”Novel Treatment”

~ Elizabeth

Throughout the United States and Canada Native American children were, until relatively recently, taken from their families at a very young age and sent to boarding schools. The premise held that such children needed to be acculturated into the “mainstream” and not hold onto hairstyles, dress or beliefs from their indigenous past. Needless to say this produced devastating trauma for children and families alike. Only recently have governments and churches acknowledged their responsibility for the damage done.

The 2023 novel The Berry Pickers does not explicitly deal with this practice. The story itself is compelling and a reader might never connect the plot with the larger issue of taking children from their families in the historical pattern I mention. Here a four year old Mi’kmaq girl from Canada disappears from her family while picking blueberries in Maine. For fifty years neither she nor her family know or understand what happened to her.

Without divulging the plot I can say that she is essentially erased and recreated during those years. Eventually both she and her birth family must reckon with the long lasting separation. And if you, like I, are reading the novel on two levels as both plot and a metaphor for history, you may truly grasp the impact of such ruptures. The book is a best seller here and certainly stands alone as a touching novel. I hope, though, that others may make the connection I have and may ponder the damage we often produce with “good intentions.”

13 thoughts on “”Novel Treatment””

  3. that was also the case of the Aboriginals in Australia and later there was the “apology” but damage had been done. I studied their situation on year when I took a Literature paper…

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment