Five Little Indians
By Michelle Good
Harper Collins
Read. This. Book.
It’s the story of Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie, five Indigenous children, torn from their families and sent to residential school in British Columbia in the 1950s. Told through flashbacks, the stories of how they were taken and what their experience was like at the school will break your heart. But the heart of this book does not take place at residential school, it takes place after they are released, sent to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, to survive on nothing but their own wits.
Yes, their stories are sad and they will make you angry. But they are also filled with resiliency, hope and healing. Nuanced with understanding, these stories will help you see the world through a more compassionate lens.
And it’s well written – the storytelling is fast paced and will keep you turning pages late into the night.
Author Michelle Good is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. The book jacket says she obtained her law degree after 30 years of working with Indigenous communities and organizations and then went on to earn her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, an impressive resume that no doubt shows a strong core and resilience at the author’s core, which comes across in this book.
In the book’s acknowledgements, Good says the book is a tribute to her mother, “who lived through one of these schools. Her tenacity taught me courage; her stories echo here.”
Good won the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction in 2018 for this book.
Five Little Indians follows the five main characters through their lives, ending nearly at the present day. One character even gives evidence in the residential schools class-action lawsuit, settled in 2006.
While reading one particularly tragic part of the story near the beginning, I nearly closed the book, thinking it might be too painful to read. But I stuck it out and I’m very glad I did. I highly recommend it.
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