41 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph BoydenThrough Black Spruce
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Colonization of Indigenous Culture
Boyden highlights the impact that white influence has had on indigenous peoples and cultures. Throughout the novel we learn different ways that colonization has negatively affected the local population of Moosonee and the Bird family:
In their lives, they’ve gone from living on the land in teepees and askihkans, hunting, trapping, trading in order to survive, to living in clapboard houses […] Diabetes and obesity and cancer plague our community, in communities all across the north (37).
The neglect of communities was deliberate in some cases, like the government’s decision to put Indian children into white boarding schools. Will notes that “they were bent on crushing the old ways in order to sow the new. And if that meant parents and children who no longer really believed one another, so be it. Generation after generation” (104). The use of boarding schools to colonize populations is not specific to Moosonee or even to Canada; this is a strategy used by many colonizing nations, including the United States and several European countries.
Will remembers the government’s neglect and denial. When multiple community members were diagnosed with brain cancer, “the government called it coincidence, but the army had left piles of oozing barrels […] And most any Indian within a hundred miles knew that ‘coincidence’ is just a white phrase for bummer” (42). Colonization’s effects on the Bird family are clearly apparent through Will’s stories, as he connects the fading traditions that his father taught him with the modern ways of the new world. This cultural erasure is a painful memory for Will and for many others in Moosonee.
Family and Community Ties
The Bird family is very tightly knit, despite their generational differences and various disagreements. Family and community are an integral part of indigenous life, as families and communities depend upon one another for survival. Peace in a family and a community means working together for survival. This collectivist culture is juxtaposed with the individualistic culture introduced by white colonization.
The collectivist culture of the Bird family is present in how they treat one another and their friends. When Will’s mother was supposed to be sent away to boarding school, Will says his “grandparents took the children to their camp […] protected them with their hunting rifles” (103). It is natural, second nature, for family members to protect one another and their way of life.
Will is also very loyal to his friends. When he moves to escape from Marius, he’s struck by realization: “I prepare myself to push from this crouch and run as fast as I can. […] I can’t leave my friends. I can’t run away and leave them to be killed” (333). He stays with his friends, even if that means dying together. Such loyalty is also seen between Gordon and Annie, who as fellow Indians see each other as family, and families takes care of one another. Even Butterfoot, who dates Violet behind Annie’s back, helps Annie and Gordon cross the border to return home. Despite his infidelity, he still knows that you need to protect and help your family. The book’s final sentence, spoken by Will, emphasizes the importance of this theme: “The hands of my family reach out to help me” (359).
Finding an Individual Sense of Identity
Annie struggles to find her identity throughout the novel. She has been jealous of her sister since childhood, and that pain only worsens when Suzanne runs out of town with a boy Annie liked. When Annie travels south to find her sister, she ends up “trying” her sister on, seeing what it’s like to live her life. She ends up befriending Suzanne’s friends, dating Suzanne’s boyfriend, taking Suzanne’s modeling job, and living in Suzanne’s old apartment with her old clothes. Annie assumes Suzanne’s life: “I’ve not been this thin in ten years and love the way my face is tighter and high cheek-boned again […] now I’ve slipped just a little into her world. Her skin” (157). The level to which Annie emulates Suzanne shows how lost she is.
Annie ends up leaving her life in New York and heading back to the bush in Ontario. Her talks with Will help heal her sense of self and confidence. As she tells stories in his hospital room, she finds comfort and peace, which allows her to let go of her jealousy and to step into who she is as a person.
Will struggles with his own identity issues. He has never forgiven himself for the fire that killed his family and left him a mourning widow. He also has never forgiven his father for not protecting him from white colonialism. Will exists in an in-between world, where he code-switches between English and Cree and lives between the bush and the town. When he spends time in the bush after shooting Marius, he finds his identity, which helps him release his fear and pain, accept his past, and gain the strength and ability to move on.
Living caught between two worlds, one white and one indigenous, is not an easy path to navigate. Both Annie and Will draw strength from their culture and Indian heritage; in their struggle with identity, they both learn that who they are as individuals is wrapped up in their collective Cree identity. Nature and the bush give them strength as they work toward self-acceptance.
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