The Berry Pickers

This first section introduces Ruthie’s family and establishes the importance of Indigenous Family Bonds. The strength and closeness of Ruthie’s Indigenous family is contrasted with the strained, anxious atmosphere of “Norma’s” white family. Through the social contact between Indigenous and white characters, like Mr. Ellis of the berry fields and the men who hire Lewis to lead their hunting expedition, the lasting damage caused by normalized anti-Indigenous racism becomes palpable, and through the narrative’s exploration of Ruthie’s mother’s Catholic faith, the theme of Assimilationist Policy and the Loss of Culture is presented. Though Ruthie’s mother can be both Indigenous and Catholic, the latter is taught forcefully and presented as the only way to worship, thus condemning Indigenous religions.  

Ruthie’s Indigenous family is introduced in part through a scene in which Joe recalls his father removing Mae and Ben from their residential school to the protest of their regional “Indian agent.” Canada’s residential school program has a long history of abuse, neglect, starvation, and even murder. Choosing to represent survivors of the residential school system in the very first set of scenes places the real horrors in dialogue with what is arguably one of the most important contemporary issues in Canadian society in general, and certainly within First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities in Canada. Further, the broader, allegorical connection between the young Ruthie/Norma and the more than 150,000 Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families provides an intimate view into the violence of such separation: Ruthie’s narrative sits at the heart of this narrative, and the longing she feels and nightmares she experiences give life and relatability to stories that are generally told through statistics. Through Ruthie, Peters explores the idea that these children never forgot, and the families that lost them never fully healed. Indeed, Joe’s cancer can be read as a metaphor for Grief and Guilt, a wound that festers and deepens with no recourse and through no fault of his own.

Assimilationist Policy and the Loss of Culture was the goal of the residential school project: Forcing Indigenous peoples, like Ruthie, Mae, and Ben, to adapt to white society and adopt white cultural values was seen by the Canadian government as official policy. In this introductory set of chapters, Ruthie’s mother best embodies the politics of assimilation as a devout Catholic, and her son notes that during her childhood, she learned to replace her own religious beliefs with Catholicism. Her religious assimilation was so effective that she doubts the decision to remove her own children from residential school; this demonstrates the impact of thorough cultural erasure on those of the original culture, highlighting that renouncing it as invalid creates generational uncertainty of self and belonging.  

Furthering the theme of Assimilationist Policy and the Loss of Culture, person-to-person prejudice is a part of life for the Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous communities in Canada. In this section, Peters displays the impact of prejudicial language in particular. Mr. Ellis points out Ruthie’s light skin color and quiet temperament, noting that both features set her apart from her family and are decidedly white. He suggests her family stop speaking their language to her because he views any evidence of Indigeneity as inferior. These comments present an offhand prejudice that is markedly dehumanizing: Mr. Ellis locates Ruthie’s most positive attribute within her proximity to whiteness and casually suggests linguistic erasure as a path to success within society, foreshadowing her abduction. Although this conversation is short, and Mr. Ellis has not used an explicit slur, it is a distinctly prejudicial assertion of white supremacy from a man who benefits from the labor of Ruthie’s family and still denies them their humanity. As such, it represents an ideological orientation that establishes whiteness at the top of a social hierarchy and Indigeneity at the bottom. Through her in-depth depiction of interrelated issues of cultural erasure and abuse toward the Mi’kmaq, Peters paints a picture of the interconnected nature of all systems of oppression in white supremacist societies, which highlights their legacy in contemporary society. The horrors faced by the Mi’kmaq do not belong to a bygone era; by telling much of this real history through the fictional Ruthie and her Indigenous family, Peters appeals to pathos, ethos, and logos.

This section further presents a strong focus on family structure and the importance of Indigenous Family Bonds. Ruthie’s Indigenous family is painted as loving, strong, and caring. Ruthie’s parents are fierce advocates for and caregivers to their children, and in spite of losing Ruthie, they remain connected and committed to one another. Their love is so strong that it creates a connection in Ruthie’s dreams, preserving the life that she and her Indigenous family refuse to forget. These dreams are a motif that speaks to the strength of the Indigenous family, and they appear the most frequently during these early chapters. The white family who kidnaps Ruthie and renames her Norma contrasts sharply with Ruthie’s Indigenous family: Lenore is an anxious and overprotective mother. She drinks and is devoid of joy. She is characterized by her “nervous” energy, and the home that she and her husband provide to the girl whom they call Norma lacks the fullness and happiness of Ruthie’s Indigenous household. Additionally, in this section, she actively works to convince Norma that her dreams are just flights of fancy; she is shown to have her own interests at heart rather than those of her stolen daughter. In contrast, Ruthie’s Indigenous family always places the interests of their children at the forefront of their lives, and Lewis is even willing to defend his children’s right to remain in their home with a gun. Additionally, while Ruthie’s Indigenous family stayed in the berry fields looking for her and returned in the summers hoping to find evidence of her, her white family took her as something to be possessed, a stand-in for lost biological children, never bothering to tell a convincing enough story to make her feel secure. Her parents further subject her to emotional abuse in knowing that she takes on the mismanaged emotions of her mother, blaming herself for headaches and nervousness that are actually her mother’s fear of being caught.