Five Little Indians is a novel published by Michelle Good, a Canadian author who is a member of the Cree indigenous tribe. Published in 2020, it is the author’s debut novel and tells a historically-based story that shines a light on one of Canada’s most notorious chapters: the creation of a school system designed to enforce assimilation of native schoolchildren into European culture.
The titular characters of Good’s narrative are five such children whose movement through the system starkly illuminates the harsh process by which these kids were separated from their parents and other family members to attend what were known as Catholic Mission schools. The novel is set in the late 50s/early 60s and covers the period from their enrollment through the later consequences afterward. The consequences of each of the children varies from one to the other but each has the same experience of their time at school inducing both physical and emotional trauma which impacts the decisions leading to those outcomes. Eventually two romantic couples will be formed from the five while the fifth succumbs to the unyielding power of memories which cannot be escaped from in any way other than self-annihilation.
Good’s book is a fictionalized retelling of actual Canadian history that covers an expanse of thematic territory as big as the country itself. Collective national guilt overlooks these tragic stories which not only could have been avoidable but should have been. This absence of a social conscience by an entire governmental system is forever a specter hanging over the story’s other narrative pursuits. Without the full complicity of everyone involved from government leaders down to priests and nuns in each individual school, the story could not be an examination of everything from the long-term consequences of childhood abuse to the development of a resilient bond among those who share such histories.
If the specter of complicity on a vast level is a specter hanging over the concept of such schools, then the foundation supporting it can be identified as the stunning hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The actual physical abuse of the five kids comes not the hands of mere teachers. Their teachers are members of a religious faith which prides itself on moral judgment of those who do not believe in its tenets. The hypocrisy of priests and nuns committing acts of sexual perversion upon kids makes the story almost impossible to imagine. And, indeed, were it not for the revelations of multiple such offenses committed by members of the Catholic Church coming to light in recent decades, most people could not imagine such a thing. This firm faith in the goodness of the members of the church thus ensured that the abusive system would continue unabated.
The story which Good tells in this novel is merely the Canadian version of a repetitive abomination that has arisen in multiple locations where Christianity, European imperialism, and displaced native populations have collided. The culture and languages of the native population that is victimized changes from incident to incident with the only common bond uniting them being the presence of abusive members of the clergy assigned for the purpose of moral instruction.
