Bad Cree
Jessica Johns
Bad Cree
SuperSummary
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Table of Contents
S UM M A RY
3
B A C KG RO UN D
6
Cultural Context: The Wheetigo
6
Literary Context: Indigenous Literature and Indigenous Horror
6
C H A P TER S UM M A RIES & A N A LYS ES
9
Chapters 1-5
9
Chapters 6-9
13
Chapters 10-13
18
Chapters 14-18
23
C H A RA C TER A N A LYS IS
28
Mackenzie
28
Mackenzie’s Mother
29
Kassidy
29
Sabrina
30
Tracey
30
Joli and Dianne
31
Mackenzie’s Aunts: Verna and Doreen
31
TH EM ES
33
Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation
33
The Affirming Power of Family and Community
34
The Impact of Extractive Industry on First Nations Communities
36
S YM B O LS & M O TIFS
38
Crows
38
Dreams
38
“Bad Cree”
39
Anti-Indigenous Prejudice
39
The Wheetigo
40
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IM P O RTA N T Q UO TES
41
ES S A Y TO P IC S
48
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Summary
Bad Cree (2023) is an Indigenous horror novel by Canadian author Jessica Johns. Johns is a
member of the Sucker Creek (Cree) First Nation, and her written work focuses on her
Indigenous heritage as well as life in contemporary First Nations communities in Canada. Bad
Cree is Johns’s debut novel, but she has published her short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction
widely. She is a frequent speaker at various literary and arts festivals in both Canada and the
United States. Bad Cree has garnered attention from critics and readers alike who cite it as an
important exemplar of Indigenous horror fiction. Indigenous horror uses supernatural
elements, aspects of magical realism, and key horror tropes to explore a range of themes that
speak to both historical and contemporary Indigenous life in the Americas. Bad Cree
combines Indigenous legend with the supernatural in its interrogation of the themes of
Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation, The Affirming Power of Family and
Community, and The Impact of Extractive Industry on First Nations Communities.
This guide refers to the 2023 paperback edition by Anchor Press.
Content Warning: The source text and this guide include depictions of anti-Indigenous racism
and substance misuse
Plot Summary
Bad Cree begins as its protagonist, Mackenzie, wakes from a disturbing nightmare. She
dreamed she was in a clearing deep in the woods watching crows eat her recently deceased
sister, Sabrina. She wakes and looks down to see a severed crow’s head in her hands. She
smells blood and the sharp tang of pine and struggles to determine whether she is truly
awake. The moment quickly passes, and the crow’s head disappears. Mackenzie has had this
dream multiple times during the last few weeks, and she has also observed large numbers of
crows following her as she goes about her daily routine. She is sure that the dreams and the
crows are messages of some kind, but she is unsure how to interpret them.
Mackenzie lost her sister Sabrina to a sudden and unexpected brain aneurysm a year ago and
her grandmother several years before that. After her grandmother’s death, she left her small,
rural community and moved to Vancouver. Her move caused a rift in the close-knit family, and
her relationship with her mother, surviving sister, Tracey, and aunties is now strained.
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Mackenzie has found a new support system in Vancouver in her mother’s friend Dianne and
Dianne’s child, Joli, with whom Mackenzie works at a local Whole Foods. She consults Joli
and Dianne about the dreams but also reaches out to her family. The consensus is that
Mackenzie is in danger and should return home. She initially resists, but the dreams persist,
and she finally relents. She left home in part because she could not handle the sadness in her
mother’s home after her grandmother’s death. She still does not feel ready to confront her
grief, but she is worried that without the help of her family, the dreams will continue and
something terrible will happen.
Mackenzie comes to realize that the dreams do not depict Sabrina’s death but a night at one
of their family’s favorite campgrounds a few years prior when both Sabrina and her twin,
Tracey, temporarily disappeared into the night. Mackenzie and her cousin, Kassidy, searched
for the girls for the better part of an hour without luck, but then the twins emerged silently
from the forest. They were covered in scratches, their hair was unkempt, and their clothing
was torn. Neither was able to report what happened, and the event remained a mystery.
Back at home, Mackenzie spends time with her family and discusses her dreams. She is
averse to the idea that the dreams represent unresolved grief over the loss of her
grandmother and sister, but she does appreciate getting to talk about the dreams and
process her feelings with her family members. She learns that Tracey, Kassidy, her mother,
and her aunties have all, at certain points in their lives, had dreams that were either prophetic
or contained meaningful visions. This reminds her of the strong bond that she shares with the
women in her family.
