Moon of the Crusted Snow

“He promised to keep trying to live in a good way, despite the pull of negative influences around him. He finished his prayer with a resounding, solitary miigwech before putting the tobacco on the ground in front of the moose. This was his offering of gratitude to the Creator and Mother Earth for allowing him to take this life. As he took from the earth, he gave back. It was the Anishinaabe way, as he understood it.”

Evan Whitesky is part of a generation of Anishinaabe resisting the imposed cultural erasure their parents and grandparents faced. Evan places great value on the traditional ways, among which hunting is very important. He does his best to honor both his ancestral traditions and the lives of the animals he takes.

“The truth is, Evan thought, these things do work better than they used to. High speed internet access had been in the community for barely a year. It was provided by the band, but connected to servers in the South via satellite. Still, the fact that TV, phone, and internet were all down at once made Evan uneasy.”

Though the modern infrastructure is relatively new and often unreliable, Evan is one of the first in the community to become uneasy due to the outages. His unease proves right as news from the south arrives in coming days.

“‘Then I understood what was going on. We had put the burn on to try to get some moose in. I can’t remember the last time we had to do that around here. But everyone in my dream must have been hungry. No one was saying nothing. I looked over at you—’ He paused and turned to look at Evan. ‘You looked at me. You looked scared. And that’s when I woke up.’”

Dan’s dream is the first in a series of symbolic/premonitory nightmares throughout the novel. His dream foreshadows the coming strife, particularly at the end of winter, when food supplies run low and the band can no longer rely on Western infrastructure and conveniences.