How does Ruthie’s disappearance echo tragedies and atrocities in the broader history of Indigenous peoples? Have you learned more since reading the book?
This book was a little light on delving deeply into the atrocities of minority and indigenous groups. I learned a lot less about the atrocities of indigenous groups in The Berry Pickers compared to other books that I’ve read involving atrocities for minority groups. An excellent book that delved into the many layers of tragedy and treatment of Native American was “Flowers of the Killer Moon.”
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I think the author used Ruthie’s kidnapping, its emotional impacts on her and her birth family, as a way to get across on a deeper level how devastating it was to separate native children from their families as government policy, to erase their culture, even their language.
Since this is a novel, set in the recent past and present, it obviously is not going to address the history of this in the same way as nonfiction. But the connection is made (Lewis’s rejection of his white boarding school; his children’s limited Mi’kmaq vocabulary). The emphasis is rightly on the effect this has had on individual lives—the pain and suffering, when family ties and heritage are disrupted and destroyed.
I found the book depicting a light situation of what happened or what is happening now with the indigenous people. There are quite few articles on “Missing and murdered indigenous people”.