Francis
The protagonist, known as French or Frenchie. He is a sixteen-year-old Métis boy. He believes he lost his father, a member of the Native Council, to the Recruiters, but they later reunite in a resistance camp near Espanola. He did lose his mother Mary to the schools, and his brother Mitch handed himself over to the Recruiters to save French. French takes refuge in the woods where Miig’s group helps him.
Mitch
French’s older brother. Mitch sacrifices himself, calling out to the Recruiters in order to give French a chance to escape.
Jean
Mitch and French’s father. Jean was a member of the Native Council who went to the Capital to make a final attempt to reason with the Governors. He lost his leg there but managed to escape, and helped to establish a resistance camp with a new Native Council near Espanola.
Mary E. Dusome
Mitch and French’s mother. After the loss of her husband she becomes depressed and unstable. The night before they plan to escape from the seniors’ home where she is living, she insists on foraging for a few things they need. She never returns from the outing.
Miigwans
A middle-aged Anishnaabe man, and the leader of the group. He is called Miig for short. Miig escaped the schools but lost his half-Cree husband, Isaac, there. He guides and teaches the youngsters about their history and present, as well as how to survive in the wilderness. At the end of the novel, he reunites with Isaac.
Zheegwon and Tree
Two twelve-year-old twins who are part of Miig’s group. They are very tall and don’t talk much. They share one baseball cap that they constantly exchange between the two of them. Miig and the group found them tied up and tortured by townies who wanted to extract their dreams.
Wab
At eighteen, Wab is the oldest female member of Miig’s group. She has a vicious scar that splits her face nearly in two. Wab used to be a runner who worked delivering messages and packages in Toronto. She suffered significant trauma, including neglect by her mother and physical and sexual abuse by the gang that put her out of work. She is fragile and stingy with her words. She develops a romantic relationship with Chi-Boy and is expecting a baby at the end of the novel.
RiRi
A seven-year-old Métis girl from a community near where Frenchie’s family is originally from. She is playful and mature for her age. She dies when Travis captures her and grasps her as he leaps from a six-storey cliff.
Minerva
An old woman, Minerva is dark, round and tiny. She doesn’t speak much and has “old-timey ways.” Eventually, the reader learns that Minerva is capable of destroying the Recruiters’ marrow-harvesting system, which she resists by turning her dreams into songs in her native language. A Recruiter shoots Minerva dead during the camp’s efforts to rescue her.
Chi-Boy
At seventeen, Chi-Boy is the oldest male member of Miig’s group. A member of the Cree Nation from the West, he is very quiet and skinny. He is the group’s most able and agile scout. He develops a romantic relationship with Wab.
Slopper
A nine-year-old boy “with the belly of a fifty-year-old diabetic,” Slopper is from the East Coast and a member of Miig’s group. In the camp, he is tasked with organizing the youth council and thrives under this responsibility.
Rose
Rose joins Miig’s group after French. French immediately feels attracted to her and they eventually begin a romatic relationship. Rose previously lived with her Granny, who sent her into the bush with her uncles Will and Jonas. Both eventually died when Rose was thirteen, and she carried onward alone. Rose is introduced as a rebel who speaks like her elders.
Will and Jonas
Rose’s great uncles. She travels with them to the bush, leaving her granny behind. Both eventually die.
Isaac
Miig’s husband. A pale, light-haired, half-Cree man. He is a poet and linguist who believes his reputation will save him. Miig believed he died in the schools but he was saved by two Guyanese nurses. At the end of the novel, Isaac and Miig reunite.
Travis
An Anishnaabe man who is a traitor and works for the Recruiters. He is the same man who handed Wab over to her captors by hiring her for a decoy run. Back then he was addicted to opiates. When the group crosses paths with Travis and his sidekick, Lincoln, the pair plan to turn them over to the government.
Lincoln
Travis’s sidekick, Lincoln is a Native man who works for the Recruiters. He drugs himself with unnamed pills that leave him woozy and altered. At night he captures RiRi, and eventually jumps off of a cliff with the young girl in tow, bringing both to their deaths.
Clarence
An older Cree man from the old prairies territory. He is a member of the Council at the resistance camp. He is a curator and lover of the Cree language. He is also Derrick's uncle.
Mint
An Anishnaabe man from south in America. He is a member of the Council at the resistance camp.
Bullet
An Inuit woman who is blind in one eye. She is around sixty-five and appears to be the oldest member of the Council at the resistance camp. She is tough and committed.
Jo-Jo
A Salish man who is the newest member of the Council at the resistance camp.
Rebecca
A Ho-Chunk woman from the U.S. territories. She is a member of the Council at the resistance camp.
Sam
A young boy at the resistance camp.
Talia and Helene
Guyanese women who worked as nurses at Sudbury hospital. They see the marrow-harvesting experiments and studies firsthand and rescue people, including Isaac.