The dreams continue, and Mackenzie, Tracey, and Kassidy become increasingly certain that
the clues to unravel their meaning are somehow tied to the night of Tracey’s and Sabrina’s
disappearance. The event took place during the summer, but Mackenzie’s dreams all happen
against the backdrop of swirling snow and bitter cold. The girls begin to wonder if the dreams
are somehow tied to the wheetigo, a mythic, shapeshifting, undead figure from the
Indigenous legend who is born out of, and feeds upon, unchecked greed. Their community
was, for a time, the site of oil drilling, and the petrochemical company responsible (as well as
its workers) was profoundly greedy. They promised regional prosperity but left a trail of
environmental destruction, blight, and missing Indigenous women in their wake. Mackenzie,
Tracey, and Kassidy wonder if a wheetigo attacked Sabrina on the night of her
disappearance. They speculate that the figure of Sabrina in Mackenzie’s dreams is the
wheetigo, appearing in the form of Sabrina to lure Mackenzie into some sort of danger.
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The girls consult their mothers and aunties who begin to ask around about the wheetigo.
Appearances of the creature began during the days of the oil boom, and they, too, are
increasingly sure that the wheetigo is involved somehow in Mackenzie’s dream. Against the
better judgment of their mother and aunties, Mackenzie, Tracey, and Kassidy hatch a plan to
kill the wheetigo. In a dream, Mackenzie encounters the wheetigo and realizes it did indeed
attack Sabrina on the night of the disappearance. To do so, it took the form of Tracey. It
began to reappear in Mackenzie’s dreams to feed on her, too.
Mackenzie knows that she must kill the wheetigo, and after some difficulty, she does. A large
group of crows aids her in this endeavor, and she realizes that the birds are protectors, not a
bad omen. After she successfully slays the wheetigo, Mackenzie makes plans to return to
Vancouver, although this time she will remain in close contact with her family. She has come
to understand the importance of both familial and community ties and no longer considers
herself a “Bad Cree.” On her last night at home, she, Tracey, and Kassidy see something
ominous but identifiable in the woods. They try their best to put it out of their mind and focus
on enjoying their remaining time together.
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Background
Cultural Context: The Wheetigo
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and
substance misuse.
The wheetigo (also spelled wiindigo, windigo, or wendigo) is an important figure in Indigenous
myth. Stories of the wheetigo are present in the oral histories of various Indigenous and First
Nations groups. Although variations on the wheetigo myth do occur, it is characterized
similarly in each of these traditions: The wheetigo is a malevolent spirit and is sometimes
depicted with human or semi-human characteristics. It has the power to shape-shift and
possess human bodies. Bodies who become possessed by the spirit of the wheetigo are
overcome by hunger so insatiable that they are driven toward cannibalism. The wheetigo is
often depicted with a heart of ice and is frequently associated with winter and winter storms.
Its foul odor precedes its approach, and it typically tries to isolate its prey before feeding on
it.
The wheetigo is said to be borne out of extreme greed, and it preys on greedy individuals. It
also victimizes individuals who become lost and those who are in distress. People interpret
the wheetigo myth as a warning against selfishness, obsession, and greed, and Johns uses it
in Bad Cree to depict the danger that oil companies and other predatory industries pose to
First Nations communities such as the one in which Mackenzie grows up. In Johns’s story,
the wheetigo isolates and then attacks Sabrina. Although she does not immediately die, her
eventual, mysterious death is understood to be part of the long-term impact of her attack.
Because the presence of oil companies in Indigenous and First Nations communities often
results in an uptick of missing and murdered Indigenous women, Sabrina’s victimization by
the wheetigo can be read as a symbolic engagement with this ongoing epidemic of violence
against women in Indigenous and First Nations settlements.
Literary Context: Indigenous Literature and Indigenous Horror
Indigenous and First Nations writing has a long and storied tradition within American and
Canadian literature. Indigenous storytelling has existed in oral form since the first days of
Indigenous settlement in the Americas, and there are several notable writers whose work was
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published in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Zitkala-Sa (American Indian Stories )
and John Joseph Matthews. However, N. Scott Momaday’s 1969 Pulitzer Prize for the novel
House Made of Dawn (1968) dates to the first wave of Indigenous literature to achieve
widespread popularity. This first wave of Indigenous-authored texts represents the entrance
of Indigenous literature into the mainstream, often termed “The Native American
Renaissance.” The term Indigenous is now used in place of Native American, but in the 1960s
and 1970s, Native American was more commonly used, and the movement’s title still reflects
that nomenclature. Its authors included N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony,
“Yellow Woman”) James Welch ( Winter in the Blood, Fool’s Crow) Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo
(Crazy Brave, “Perhaps the World Ends Here”), and many others. During the 1980s and 1990s,
Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, The Round House ), Paula Gunn Allen ( Spider Woman’s
Granddaughters), Linda Hogan ( Mean Spirit), and Sherman Alexie ( Reservation Blues, The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) also rose to prominence. Indigeneity and
Indigenous identity development and the reclamation of and reconnection to traditional
cultural beliefs are common themes in works associated with the Native American
Renaissance, as is the experience of Indigenous soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam
wars.
