Once winter arrives, Omakayas and her family join with the rest of the community to celebrate their coming together once again. Meanwhile, Omakayas' father and his friends discuss the increasing presence and influence of the white man and consider the possibility of moving west. Her grandmother tells her to trust her instincts about both plants and animals. Meanwhile, Omakayas talks with her grandmother about her experience with the bears and discusses her grandmother's use of herbs as medicines.
As the summer progresses, she ponders the meaning of the encounter even as she rejoices at the return of her father from his hunting trip, and has friendly encounters with both a deer and a crow, the latter becoming a family pet.Īs summer fades into fall, the family prepares to move from the birchbark house into their cabin in town, harvesting wild rice and other forms of food to get them through the winter. The bears leave, and Omakayas returns home. On her way home, Omakayas has an encounter with a family of bears, but after an initial surge of fear and impulsively speaking as respectfully to the mother bear as she would to her grandmother, suddenly feels she's safe. After the bark is harvested and the house constructed, Omakayas is sent on an errand to the home of eccentric elder Old Tallow, with whom Omakayas feels an unusual connection. Several springs later, seven-year-old Omakayas and her family prepare to move into their summer home, a hand-built birchbark house. As he goes, however, one of the traders imagines that if anyone would come back to rescue the girl, it would be his strong-willed, fearless wife Tallow. As it chronicles the year's events, the narrative thematically explores the connection between human beings and nature, the effect of whites on indigenous culture, and the necessity of confronting fear.Ī brief prologue describes how a group of canoeing fur traders abandons the sole survivor of a smallpox outbreak, a baby girl, because they're afraid of being infected with the disease that killed everybody else in her Ojibwa community. This young adult novel is the story of a year in the life of a young Ojibwa girl who, over the cycle of four full seasons, comes to a deeper understanding of life, herself, and the relationship between the two.
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