The Barren Grounds

“‘It’s not just that people wouldn’t like talking to me; I don’t think they’d like me period,’ Morgan said, as though they’d been talking the whole time.

‘I like you,’ Eli said.”

Morgan reveals that she doesn’t like herself, which is why she’s withdrawn all the time. She is a loner because she’s insecure. This statement happens in the first conversation she and Eli have, so when he reveals he likes her it lays the foundation for their positive relationship.

“I run away, […] or they don’t like me. Or I run away because they don’t like me. I get older and, you know, they want a cute Native kid. And I can tell, so, I don’t know...I guess I act like a jerk. They’re saviors, you know. Like, all of them. Katie and James too. They want to save kids like us.”

Morgan explains that she has run away from so many foster homes because she feels unwanted. This quote reveals the state of the foster system for an Indigenous child: The system does more harm than good for her. It is the first time white saviors are mentioned, and Morgan reveals that her suspicion of Katie and James flows from her familiarity with this attitude.

“‘I was too young to remember,’ she said. ‘All I know is that my mom didn’t want me.’

‘How do you know that?’ he asked.

How could she?”

Morgan and Eli discuss how she entered the foster care system. Morgan reveals that her mom didn’t want her, and this wound informs her character, explaining why she is so angry. However, Eli points out that she can’t know her mother’s attitude with certainty, and the rhetorical question that follows suggests Morgan takes this idea to heart. It later emerges that Morgan’s mother, like many Indigenous parents, was likely forced to give up her child.

“What’s there about me for anybody to like? What do I even like about myself? Morgan thought. It felt like the world’s hardest algebra question, and by the time class was over, she’d settled on the fact that Emily being nice to her was more a reflection on Emily than it was on her.”

This quote shows Morgan’s struggle with self-confidence. She doesn’t know what there is about herself to like, so she thinks Emily must just be an exceptionally nice person. This insecurity frames her friendship with Emily.

“She’d always thought that Katie and James were in the savior category. They didn’t need the money. But maybe she was wrong about them. Then again, maybe she wasn’t. How much could you really piece together from glistening eyes, food faces, and takeout?”

Morgan wants to change her opinion about Katie and James and believe that they are just good people trying to help her. However, Morgan is cynical and hurt from her past experiences, so she hesitates to make a final judgement. Her rhetorical question implies that the efforts Katie and James have made to respect Morgan’s Cree heritage—for example, ordering Indigenous food as takeout—may be superficial.

“Why did they always seem to want her and Eli to feel at home? This wasn’t their home. They were just staying here. One day, they wouldn’t be.”

Morgan is confused about why Katie and James want their foster children to feel at home. Morgan has never been at home in the foster care system, so she doesn’t want to settle in somewhere only to lose that sense of belonging. She has a very pragmatic view of the situation: She considers herself to be passing through and thinks it would be pointless to get attached to Katie and James.

“‘You thought that giving me something cultural as a totally lame two-month anniversary celebration, from a place I was taken from, would make me feel more at home here?’

‘We don’t want you to feel disconnected from your culture, that’s all,’ James said.

‘I don’t even know my culture.’ Morgan put both hands against her chest, and she could feel her heart pounding. ‘I’ve literally been away from my home since I was a toddler. Being a kid with no real home? With no real parents? Accepting the fact that there probably won’t be a three- or fourth-month anniversary with a cake and moccasins? That’s my culture.’”

Katie and James are trying to be good foster parents to two Cree children by incorporating elements of the children’s ancestral cultures into their new lives. However, Morgan responds poorly to the gesture because she is just trying to survive the foster care system, which is all she knows. Furthermore, the gift highlights her disconnect from her heritage and the violent colonialism behind that dispossession; here Morgan does not describe her mother as “giving her up” but rather says that she was “taken from” her childhood home.

“‘We’ve read that, as foster parents, we should try to expose you to your culture.’ Katie looked about ready to burst into tears. ‘We don’t want to make the same mistakes that have been made in the past.’”

Katie and James’s motivations are good: They are aware of the history of colonialism (including, presumably, the history of forced adoptions) and don’t want to repeat past mistakes. They also reveal that they have read books to try to become better foster parents. Their attempts may be poorly received, but their hearts are in the right place.