In more recent years, a new wave of authors has emerged. The thematic focus of Indigenous
fiction has shifted somewhat, and now it is more common to see authors engage with issues
that Indigenous individuals and communities face during contemporary times. Generational
(or inherited) trauma is a key focal point in the work of authors such as Oscar Hokeah (Calling
for a Blanket Dance), Tommy Orange ( Wandering Stars ), David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and
others. The lasting impact of residential schools is another common theme, and authors such
as Amanda Peters depict the violence that these state and church-run institutions inflicted
upon Indigenous children. The Land Back movement is another theme that runs through
many contemporary texts, as is the largely unaddressed epidemic of missing and murdered
Indigenous women (MMIW). These issues are at the forefront of contemporary public
discourse surrounding Indigenous lives and experiences, and they differentiate contemporary
Indigenous literature from the Native American Renaissance with their focus on violence,
colonialism, the residential school system, and both individual and collective trauma.
In addition to realistic fiction that engages with these issues, there is a burgeoning
Indigenous horror subgenre that seeks to address the impact of trauma on Indigenous
individuals and their communities using supernatural elements and traditional horror tropes.
Nick Medina’s novels, Sisters of the Lost Nation (2023) and Indian Burial Ground (2024), are
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two noteworthy exemplars as are Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy and
standalone novel, The Only Good Indians (2020). Waubegshig Rice’s novels, Moon of the
Crusted Snow (2018) and Moon of the Turning Leaves (2023), combine horror with a postapocalyptic setting to explore the lasting impact of colonial violence on First Nations
communities and the roots of generational trauma within histories of displacement and
genocide. There are many other examples of recent Indigenous horror books, and these texts
share an interest in using violent language and imagery to spark discussions about the
violence against Indigenous peoples in the Americas during the centuries since colonization.
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-5
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and substance
abuse.
Mackenzie wakes up from a disturbing nightmare. She smells pine and blood and looks down
to find that she is holding a severed crow’s head in her hands. This is the third time in the last
three weeks that Mackenzie has had this dream and the third time she’s woken up holding
the dead bird’s head. She searches the rest of her bedroom. The crow’s head mysteriously
vanishes. In the dream, Mackenzie wakes to find herself alone wearing thin pajamas in a cold,
snowy forest. The wind begins to whip the trees into a frenzy, and she hears a shriek coming
from a nearby trailhead. This time in the dream, she follows the trail to a clearing. There, an
entire murder of crows is eating her sister, Sabrina. Sabrina looks like she’s been dead for
quite some time, and there is a large hole beneath her collarbone. Through the hole, Sabrina’s
heart beats. Mackenzie grabs the crow, snaps its neck, and wakes to find herself back in bed.
She showers and looks out the window. There is, as there has been for weeks, an unusually
large number of crows sitting outside on the fence. She thinks the crows have begun to follow
her. After Mackenzie showers, she heads to Whole Foods to see her friend, Joli. Joli’s mother,
Dianne, knows Mackenzie’s mother, and Mackenzie is grateful for Joli’s and Dianne’s
friendship. Three years ago, she moved from her small community to Vancouver, and without
them, she would be utterly alone. She tells Joli about the dream, and Joli encourages her to
call her mother or someone else who might be able to interpret it. Mackenzie calls her aunt,
Doreen, who tells her that she finds the dream worrisome. Mackenzie’s sister, Sabrina, died
nearly a year ago. Mackenzie is sure that the dream isn’t unresolved trauma: The crow’s head,
she is sure, was real.
Chapter 2 Summary
Crows continue to follow Mackenzie around. Their presence makes her nervous because she
knows that they gather not only to mourn their dead (the crow she killed in her dream) but to
exact revenge on whoever killed one of their group. Mackenzie tries to shake her anxiety and
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heads to work at Whole Foods. There, she stands at her till and moves mechanically, thinking
back to her childhood. She recalls the time when she and her sisters, Sabrina and Tracey, all
had nightmares that rats were eating Sabrina. Sabrina became ill and had to be hospitalized.
The doctor said it was an allergic reaction, but her parents got the girls a dreamcatcher.
Mackenzie reflects that her recent dreams are different from her childhood nightmares, but
she is sure that both kinds of night terrors are warnings.
