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In:Storytelling, Identity Formation, and Resistance in Indigenous Cultures in Canada and the United States
Edited by Kamelia Talebian Sedehi
[Studies in Narrative 28] 2025
► pp. 92–108

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Chapter 5
Storytelling through trauma

Stories of violence and moral injury in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021)

Published online: 2 September 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.28.05bur
Abstract
This chapter explores Cherie Dimaline’s use of storytelling in young adult dystopian fiction as a resistance tool that empowers both narrators and listeners. The analysis of the novels, The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021), shows that narrators may use storytelling, particularly stories about cultural figures and beliefs that they received through the same means, to avert the linguistic limitations of unresolved traumatic experiences. Those experiences include personal loss, cannibalism, and sexual violence as well as moral injury. The protagonist’s double role, as preserver of stories and narrator of the book, and therefore, teller of stories, allows him to overcome the moral injury resulting from the residential school system’s demands for betrayal.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Stories as walls
  • Wab, Minerva, and the curse of pervasive sexual violence
  • Keeping stories, moral injury, and survival
  • Conclusion
  • Reference
References (49)
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