Mary March as a Symbol for Loss Kalista Pouget College

Mary March, a kidnapped Beothuk woman whose capture and death are central to the plot of Michael Crummey’s River Thieves, symbolizes historical losses of Indigenous culture. By bearing similarities to the outcomes of other British encounters with Indigenous groups in pre-confederation Canada, Mary’s death prompts the acknowledgement of the past. This research paper compares Mary’s displacement, disease, and death to other examples of loss caused by British settler-invaders, such as the implementation of the residential and missionary school systems and the transmission of lethal viruses like smallpox. Interpreting Mary as a symbol for loss allows for the reading of River Thieves as a sustained metaphor for Canada’s colonial history. Such a reading extends the magnitude of River Thieves’ message of guilt beyond the novel’s characters to today’s audience. The association of Mary’s death with other losses of Indigenous culture serves as a reminder of the tragic history of subjugation that grants non-Indigenous people the privileges they enjoy as descendants of settler-invaders. Analyzing the similarities between the events surrounding Mary’s death and the events of Canada’s past gives River Thieves a degree of profundity as a...