After work, Mackenzie doesn’t feel well and returns home. She makes tea and begins scrolling
through old family photos on her phone. Her older sisters, twins, had a different father,
although Mackenzie’s father raised all three girls. He was a loving presence and showed them
that real parents did not need to be related by blood to their children. Mackenzie recalls her
first memory: spending time at “the lake” with her family. She was nine, the twins were 11,
and their cousin Kassidy was eight. They went for a long walk with their grandmother in the
woods near their campsite, and she felt the presence of her deceased grandfather. She was
scared, but her grandmother explained that he was just warning them that a storm was
coming. They’d made it back to camp just before the thunder began. In an old photo,
Mackenzie notices a small wound on Sabrina’s collarbone, and she is suddenly sure that the
woods from the lake are also the woods in her dream.
Chapter 3 Summary
Mackenzie sleeps fitfully that night. She thinks about her grandmother. She was diagnosed
with liver cancer a while back and spent her final year living with Mackenzie and her parents.
Not long after she died, Mackenzie left for Vancouver. She still feels connected to her
grandmother and misses her. The next morning, she wakes to the noise of crow wings
beating outside and decides to stay home. Mackenzie researches crows and contemplates
her dreams. She wonders if they are not a warning but a signal of some unknown, inner
power. She calls her mother, who is still upset with her for not coming home for Sabrina’s
funeral last year. She tells her about the dreams, and her mother suggests she see a grief
counselor. She stays home from work a second day, making a mess in her house and
watching films on her computer. She thinks that she hears her grandmother in her house,
shaking a metal tin full of coins that she once used during family poker games.
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Chapter 4 Summary
Mackenzie wakes the next morning and takes a walk down to the beach to clear her head. On
the way, her cousin Kassidy calls. Kassidy heard from her mother, Doreen, about Mackenzie’s
unsettling dream, and she tells Mackenzie that she too has troubling dreams. Hers, though,
predict the future. Mackenzie is stunned, but she is also happy that Kassidy and Doreen
believe that she hasn’t “made up” her dream. Mackenzie shares that crows are now following
her, and Kassidy expresses further concern. She encourages Mackenzie to return home, but
Mackenzie is unsure. After she and Kassidy say their goodbyes, she keeps walking, thinking
back to her childhood with Kassidy and her sisters. She is shaken from her contemplation by
a noise overhead. She looks up to see a crow drop something down at her. At first, she thinks
that it is a dead crow, and she is terrified. Upon further inspection, however, she realizes it is
just a watermelon rind. Crows, she knows, give gifts to their “kin.” Could this be a good omen?
Mackenzie falls asleep outside and dreams of her sister. The three girls are together at their
family’s campsite, and the twins want to go to a party. Mackenzie is unsure. The dream girls
walk away, headed toward the gravel pits where teens throw clandestine, late-night parties.
Mackenzie watches. Eventually, the air around her fills with snow. She sees another Sabrina,
in addition to Sabrina walking with Tracey and dream Mackenzie. This Sabrina looks dead.
Her skin is ashen, and her hair is tangled and grey. She is standing on a frozen lake with blood
streaming from her mouth. She begins to stamp her foot, cracking the ice. Mackenzie
screams for her to stop, but she does not. The ice cracks. Mackenzie wakes outside and
vomits fresh lake water.
Chapter 5 Summary
Mackenzie walks home, feeling ill. Her phone is soaked, and she puts it into a bowl of rice to
drain the water. She falls asleep and wakes later to Joli at the door. Joli is concerned because
Mackenzie shares her location with Joli on their phones, and according to Mackenzie’s phone,
she is at a lake in Alberta (the lake from her dream). Mackenzie is shaken and tells Joli about
the dream and the vomiting. Joli warns her to be careful who she tells about her dreams. She
notes how little regard white society has for Indigenous ways and wisdom and cautions
Mackenzie not to end up in a psych ward. She asks Mackenzie about the events of the dream,
and although Mackenzie knows that the dream depicted a real night from her memory, she
cannot put any details about it together. Joli tells her that the two must work toward
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returning some normalcy to Mackenzie’s life. Joli cooks a meal for them, and they eat. Later,
Mackenzie’s phone dries out. She receives text messages from an unknown number. The
sender claims to be Sabrina.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Johns introduces Mackenzie’s character through the framework of grief and loss, her
troubling nightmares, and her self-imposed isolation in Vancouver. The novel’s very first
scene depicts Mackenzie’s dream about her recently deceased sister, and she wakes from it
to find herself holding a severed crow’s head. It is evident that Sabrina’s death impacted
Mackenzie deeply, and those around her initially interpreted her dreams as a manifestation of
her melancholy. Mackenzie, however, is not convinced. She tells her friend, “This isn’t some
unresolved trauma shit. This is something else. I woke up with a dead crow in my hands” (11).