“She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to leave somewhere else. She’d left too many places. She was tired. She couldn’t catch her breath from crying; she couldn’t ever catch her breath, just from life in the foster care system. And Katie and James, they were alright. They were good. She’d not had foster parents like them before. Yes, they’d fed her bannock. And yes, they’d given her moccasins. But Katie had said they were trying, and weren’t they? Was it so bad? Who’d tried to connect with her like that before? Even if she didn’t want the moccasins, was that their fault? Maybe. Maybe not.”

After the fight with Katie and James, Morgan feels confused. She has run away many times, but she is tired of running. She also wants to trust Katie and James and recognizes that they were trying, clumsily, to be good foster parents. All these emotions lead to her crying because she doesn’t know who she is or how to react.

“He gripped the picture with both hands, in case she tried to take it again. He wouldn’t look away from it, and when she shone her flashlight on him, she could see that he didn’t look curious anymore, but sad. It reminded him of home, and he wasn’t anywhere near home. He was here, in this attic, in this house, in the middle of some upper-middle-class neighborhood, in this city. It wasn’t long ago that he’d been in his own community.”

Eli is looking at the picture of Misewa that he drew, and it makes him sad because he is far from home. Morgan realizes that he has been taken from his own community and placed in another one that is both geographically and culturally far removed from his own.

“‘I don’t think I’m saving you by fostering you. You’re a strong young woman. You don’t need saving. I’m just [...] James and I [...] we want to make sure you’re not [...].’ She rubbed her face. ‘Well, I’m just one of those good-intentioned settlers, okay?’”

Katie tries to connect with Morgan and explain her motivation. This is the first time that Katie addresses the white savior idea, and she says that while they aren’t trying to save Morgan, their actions might have been misguided. Katie recognizes her privilege and is trying to do something about it.

“‘Those moccasins would’ve been perfect for Eli, you know. He’s got himself figured out. He’s indigenous. Probably goes to ceremonies and all that. I don’t think I even want to be Indigenous. I grew up white, in all these white homes. I’m not Indigenous anymore.’

Katie spoke carefully and quietly. ‘Does doing all that make him more Indigenous than you?’”

Morgan explains that she doesn’t feel Indigenous because she grew up with white families, whereas Eli is Indigenous because he has strong ties to his own culture. Katie questions Morgan about her ideas of being Indigenous, which ties into the theme of Morgan remembering who she is: Just because she doesn’t live in an Indigenous community doesn’t mean her heritage disappears. The conversation illustrates a tentative connection between Katie and Morgan, with Katie seeking to understand Morgan’s point of view and Morgan softening her stance on Katie’s gift.

“‘Just treat me like I’m any other human girl, that’s it. I don’t need, you know, to wear those’—she pointed at the gift Katie and James had got her—‘or hang dream catchers from my window, or smudge every morning, or whatever else. Just treat me like a girl.’”

In the heart-to-heart with Katie, Morgan reveals that she just wants to be treated like a “human girl.” Morgan doesn’t want to be treated differently just because she’s Indigenous; she wants to be seen for who she is individually.

“‘How can anybody remember who they are when they’re never in the same place for more than a couple of years?’ She felt the anger bubbling again, right inside her chest. Hot and quick. ‘She’s just this stupid memory to me now and that’s all! And so’—her shout fell to a whisper—‘so is whoever she wanted me to be.’”

Morgan is angry because she doesn’t know who she is; she didn’t grow up in her ancestral community, and she’s never lived in one place long enough to develop strong ties to an adopted one. The dream of her mom reminding her to remember who she is triggers her because she feels like her mom abandoned her to the foster care system. Morgan wants to be true to who she is but she doesn’t know how to, so she feels she can never live up to her mother’s idea of her.

“But there came a time when all that was provided to him, which is all anybody would need to live the good life, wasn’t enough. He began to want more, and so took more. Of course, we noticed that our stores were getting lower and that the man began to change. You might think he would get full and content, consuming everything the way he was, but it was the opposite. He became gaunt and tired, and the more he took, the more he needed.”

Ochek talks about the man who stole the summer birds and how his theft started with greed. The man’s relationship with the villagers parallels the colonization of North America and the displacement of Indigenous peoples by white settlers. Ochek provides a moral to the man’s story, saying that the more someone takes the more they find they need; greed feeds on itself and prevents real contentment.

