In the coming weeks, the temperature would drop and the snow would come. Soon after, the lake would freeze over and the snow and ice would be with them for six months. Like people in many other northern reserves, they would be isolated by the long, unforgiving season, confined to a small radius around the village that extended only as far as a snowmobile’s half tank of gas. (page 11)

Despite the hardship and tragedy that made up a significant part of this First Nation’s legacy, the Anishnaabe spirit of community generally prevailed. There was no panic on the night of this first blizzard, although there had been confusion in the days leading up to it. Survival had always been an integral part of their culture. It was their history. The skills they needed to persevere in this northern terrain, far from their original homeland farther south, were proud knowledge held close through the decades of imposed adversity.  They were handed down to those in the next generation willing to learn. Each winter marked another milestone. (page 48)

It was supposed to be a dry community. Alcohol had been banished by the band council nearly two decades ago after a snarl of tragedies. Young people had been committing suicide at horrifying rates in the years leading up to the ban, most abetted by alcohol or drugs or gas or other solvents. And for decades despairing men had gotten drunk and beaten their partners and children, feeding a cycle of abuse that continued when those kids grew up. It became so normal that everyone forgot about the root of this turmoil: their forced displacement from their homelands and the violent erasure of their culture, language and ceremonies. (page 44)

Somehow Evan had known that the cigarettes and free-flowing booze would lead back to Scott. Scott hadn’t been in the community long, but rumour had it that he was the man to go to if you’d run out of smokes or alcohol. He had somehow concealed a decent supply of vices in those hard cases he towed from the South. (page 131)

Our world isn’t ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us.  That was our world. When the Zhaagnaash cut down all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that’s when our world ended. They made us come all the way up here.  This is not our homeland! But we had to adapt and luckily we already knew how to hunt and live on the land. We learned to live here. (page 149)

Gathering wood was a year-round process on the rez. People went into the bush to cut down spruce, oak, and maple to bring home for their own use or to sell. The band employed its own crew to provide wood for the elderly and others who needed help, and Evan brought any leftover wood home whenever he could. (pages 32-33)

Aileen was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from the tea she had promised Evan. She still had an old wood cookstove in her kitchen and she could handle keeping it stoked, but she was too frail now to load the furnace in the basement. The main floor was toasty and it comforted Evan to know that Aileen was okay. He took off his jacket and placed it on the back of the wooden chair across from the elder. She put down her cup and smiled at him through her big glasses. “Everything okay down there?” she asked. Evan looked down at the full cup in front of him, then to hers. She had wrapped her thin, wrinkled fingers around the hot glass for warmth. The sleeves of her pink sweater were fraying at the end.

“Yeah, everything looks good. You got lots of wood still,” he replied. “Izzy will be by tonight to top it up.”

“I really appreciate you boys doing this for me. Chi-miigwech.”

“It’s nothing, Auntie. We’re happy to help.” (page 146)

The boy was eager to join his father on his first hunt but that was still a few years away. Evan first went on an actual hunt with his own father when he was nine, after spending years learning about the land.  He had shot his first buck that fall.  They didn’t offer tobacco when they killed animals to eat back then – Evan only learned about that ceremony years earlier, when an elder took it upon herself to teach him and some of the other young people the old ways. (page 14)

Evan thought of Nicole at home, trying to prepare herself for the skills they would need if the power was gone for good while struggling to keep the children occupied. (page 147)

Conversation between Aileen and Evan
“What about your bazgim?”

“Oh, she’s tired, but she’s getting by. She really appreciates all the things you are teaching her about the old medicine ways, but she still gets stuck at home a lot with the kids while I’m out here doing stuff.”