Although Mackenzie’s unwillingness to face her grief is a key part of her characterization at
this early point in the narrative, she is partially correct about her dreams. One of this novel’s
initial uses of suspense and foreshadowing is the slippery, shifting meaning of several of its
key symbols and motifs: Mackenzie’s dreams do seem to be the result of “unresolved
trauma,” but the narrative ultimately reveals them as something far more sinister.
However, Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation is one of the novel’s primary
themes, and it is important even in these early chapters. Mackenzie recounts both the loss of
her grandmother and her sister and fills in details about her relationship with each family
member. It is already apparent that her family is close-knit, and from the stories that
Mackenzie tells about life with her grandmother, it is obvious that she was as important to
Mackenzie as her mother. The Affirming Power of Family and Community is another of the
novel’s key themes, and Mackenzie’s various flashbacks and ruminations demonstrate how
profoundly her family shaped her identity, both familial and cultural. After Mackenzie flees her
childhood home in High Prairie, she lives a relatively isolated life in Vancouver. She does,
however, find belonging in the city in the form of close relationships with her mother’s friend,
Dianne, and Dianne’s child, Joli, with whom Mackenzie works as a cashier at Whole Foods.
Dianne and Joli become Mackenzie’s surrogate family, illustrating how Johns underscores
that kinship exists beyond one’s immediate, biological family, especially for the novel’s
Indigenous characters.
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An exploration of race and Indigenous experiences underpin much of the narrative, and
Mackenzie recounts various moments of prejudice as she moves within a society that is
majority white. She is aware of the way that white Canadians treat Indigenous people and
how her light skin privileges her, even as a “minority” in Canadian society. She observes that
because of her “light skin,” she is “treated better everywhere” than her sisters (24), who have
a different father than Mackenzie and darker skin as a result. Race will continue to play a role
in the way that Indigenous characters are treated throughout the narrative. Here, it serves as
an important moment of engagement with the lived experiences of Indigenous people, and it
connects the novel to other works of Indigenous literature that explore themes related to race
and racism.
Crows are one of the novel’s key symbols, and they emerge early in the narrative as a focal
point for Mackenzie. At this point, she finds their presence sinister, and their constant circling
above her as she walks to and from work heightens her already-increasing anxiety. Although
the text will ultimately reveal that the crows are a benign force in Mackenzie’s life, their eerie
presence in Vancouver and the severed head that Mackenzie wakes holding after one of her
nightmares are one of the novel’s first uses of horror tropes to explore its themes.
Dreams, another of the novel’s key symbols and motifs, also emerge as important in this first
set of chapters. Not only does the novel begin with Mackenzie’s nightmare, but Mackenzie
also learns that her cousin, Kassidy, experiences strange, prophetic dreams. This is another
way that the novel engages with the theme of The Affirming Power of Family and Community.
Mackenzie has chosen to isolate herself hundreds of miles from her childhood home and
mostly cut off communication with her family. Her cousin’s admission that she too has
troubling and meaningful dreams re-establishes this connection: Mackenzie feels a sense of
kinship that not only ties her back to her family but also provides her some respite. She is not,
as she worried, “crazy,” as her cousin validates for her. This connection foreshadows the role
that dreams play in Mackenzie’s family and establishes these dreams as a shared familial
trait that deepens Mackenzie’s bond with the women in her familial network.
Chapters 6-9
Chapter 6 Summary
Mackenzie tries to distract herself from the eerie, unexplainable text messages by doing
laundry. She thinks back over her time in Vancouver, remembering that she’d already been in
the city for two years when Sabrina died. The grief from losing her grandmother was fresh,
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and so she had declined to travel back home for her sister’s funeral. Mackenzie remains in
the laundry room while her clothes are in the washer and then the dryer; she does not want to
return to her apartment. When she finally does have to go upstairs, she calls her aunt, Verna,
and tells her everything. Verna suggests Mackenzie come home: She is worried by the
dreams, the crow’s head, and the text messages and thinks that Mackenzie is being sent a
message of some kind. After hanging up, Mackenzie smudges her apartment with sage,
reflecting on how few times she performed the ritual before. Unlike her Indigenous friends
and family members, she has had little use for the bundles of sage she was gifted over the
years. She even learned how to smudge from a white yoga instructor’s video on YouTube.
