The Marrow Thieves

“Smudging,” as Dimaline frequently refers to it, is the act of using smoke and ashes to purify oneself or a space. Minerva often uses Miig’s tobacco smoke to smudge, and sometimes Miig smokes specifically so that Minerva can do just that. When Minerva blows up the school with her dream powers, Indigenous campers “made their hands into shallow cups and pulled the air over their heads and faces, making prayers out of ashes and smoke” (174). 

Smudging ties into the novel’s theme of rebirth. In the case of Minerva blowing up the school, Dimaline suggests that the Indigenous peoples may literally rise from the ashes, using their heritage and culture to rebuild after the whites nearly devastated them.

The novel illustrates many variations of loss: loss of loved ones, loss of culture, loss of innocence, loss of physical body parts, and loss of the natural world. Most if not all the characters in the story have lost loved ones to the schools. Wab is missing an eye, Jean part of his leg, and both Rose and Frenchie cut off their hair in a literal and symbolic gesture of loss over Minerva’s death.