“We’ve been waiting for death to find us. Perhaps it’s time we found life.”

Muskwa, the Council leader, decides to allow Ochek, Arik, Morgan, and Eli to rescue the summer birds and bring back the Green Time. Muskwa justifies this by saying that the villagers of Misewa have just been surviving but that now they need to actively start living.

“Morgan looked back and saw that Ochek and Arik were waking up now, startled and confused. She wanted to wait for them to get up and save Eli. For them to go out into the dark, not her. She could hear the woman taking her, as a toddler, out of the pitch-black room. Her footsteps. Her own screams. Her mother’s screams. Mwach. The man telling her mother to calm down or else he’d handcuff her to the doorknob. Mwach. She wasn’t in a dream. She was here now, and Eli was getting taken. Eli was screaming. She had been scared of the black for too long.”

Morgan has been reluctant to act throughout the novel, but now Eli’s life is in the balance. With this motivation, Morgan finally does something to save someone else. Like the villagers of Misewa, she has been in survival mode for a long time, but now she cares about someone else and realizes she has the strength to look beyond herself and her immediate needs.

“‘Humans.’ Ochek watched the swift water pass them by for a moment that seemed to stretch on. ‘The land provides everything that anybody would need. If you take only what you need, the land renews itself so that it can provide more. Medicines, water, plants, meat. In exchange, because we don’t really have anything the land wants, we honor it for what it gives us.’ Ochek turned towards Arik and the children. ‘When you take more than the land can provide, it stops giving. It can’t give. That’s what’s happened here. That’s what happens with humans.’”

Ochek laments the harm humans (and human greed) have done to the land. He says they take more than they need and are then surprised when the land fails. He also articulates the alternate approach: When you take care of the land, the land takes care of you.

“‘We wouldn’t take more than we need!’ Morgan shouted. She heard her mother whisper to her in that moment. Kiskisitotaso. For the first time, she felt she knew something about herself that she’d long forgotten: she belonged in a place like this. She belonged on the land. She’d never felt more at home than during the days she’d spent on Askí.”

Morgan finally realizes who she is after Ochek accuses her and Eli of being like all the other humans. Morgan realizes that she belongs on the land and needs to protect it. She goes from merely being pressured to save Misewa to actively wanting to save Misewa because she has finally found a home. In doing so, she also rediscovers her connection to her mother and her Cree heritage, which this passage depicts as involving a particular (respectful) relationship to nature.

“Ochek looked at them intensely, first Morgan, then Eli. ‘Maybe you aren’t the same as the man. The others that came before the man, they were Indigenous, like you both. They never wavered.’”

Ochek says that in his experience Indigenous people have taken care of the land. He realizes that Morgan and Eli are not like the man because they have helped care for the land and want to get the summer birds back.

“From now on, he [Ochek] will be known as Ochekatchakosuk. He will be in the sky forever, to remind all of the beings living on Askí of what lay in the past, the gift they have been given now, and what could happen again if the land, and all it has to lend, is not respected.”

The Creator explains that because of Ochek’s great sacrifice he will forever be a constellation in the sky; his selflessness stands in contrast to the greed of the man who stole the summer birds. However, Ochek’s constellation is also a warning to future generations of what happens when they don’t take care of the land.

“Mason’s eyes looked wild. That’s when Morgan saw it. His body, like those of the animals she’d seen in Misewa, looked thin. Emaciated. His clothing, like Ochek’s, looked too big for him. He had moved away with the Green Time but was starving all the same. ‘You’re always going to starve, no matter where you go, no matter how much there is for you.’”

Despite all the time he spent in the Green Time, Mason is starving, and Morgan realizes that it is his greed that is starving him. For Mason, nothing will ever be enough, so his greed and selfishness will consume him. This quote shows that greed doesn’t pay; it hurts not only others but also the person who is greedy.

“And what’s most important is that you’ll remember. Nobody’s really gone if they aren’t forgotten[.]”

Morgan comforts Eli after Mahihkan’s sacrifice. Eli is upset that Mahihkan won’t get a constellation like Ochek, but Morgan says that Eli will remember and honor Mahihkan: It is up to him to tell the story.