The next day, Mackenzie returns to work. She gets a few tight-lipped smiles and strange
looks, and she wonders what rumors have been circulating about her in her absence. She tells
Joli that her family is pressuring her to visit home, and Joli responds that they also think that
Mackenzie could use some time with her parents and aunties. Mackenzie asks their manager,
Brandon, for a few weeks of unpaid leave. Brandon, who is fond of white feminist authors and
Marxist work jargon about cooperation and unity, sighs audibly when she asks and does not
want to give her the time off. She reminds him that when her sister died, she did not take a
single day of leave, and he reluctantly relents. Mackenzie’s aunt, Doreen, buys her a plane
ticket, and she prepares to return home for the first time in three years.
Chapter 7 Summary
Mackenzie arrives in Edmonton. She recalls her grandmother’s final months and the funeral
that followed. She and her sisters hoped their grandmother would make it through winter, but
the elderly woman seemed to know that her time was up. After she died, the sisters were
grief-stricken, but their mother was resigned. She, too, knew that her mother’s time had come.
Mackenzie, Tracey, and Sabrina felt like they were sleepwalking. Mackenzie remembers an
incident, not long after the funeral when a group of oil workers accosted them in a store. The
men were intimidating but pretended they were just joking. Tracey, usually quick to anger and
ready with a scathing comeback, remained silent. She is shaken from her memory by an
airport employee and heads toward the baggage claim to meet her auntie, Doreen. The two
make the long drive out of the city to High Prairie, talking as they go. The familiarity of the
landscape strikes Mackenzie, and she is happy she made the trip home.
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At her parents’ house, various family members have gathered. The space seems full, familiar,
and homey. Mackenzie thinks that she should have returned much sooner, but she is grateful
to at least be back now. After a night of restful sleep, she talks with her mother and aunties.
She is hopeful that the dreams are over, but no one else seems ready to believe that she is
out of the woods. She finds out that various other family members, including her aunt, Verna,
have prophetic dreams and visions. Verna’s have even predicted disasters, disappearances,
and illnesses. The consensus is that Mackenzie’s dreams are a message of some kind, and
Mackenzie realizes that she does not yet understand its message.
Chapter 8 Summary
Mackenzie finds these new revelations about dreams unsettling and locks herself in the
bathroom to check her phone and calm down. When she comes out, Tracey challenges her to
a game of mortal combat. It is the unofficial video game of Mackenzie’s family, and she
recalls many hours spent playing it with her sisters and cousins as a young girl. As the two
sisters play, they talk about Sabrina. Mackenzie wants to know if Tracey is mad at her for
skipping Sabrina’s funeral. Tracey explains that she was never angry, but she thought it was
odd that Mackenzie hadn’t “shown up” for their sister.
Sabrina’s death was a shock to everyone. She died in her car: A blood vessel burst in her
brain, but luckily the tragedy happened just as she was starting the vehicle. She wasn’t on the
road and hadn’t put anyone else in danger. Mackenzie thinks how much easier it is to lose
someone to sudden death than illness. They lost their grandmother bit by bit, and the
sadness of it remained with Mackenzie but also, she thought, in the house. It was why she’d
left. She and Tracey continue to talk, and it becomes apparent that Tracey is deeply angry
with Mackenzie for leaving. Sabrina had been “the glue” that held Mackenzie and Tracey
together, and without her, Mackenzie worries that their bond is forever altered.
Mackenzie tried to assure everyone that her dreams had stopped, but that night, she has
another disturbingly vivid nightmare. She is in the woods at the lake, out by the bonfire in the
gravel pit where teens would gather after their parents fell asleep. She remembers this night:
Tracey and Sabrina disappeared into the woods alone, and for 45 minutes she was sure that
something happened to them. As children, they were taught never to go anywhere alone, and
she knew when the girls ran into the woods, she should have followed. In the dream version
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of this event, she does find Sabrina. Sabrina looks like a corpse and admonishes Mackenzie
for not following her. Mackenzie begs to know what happened to Sabrina that night, but
Sabrina says nothing.
Chapter 9 Summary
Mackenzie wonders if her actions that night at the gravel pit caused her dream. She wonders
if Sabrina was haunting Mackenzie because she hadn’t followed her that night and not
because she’d stayed in Vancouver for her sister’s funeral. She calls Joli to run this idea by
them, and Joli tells Mackenzie that they and their mother had been talking and thought they
had figured something out. Just as Joli is about to share this new perspective with
Mackenzie, the phone cuts out. Mackenzie tries to call back, but no one picks up.
