen"?
"I was a runner and I could go for hours without having to stop or even slow down. The way a good sprint turns your breath into a low whistle, the way it spring-loads your knees: that was my drink. I was addicted."
Who is Wab?
The oldest boy in Frenchie's family. He's in his late teens, is extremely tall, and seldom speaks.
Who is Chi-Boy?
The payment Wab accepted for running errands for people in her coming-to story.
What is food?
The item that Frenchie's Dad gives him to help him find his way/direction.
What is a compass?
Name one of the tribes mentioned in "The Marrow Thieves."
What is Anishinaabe, Cree, Inuit, Metis, or First Nation?
"I didn't set up this camp to be my community, Francis. I brought these people together so we could find our community. But, eventually, that's what we became in the absence of the other. But it doesn't mean we stop searching."
Who is Frenchie's dad?
The taller, less friendly of a pair of adult men whose encounter with the main characters leads to tragedy.
Who is Lincoln?
The concerning sign the main characters see in the woods that leads to the realization that the recruiters are building a new school.
What is smoke?
The way that Frenchie and Rose honour Minerva after she dies.
What is cutting their hair?