Review of TETHERED SPIRITS: WIAQTAQNE'WASULTIJIK NA KJIJAQMIJINAQ by Corinne Hoebers (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This historical fiction book is set near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in the mid-1700s.

Christian Heber, the son of German settlers, is taken in by a Mi’kmaw family and renamed Bear Cub. He immerses himself in their culture, learns their language, and develops a deep bond with them, especially his “brother” Eagle Feather, and “sister” Singing Sparrow. Meanwhile his sister Hanna befriends a Mi’kmaw man and begins to question the settlers’ ownership of the land they are claiming as they build on it. Her sister Elizabeth and father Michael see the Mi’kmaq as savages who need to be removed.

Christian/Bear Cub has a conflict: he is torn between two families and cultures. He feels obligated to his birth family, but he has come to love and respect his Mi’kmaw family. Obviously, he disagrees with Michael’s views of the Indigenous Peoples though he does feel duty-bound to help his father on his farm. It is the way of life of the Mi’kmaq that appeals to Bear Cub: living off the land following the cycles of the seasons and taking only what they need to survive. Theirs is a cooperative society in which all life is interdependent. The newcomers, on the other hand, “allowed fear to rule, avarice to prosper, and biased assumptions to sprout.”

A major theme is indicated by the title. When leaving his sister Hanna, Christian tells her that, though they may be far from each other, “’the tether is never severed, only stretched.’” Later when they speak again, he tells her, “’We cannot sever that which we are all born with – spirit. Everybody and everything are one.’” And adds that “’A love must be secure enough to allow the freedom to change.’”

And change is another theme. Bear Cub is told that, “’Nothing is constant. It is the present form that changes.’” Morning Dove, Singing Sparrow’s mother, teaches her daughter that “’we are always in a state of fluidity as we move through life, adapting to whatever falls across our path.’” Morning Dove repeats this message to her husband: “’To survive, we must adapt to life’s challenges and transformations.’”

Knowing the fate of the Mi’kmaq, I found the book very sad. They try to adapt to the newcomers, but the settlers carry on without concern for the original peoples: “’All regulated and named under British specifications. All this has happened as if the Mi’kmaq not exit.’” As settlements expand, the Mi’kmaq are displaced and forced to retreat: “the New Englanders continued to fish exorbitantly for profit. With the animal migrations changing and shrinking, the past Winter had seen times of malnutrition, starvation, and disease in several communities.” Christian tries to convince his father Michael to see that the settlers are repeating the tyranny they tried to escape: “’Eugen, devoid of any respect, rode roughshod over us with no thought of our worthiness, and now the Mi’kmaw territories are being confiscated by the same government you have put all your hopes into. Their lives are slowly being snuffed out by our greed, as we cut off their sustenance, river by river.’”

I did find the book rather wordy. I admire the author’s research, but sometimes too much extraneous information is given. These information dumps make the book read like a history text. For instance, when Singing Sparrow is working on porcupine quillwork, we are told, “Goldthread for the colour yellow, elderberries for black, the bark of dogwood for blue, and bayberry and larkspur for green. There was orange dye still left over from the bloodroot that had been harvested in the Spring, and brown from acorns.” Battles are detailed: “’The British began bombarding us. The Bienfaisant was captured and the Prudent burned. Just a week before our surrender, three of our ships caught fire. Then the fortress headquarters burned. Drucour surrendered on July twenty-sixth.’” The following sounds like a history lesson: “Quebec, the capital of New France, had fallen on September thirteenth. Both the British and French commanders-in-chief, Generals James Wolfe and Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, had died in battle.” Do we really need to be told that the blade in the sawmill sawed “at a hundred and fifty strokes a minute”? The many political discussions are just tedious.

Though I’m posting my review later, I actually finished this book on September 30, Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Though this book does not directly address residential schools, it does shine a light on how the lives of Indigenous Peoples were negatively impacted by the arrival of Europeans and so is a worthy read.

Note: I gather that this book is actually a sort of sequel to Call of a Distant Shore which tells the story of Elizabeth and her family and their emigration to Canada.