She spends the rest of the day in a daze, scared to fall asleep. She does eventually drift off
but her mom wakes her before dawn the next day. Her mother planned an impromptu road
trip, and the two set off together in the car. She remembers another such trip, years ago. They
were out scavenging and ran into an angry white man who claimed that they were on his
land. (They were not, her mother later explained.) It was evident from her mother’s demeanor
and body language that she was nervous around this man, and Mackenzie and her sisters
watched as her mother diffused the situation and kept the girls safe. Today, they find another
old barn to scavenge in, and her mother looks for anything that might be useful for craft
projects. The two talk and Mackenzie tells her mother how hurtful she found her mother’s
behavior when she left home. She’d just wanted a fresh start, but her mother didn’t seem to
understand. The two talk things over, and Mackenzie realizes that her mother both loves and
understands her. She is grateful for their relationship.
Chapters 6-9 Analysis
Mackenzie’s characterization is an important focal point within this set of chapters. Much of
what the author reveals about Mackenzie happens during one of her many moments of
reflection and remembrance. Although she has struggled to process her grandmother’s and
sister’s deaths, Mackenzie is a markedly self-reflective character. At this point in the
narrative, she is actively trying to identify the source of her nightmares, and she does that in
part by sifting through various memories of her childhood and adolescence. The Affirming
Power of Family and Community is important to Mackenzie, even as she has chosen to live
apart from her mother, sister, aunties, and cousins. After reflecting on the importance of
these relationships, Mackenzie eventually decides to reach out to someone in her family. She
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calls her aunt, Verna, and the strength of their bond is evident during the phone call.
Mackenzie is close not only with her immediate nuclear family but also with the wide sense of
kinship that makes up their community in High Prairie.
Mackenzie’s reflection also reveals the role that Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome
Isolation plays in her decision to leave High Prairie. She recalls her grandmother’s last year,
noting, “We lost kokum one bit at a time as she got sicker and sicker” (105). She recounts how
difficult it was for Mackenzie and her sisters to lose their grandmother even as they were
grateful to have her in their home for her final days. It is during this section of the novel that
Mackenzie clarifies that it was not only loss that prompted her to move to the city but also
the atmosphere in the family home after her grandmother died. Mackenzie felt the house
suffused with grief, not only her own, but everyone’s. It was this communal sense of loss that
Mackenzie was so overwhelmed by, even as she knew that shared grieving was an important
part of both familial and cultural norms. This causes her to opt for isolation in an attempt to
process her grief; however, she now realizes that this left critical wounds unresolved.
The sense that Mackenzie is a “bad Cree” for refusing to take part in communal patterns of
grieving with her family intensifies when she returns home after speaking with aunts, Verna
and Doreen. However, this section of the narrative also evidences the beginning of
Mackenzie’s healing journey. Although she previously ran away from communal healing, she
begins to embrace it at this point in the story, further cementing the role of Processing Grief
and Loss to Overcome Isolation. She processes her feelings first with her sister, Tracey, and
then with her mother. While each family member was hurt by Mackenzie’s abandonment of
the family, they begin to forgive her. Both women are worried about Mackenzie’s dreams, and
they feel a strong commitment to working together to address the root cause of Mackenzie’s
recurring nightmares and eerie visions.
Racism also underpins Mackenzie’s interactions with white people—both while living in
Vancouver and in her rural community. In one scene, she smudges her apartment with sage
after a nightmare and a conversation with her aunt. She notes that she learned how to
smudge (a ritual smoke cleansing in Cree culture) not from her family but from the video that
a white yoga instructor posted on YouTube. Mackenzie’s wry language here both provides
commentary on cultural appropriation and contributes to her feelings of being a “Bad Cree”—
evidenced by learning about a ritual practice from a non-Indigenous voice.
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While back at home, she recalls an encounter with a white man during which it was obvious
that her mother was fearful for their safety and actively trying to diffuse the situation and
appease the man’s anger. Mackenzie realizes that interactions like this are common and
reflects on how many of the women in her family have learned appeasement as a kind of
“soft” survival skill out of necessity. Mackenzie also recalls oil workers taunting her while she
was out with her sister, Tracey. Tracey, like her mother, grew up with this kind of racist abuse
and devised ways of dealing with it. This incident is the novel’s first moment of engagement
with the theme of The Impact of Extractive Industry on First Nations Communities. Its focus
is not yet on the environmental or economic impacts of the extractive industry. Rather, it
focuses on the harmful effects the oil industry has on women in High Prairie, many of whom
became fearful of their safety due to the presence of hostile, predominantly white male
outsiders. Here, Johns establishes a connection between her characters’ experience with the
negative impact of the extractive industry and the real violence and uptick in missing persons
and murder cases of Indigenous women due to outside industries’ increasing presence on
Indigenous land.
Chapters 10-13
Chapter 10 Summary
Mackenzie and her mother return home and unload their scavenged finds into the garage.
