This is an arresting chronicle about what it is to be indigenous in Canada—about growing up hard in a place of crime, addiction and sexual abuse. It’s about facing down a community’s shattered past and a country’s ingrained racism. To transcend these things, as Thomas-Muller does, is impressive. To turn a past throbbing with pain into a future brimming with hope is inspiring, even if most of the old societal evils still persist in the present.
This memoir feels a little disjointed, with three separate sections that exist in near isolation from one another, but it’s still an absorbing and uplifting personal history. It lays bare the lie that Canadians, while not exactly nice to their indigenous populations, have at least been more just and moral than the Americans. They haven’t been. The two countries are cut from the same colonial cloth. Eloquent activists like Thomas-Muller remind us of this. Speaking truth to power isn’t easy, but he does it with a logic that deserves to be heard. Reviewed on Jan. 13, 2022