Warrior Girl Unearthed

Warrior Girl Unearthed is a 2023 young adult mystery/thriller by Angeline Boulley. Set in Sugar Island, Michigan (like her debut, Firekeeper’s Daughter), it follows a young woman of the area’s Ojibwe Tribe named Perry. During her summer internship, she realizes that a nearby college has 13 of her ancestors’ remains and thousands of cultural objects, and as she learns about repatriation, the number of missing and murdered women rises. Perry, her twin Pauline, and their friends uncover entwined secret plots that threaten their community’s people, both past and present. The novel touches on mistreatment of Indigenous human remains, Indigenous sovereignty and the right of repatriation, and the systemic racism that helps drive an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Boulley is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her father, like Perry’s, is a traditional firekeeper. She has worked as the Director for the Office of Indian Education at the US Department of Education, as her tribe’s Education Director and Assistant Executive Director, and on the Board of Regents at Bay Mills Community College. Boulley’s books convey nuance and authority because they tell fictionalized stories about real issues that affect her people and home. Her books have received praise for their authenticity.

Warrior Girl Unearthed is a New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indies Bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner, a BookPage Best Book of the Year, an Indigo Teen Staff Pick of the Month, an Indie Next Pick, and a 2023 finalist for Goodreads Best Young Adult Fiction.

This guide refers to the 2023 Henry Holt hardback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism; the kidnapping, murder, and rape of Indigenous women; sexual abuse; grooming of children; and mistreatment of human remains.

Language Considerations: The source text and this guide refer to citizens of the Sugar Island Ojibwe Tribe as both “Anishinaabe” and “Ojibwe” and to that tribe as “Tribe,” while “tribe” in lowercase denotes any collective of tribes from different nations. Perry sometimes calls herself “Indian,” but this term can be considered offensive when used by non-Indigenous people and is thus used only inside quotations. To refer to phenomena that affect people across many tribal nations, the source text and this guide use the umbrella term “Indigenous.”

Plot Summary

After 16-year-old Perry Firekeeper-Birch (who is Black and Anishinaabe), crashes her car, she joins a 10-week summer internship program to repay her Aunt Daunis for repairs. While Perry’s ambitious twin sister, Pauline, interns with Chief Manitou and Tribal Council, Perry interns with “Kooky Cooper” Turtle at the local museum. Her internship group, “Team Misfit Toys,” includes the twins’ childhood friend Lucas Chippeway; Erik Miller, who’s new to town and is Perry’s love interest; and Shense Jackson, who goes to school with Perry. Every Friday, all the interns do team activities together under the supervision of the internship director, Claire.

Perry wants to quit until Cooper takes her to Mackinac State College, where the anthropology department has 13 of their ancestors and thousands of Ojibwe cultural and funerary artifacts. Although the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) calls for institutions to repatriate items, Drs. Fenton and Leer-wah have stalled the process. Perry is especially moved by Warrior Girl’s remains, which she wants to “steal.” Instead, she steals heirloom pumpkin seeds from Fenton’s office and plants them in her father’s garden. Perry then learns that private collectors aren’t subject to the same laws that federally funded institutions are. In Frank Lockhart’s shop, called Teepees-n-Trinkets, she and Erik see cultural items displayed improperly, including a basket that her great-grandmother made. She steals it, creating friction between her and Erik.

Meanwhile, local Ojibwe women go missing, setting the entire community on edge. Pauline’s internship is moved to Tribal Police after Daunis suspects that Chief Manitou is “grooming” Pauline. Daunis herself was raped at 19 by Grant Edwards, a man on Mackinac’s board of trustees. When Cooper learns that Perry stole the seeds, he requests her transfer. Her new assignment is with Subchief Tom Webster, called “Web.” Web tells her that they’ll soon have an influx of repatriated artifacts because Lockhart plans to donate his items back to the Tribe. One internship assignment is to interview local Elders. Team Misfit Toys interviews Elders about their relationship to black ash baskets. They find that cultural knowledge has been lost because of the history of forced assimilation and boarding schools. Perry breaks into Fenton’s office and steals black ash baskets with names she recognizes, so that she can return them to their families.

Lockhart donates his collection to Mackinac instead of the Tribe because he has a personal grudge against Edwards, Daunis’s rapist. In the ensuing confusion, Daunis threatens Edwards, Lockhart runs away, and Perry finds Edwards stabbed to death. Police arrest Daunis for the murder but release him after finding the fingerprints of Mr. Bailey, the father of another of Edwards’s victims.

Erik and Perry make up. Earlier, Perry told Web that she thought Lockhart acquired some items via grave robbing on land he owns on south Sugar Island. Web asks Perry to investigate. After hearing from Claire, Lockhart’s former stepdaughter, that he’s out of the country, Perry investigates his property and finds 42 of her ancestors arranged in shadow boxes and displayed in a silo. To take back these ancestors, Perry assembles “Team Heist Misfits,” including Perry, Pauline, Lucas, and Shense (but not Erik, who’s on probation for hacking his high school’s website for its racist “Eskimo” mascot) as well as Web and Stormy Nodin, a traditional healer. People of childbearing years can’t handle babies’ remains, so they recruit Elders Minnie Manitou and Granny June, Lucas’s great-grandmother. A storm covering their activity, they begin the heist. Shense checks the security system but never texts Perry to confirm. The next morning, they find Shense’s wrecked car but not her body: She’s the newest missing Indigenous woman.

When Perry talks to Erik, she’s shocked to learn that Web coerced him into driving a moving van for their heist even though she told Web that Erik shouldn’t be involved. Perry wants to call the heist off. When she confronts Web, he coerces her into continuing the heist with a recording he made of Pauline admitting to her participation. They go through with the heist, not telling anyone else that they were extorted into doing so. After they put their ancestors in a moving van, Stormy unexpectedly runs after Lucas and Pauline, who are escaping via boat. Perry follows but can’t find them. She returns to find the van driving off. Running after it, she finds Erik, passed out, with a head wound. A figure approaches, and the next thing Perry knows, she wakes up in a deep, dark hole. Shense is there, along with the bodies of missing women. Shense has been recording messages to her daughter on the internship recorder she had in her pocket when she was captured. When Perry’s dog, Elvis Junior, finds them, Perry records a message about their location and ties it to his collar, hoping he’ll lead their families to them.

Their captor, Leer-wah, aspires to kidnap one descendent from each of the Thirteen Grandmothers. The next morning, Perry and Shense’s families find them. Claire confesses that Lockhart recruited her and Web to get interns to steal from his property, planning to split the insurance money. Several months later, the Tribe holds a recommitment ceremony for their recovered ancestors. Perry plans to pursue museum studies to find a way to repatriate Warrior Girl, and Daunis tells Perry she’s pregnant, adding a new generation of warrior girl to their family.