Warrior Girl Unearthed, the sequel to Angeline Boulley’s New York Times bestselling novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, follows Ojibwe teen Perry Firekeeper-Birch and her fight to protect her community and the rights of her ancestors.

While visiting a local university, Perry is introduced to the “Warrior Girl”, an Anishinaabe ancestor whose bones and belongings are stored in the museum archives. Unsettled, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items and ultimately realizes that the university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains. With the help of a ragtag group of friends (aptly named the “Misfits”), Perry takes matters into her own hands to protect her community and bring her ancestors home where they belong, all while facing challenges including generational grudges, bureaucratic subterfuge, unnerving stories of missing women, family secrets, and painful realities about the legacy of colonialism.

Perry and the Misfits’ solution–a thrilling heist–gives way to a complex and compelling mystery, ultimately exploring themes of identity, family, and reclamation in a Native community.

Here we share notes on the unique setting (Sugar Island), NAGPRA, and Anishinaabemowin Words & Phrases from the book.

With special thanks to Sault Ste. Marie tribal member, Jim Langdon, for contributing information about Sugar Island.

Sugar Island has been a place of abundance and spiritual connection for Ojibwe peoples for centuries. The Island lies in the St. Mary’s River just downstream from bawating, the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie, where Lake Superior’s waters tumble toward the lower lakes. The river slows to surround the island with its wealth of wildlife, fish, timber and maple trees for sugar making.

Sugar Island is part of the Sault Ste. Marie community, a transportation crossroads for indigenous and European travelers since the 1600s. Control of the area shifted from Ojibwe to French to British to American authorities by the 1840s. But through it all, Ojibwe people remained on the Island. Today many of its 600 residents are indigenous and most of them belong to either the local Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians or the Bay Mills Indian Community.

Despite 90,000 people living in nearby Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and dozens of lake freighters and ocean-going vessels passing along its western shore each week, Sugar Island remains largely undeveloped. The Island has no village and a few roads through its vast forests connect residents with a ferry that crosses the river to the mainland. Although it is surrounded by industry and development, the Island retains the same natural character that has sustained countless generations of Ojibwes.

Native traditions continue to thrive on the Island, such as the annual Sugar Island Pow Wow, Ziisbaakwad Minising Jiingtamok, held each summer and the Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa’s fall Fasting Ceremony, Mukade Kewinan. Sugar Island remains a place of great importance to local Ojibwes who turn to its forests and shores for spiritual and cultural nourishment.

NAGPRA (Native American Graves and Repatriation Act) was signed into law in 1990 and is meant to protect and ensure the return of stolen Native remains and funerary objects to their original communities, ultimately recognizing that human remains–from any group–”must at all times be treated with dignity and respect.”

In her Author’s Notes, Angeline Boulley explains that Warrior Girl Unearthed is ultimately “about the need to control Indigenous bodies–both in the past and today.” Although NAGPRA was passed over 30 years ago, many universities and museums continue to maintain control of Native remains and funerary objects despite objections by Native communities. In Warrior Girl Unearthed, the story represents this ongoing debate about who has a right to control the Native bodies of the past while paralleling an ongoing threat to the Native bodies of today: the high numbers of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) in Canada and the United States. Both of these issues represent an existential threat to Natives’ bodily autonomy.

At the time of the book’s publication in September 2022, more ancestors remain in collections (52 percent) than have been returned (48 percent).

In 2014, the rate of homicide of Indigenous women in Canada (3.64 per 100,000) was almost six times higher than non-Indigenous women (0.65 per 100,000). (source)

A 2016 study by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in the United States found that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women (84.3 percent) have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 56.1 percent who have experienced sexual violence. (source)

You can learn more about NAGPRA at the Department of the Interior’s NAGPRA website as well as with the many links to articles, films, and other resources in the Author’s Notes.

Below is a list of the words and phrases Angeline Boulley infused into her novel, Warrior Girl Unearthed. Over 130 times she paused as a storyteller and inserted Anishinaabemowin. This is what revitalization and respect for the language looks like. As her story unfolds, so does the language. Her characters work to repatriate ancestors and they model bringing the language back into Anishinaabe lives and communities.

The words and phrases are listed below as they appear in the book with an occasional alternate spelling so that speakers of the language across and far beyond the vast Anishinaabe diaspora can recognize the language they may encounter as they work with local elders and teachers. We are honored to support the work of Angeline and hope her novels invite you to learn more Anishinaabemowin. To use some of the words on the list:

Gego gotaajiken ji-gikinoo’amaageyan. – Don’t be afraid to learn.

Gimikwendaamin. We are remembering.

Bi-giiwen enji-zaagigooyan. – Come home where you are loved.

Recommended Resource: To understand how Anishinaabemowin is commonly written and the sounds you will hear, review our The Sound of Our Language lesson.

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