Recently I have been trying to educate myself about the Native Americans in my community. When I posted a review of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee on Facebook, several friends made suggestions of further reading. The semi-autobiographical April Raintree by Beatrice Culleton/Mosionier was one of these.
In this powerful exploration of what it means to be native in modern Canada, we follow the lives of two Metis (mixed blood) sisters who take different paths in response to their heritage. The girls are taken away from their alcoholic parents as young children and placed in different foster homes. Some of these are very supportive situations, but not all, and school is full of bullies. Mrs. Semple, April’s social worker, chooses to believe the abusive foster mom instead of the girls and tells them their attempt to escape indicates they are headed for what she calls “native girl syndrome”—fighting, running away, lies, paranoia, uncooperative silences, feeling sorry for themselves, and eventually, pregnancy, alcohol, drugs, prostitution and jail. April “thought if those other native girls had the same sort of people surrounding them as we did, [she] wouldn’t blame them one bit.” (Culleton 1984: 49)
