By Larissa Page
Content warning: child sexual assault/abuse, abuse by church authorities, kidnapping, residential schools
Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians is a uniquely told story of five residential/Mission School survivors. Following Lucy, Maisie, Clara, Kenny, and Howie from their years before the residential school, then at the same Mission school in British Columbia, and then during the decades that followed their various departures from the school, Good expertly crafts a multi-voiced, intersecting, heart-wrenching story that is equally full of trauma, healing, heartache, and hope.
My favourite thing about how Michelle Good created this story is how individual each of the characters feel. All stemming from the same “school” with the same authority figures and at points even the same abuse, each child copes vastly differently through their adult years. In doing this, Good shows us that coping with trauma is an incredibly individual experience. In the same vein, each of the characters also heals (or doesn’t heal) differently. I appreciated that each individual story/experience was both dependent and independent of the other characters/storylines and that they all varied in length and closure but not in impact.
I came to love these characters for both their flaws and for their strengths. In particular, the love between them all made my heart swell. The way these characters created a family where they had none, the way they were linked together by trauma but stayed together by love and friendship and mutual understanding, even when they needed to escape their pasts. This, in particular, is what will stay with me the longest from this story.
One other thing I thought was incredibly done was the way the Mission school was used as a defining factor in each character’s story, but that it wasn’t THE story. It appears both as a setting in the beginning and then in their memories as adults, the “Indian School” (as the characters refer to it) is a common thread, a setting of abuse and mistreatment, and ultimately what scars each character, but it doesn’t take over their story. Their stories here are of their lives after, the Mission school setting the scene for their life vs setting the scene for the story. The novel is certainly more character-driven than plot-driven, and I am glad for it.
Five Little Indians is a stark reminder of how recent and devastating the residential school system is for an entire culture of peoples and how the effects of the schools can be felt throughout the lives and generations after. Each character in this work shows us a different method of coping, healing, and living with the trauma inflicted by the church and the Canadian government. It is no wonder to me that Five Little Indians has been long listed (and has won!) various literary awards—it is accessible, impactful, potent, and real.