Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

This is a book I read for book club although once I had read the cover description it is one I might have picked up on my own. I never care whether a book is written by a Canadian author, an American or British author, or an indigenous author; I choose a book based on whether the subject interests me or not and sometimes on the recommendation of another blogger or a friend. While I believe that a great many, native/indigenous children/families went through a horrific trauma (and many did not live to tell about it), I also believe that there were other residential schools that were well run and where the children were cared for and educated to prepare them for a bi-cultural world.

Michelle Good has created a composite picture of life on the west coast of Canada and of five indigenous families dramatically affected by their children being forced into a residential school that was an absolute horror for them. It shows not only the abominable treatment of the children but the devastating effect on the adults left behind. Graduating girls only had training to be cleaners, waitresses, bar maids, or prostitutes and the boys, to work the lumber or fishing industry or be pimps. As the children in this story are thrust out on “graduation” into the seedy world of east downtown Vancouver, a few come to some kind of reconciliation with their past and create a future for themselves, some do not, and one has such a disgust for herself that she commits suicide as the only release she can see. It is a shocking episode and it is meant to be shocking. One goes through a healing process with loving, caring friends and in turn furthers her education and takes a position where she can help others who have survived similar experiences.

The story of how this all came to be is riveting and is a condemnation of a past that we have not yet entirely come through nor put behind us. There is still a lot of healing to be done. This is another book that you need to be in a certain mindset to read but one that helps to give perspective. ****