“Well, you should make sure you spend more time with her. Go for a walk in the bush. When the spring comes, ask her to show you some of the medicines. She’ll know a lot now, if she remembers all the stuff from when I used to take her and all the young girls out there. It will be important if we don’t get any new supplies in from the hospital down south.” (page 147)

He still felt a little awkward, saying this prayer of thanks mostly in English, with only a few Ojibwe words peppered here and there. But it still made him feel good to believe that he was giving back in some way. Evan expressed thanks for the good life he was trying to lead. He apologized for not being able to pray fluently in his native language and asked for a bountiful fall hunting season for everyone. (pages 4-5)

Nicole closed the children’s book, Jidmoo Miinwaa Goongwaas, and kissed the top of Nangohns’s head. “There you go, my little star,” she said, switching from the Anishinaabemowin in the book to English. “Now you know about the squirrel and the chipmunk. You two stay put, I’ll be right back up.” (page 48)

The children were learning their language earlier and better than their parents had. Evan and Nicole has grown up in an era when Ojibwe wasn’t spoken much with the younger generation at home.  It was only two generations before Nicole and Evan that speaking Ojibwe was punished at the church-run schools that imprisoned stolen children, and the shame attached to it lingered. Evan and Nicole had vowed to make things different for their kids. They had given them Anishinaabemowin names with pride – Maiingan meant “wolf” and Nangohns “little star.”  (page 128)

Aileen was the last of the generation raised speaking Anishinaabemowin, with little English at all. She was one of only a few dozen left who could speak their language fluently. She remembered the old ways and a lot of the important ceremonies. She had more knowledge than everyone else about the traditional lives of the Anishinaabeg. (pages 146-147)

The crust of the snow he broke was thicker than his snowshoes. He kicked up frozen shrapnel each time he raised a foot. A fine powder lay underneath. The conditions made him think of the specific time of year. There’s a word for this, he thought, trying to remember with each high step across the hard snow. His knees raised as if to rev his mind into higher gear. He looked up to the lumpy clouds in the hope that the word would emerge like a ray of sunlight through overcast sky. 

“Onaabenii Giizis,” he proudly proclaimed out loud. “The moon of the crusted snow.” (page 152)

“Boozhoo, mino shkwaa naagweg kina wiya,” he began. “Good afternoon, everybody. Chi-miigwech for coming down here today. As you all know, we’ve been having some problems with power and satellite connections, so we’re here to give you an update. First though, I’d like to call up our elder Aileen to start this meeting with a smudge and a prayer.” (page 51)

But people like Aileen, her parents, and a few others had kept the old ways alive in secret. They whispered the stories and the language in each other’s ears, even when they were stolen from their families to endure forced and often violent assimilation at the church-run residential schools far away from their homes.  They had held out hope that one day their beautiful ways would be able to re-emerge and flourish once again. (page 53)

The grey haze of the sage smoke hovered over the boardroom. The medicine continued to burn in the abalone shell on another table in the corner, pumping the healing aroma into the air. (page 77)

Evan was surprised to see that the parking lot was packed. Trucks, cars, and snowmobiles were lined up sloppily in front of the store. He saw Nicole’s cousin Chuck lumber out carrying a cardboard box nearly twice as wide as his frame, and he was a big man. Evan watched Chuck put the box in the back of his truck, hop in the cab, and back out of there in a hurry. He got to the front door just as Isaiah was coming through with bulging plastic bags. He looked serious. (pages 59-60)

Walter rose to his feet and attempted to restore order. “Okay, okay, calm down,” he shouted into the racket. “Quiet!” His booming baritone hushed the entire gym. “Nobody’s getting any kind of special treatment. And we’re not gonna keep any food or supplies from anyone. This is a goddamn crisis! We have to act like a community. We’re going to support each other until this all gets sorted out.” (page 114)

Often, Aileen shared a teaching or an old story with the young men when they came to visit. Once in a while, someone would bring a group of children or teens to hear some old Nanabush stories or her memories of the old days.  There had been no electricity in this community when she was a child and parents sometimes brought the young ones to her to remind them that life was possible without the comforts of modern technology.  Now it was critical that they learn how the old ones lived on the land. (page 148)

This was Evan’s secret project: a shelter in the bush that he had begun the day after the food brawl. A backup, in case he and his family needed refuge from whatever turmoil might eventually consume his community. He had begun by chopping the long, straight narrow spruce trees that would be the pillars and stripping their bark. A few days later, he had sledded out the three thick canvases, one at a time. Each trip took a full morning. He came back a few days after that to dig out a fire pit and drape the tarps over the tipi frame. Here he was, weeks later, beginning to outfit the safe haven. (page 184)