This book is based on my village and the community members in it. I’d read it as a kid, but never noticed the white savior complex or oppressive nature of the way she writes about my people.

There are some merits to it, like the way of speaking and syntax of folks back home, but even that is exaggerated in the wrong places, oftentimes.

There were quite a bit of poor observations.

The smell of fish is seen as a negative while fish is the last thing my community would disparage.

A child is ridiculed for her name being Indigneous in origin, not English.

She grossly underestimates the gentleness and kindness of moose.

She undermines the knowledge of Indigenous People.

She says that the kids wonder about places where it’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer, when that’s the exact description of the setting they’re in. -70° in winter and 95° in the summer in my village, so that’s just a weird mistake.

And the part where she purports that the community has absolutely no knowledge of WW2 is just false, and is written that way to exoticize us further. The book is set in 1948, after the war. My great grandpa, in the beginning of the war, went straight to the city to attempt to contribute to the war effort in any way he could. My family all knew about the war as it was happening.

You wouldn’t see these things in a book written by a Native author. They’re just gross mischaracterizations.