The first of the five shortlisted Canada Reads 2022 books that I’ve read. I took a leap and picked this one out of the longlist to start with, and turns out I picked well! This was a book I had seen a lot about since it was published in 2020. 

Cw: residential schools

Five Little Indians tells the stories of five Indigenous people dealing with the impacts of residential schools. There are five key characters, but others appear for chapters here and there. The book starts in a residential school near Mission, BC, but from there, the reader follows the characters through the United States and Canada, each intertwining with each others stories and paths throughout their lives.

It should be no surprise that this is a dark book, with sad elements. The book is not explicit about many of the abuses suffered by the characters, but all are affected. The book deals with the death of characters who cannot cope with what they experienced, and others who cope poorly. But there is also, of course, survival and resilience. The connections they make between each other allow them to support and mentor each other through the pain and trauma.

Canada Reads 2022 is about finding a Book to Connect Us. This book is so deeply about connection. The connections lost with family from being stolen away, and the connections lost to culture. But also connections made: not all the characters knew much about each other from the school, but the common history of the school connected them. And connections made to activists and mentors that helped build them up above the lot expected by the school and society at large.

This book will connect readers by showing so many different stories in a single book. The stories of residential schools, escapes, rising above trauma, and succumbing to it, the American Indian Movement, incarceration, and retribution will connect us by showing us all that there is no one way forward, and we need to make connections to get to a better future for all.