Inside with the rest of the family, Mackenzie asks her mother if she would be willing to call
Joli’s mother, Dianne. Mackenzie explains that she was in the middle of a call with Joli when
Joli hung up. She was unable to get back in touch with her friend, and she was worried.
Mackenzie’s mother calls Dianne, but the call goes straight to voicemail. There is a palpable
tension in the room, but Mackenzie’s mother loudly exclaims that she is sure everything is
fine. Still, she tells Mackenzie that she’ll reach out to one of Dianne’s friends on Facebook.
Mackenzie then asks Kassidy about the night at the gravel pit when Tracey and Sabrina
disappeared. Kassidy didn’t think much of the event, but upon further reflection, she recalls
that the girls seemed shaken when they returned and that Tracey’s arms were covered in
scratches. Mackenzie wonders what could have happened. She is sure now that there is more
to the story.
Mackenzie goes online to research dreams, visions, and symbols in Cree tradition. She does
not find anything particularly illuminating, but she does find out more about dreams from
reading information on sleep cycles. She learns that dreams happen during rapid eye
movement (REM) sleep, and she decides to set periodic alarms each night to disturb her REM
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cycle. She reasons that if she cannot dream, she will not have nightmares. She tries to sleep
this way but ultimately finds it difficult and exhausting. At breakfast one morning, her aunties
decide that the house is too somber, and someone suggests a trip to the lake. Mackenzie is
vehemently opposed to returning to the site of her nightmares, and the family decides to go
sing karaoke instead. Mackenzie doesn’t particularly want to do this either, but she agrees.
Chapter 11 Summary
After dinner, everyone steps outside. Verna observes that a storm is coming. Mackenzie
reflects that on the prairie, the weather is “honest.” The heat has been oppressive, and storm
clouds are indeed beginning to gather. The women head to the Stardust bar for karaoke, and
Mackenzie notices their easy rapport. Family, she thinks, can be so soothing. At the bar, the
woman who runs karaoke night passes out slips of paper so that patrons can request songs.
Mackenzie’s grandmother loved the Stardust, and Doreen worked here for a few months when
Kassidy was young. Mackenzie is bone-tired from her interrupted sleep schedule, and the
fatigue and her beer begin to go to her head. As she is talking with Tracey, she begins to feel
faint. Before she can get outside for some air, she passes out.
While she is unconscious, she again dreams of the gravel pit. Sabrina and Tracey return from
the woods silent, scratched up, and with torn clothing. Sabrina again admonishes Mackenzie
for not going into the woods after her. Mackenzie tries to explain that they’d looked for the
girls and shouted, but Sabrina’s eyes are angry and piercing. Mackenzie notices that her shirt
is torn and bloody. There is a wound near her collarbone that is bleeding. This is the same
injury she’d seen in a photograph, but her mother and Tracey claimed not to be able to see
(they were sure it was an imperfection in the photo) or identify it. When Mackenzie wakes, she
is outside of the Stardust. Her family is gathered around. In her hands, she is clutching a
bloody piece of flannel, Sabrina’s shirt. It does not disappear when she blinks herself awake.
She is terrified, and surer than ever that Sabrina’s “message” to her isn’t about her funeral at
all but about this night at the gravel pit.
Chapter 12 Summary
Mackenzie and her family walk back home together in the still, dark night. Back at the house,
Mackenzie reveals that her dreams have not stopped. She has continued to be tormented by
nightmares since returning home. Later, Mackenzie talks with Kassidy and Tracey. She learns
that Tracey, too, has visions and strange dreams. She and Sabrina used to dream the same
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dreams, and after Sabrina died, Sabrina visited Tracey’s dreams nightly. Tracey began
drinking to dull her mind and sleep without dreaming, but she remained unsettled by her
sister’s visitations.
They talk about the night at the gravel pit. Tracey reiterates that although Sabrina’s clothes
were indeed ripped, she hadn’t been injured. She certainly didn’t have a large, jagged cut that
bled and caused a scar. The girls postulate that there is more than one way to be injured or
scarred and recall the mythical figure of the wheetigo. Known to various Indigenous nations,
the creature is an undead monster. Associated with winter (like the unseasonable snow in
Mackenzie’s dreams) it is cannibalistic. In some traditions, it preys on animals. In others, it
preys on people. The wheetigo is a cautionary figure, used both to discourage greed and keep
children from wandering off. They wonder if Sabrina had encountered a wheetigo that night in
the woods. Tracey does recall her silence when they returned and that she’d seemed “off”
thereafter. She’d never really returned to her old self.
Chapter 13 Summary
Mackenzie, Tracey, and Kassidy try to look up more information about wheetigos, but they
find little beyond what they already know. Their mothers gather with them in the kitchen, and
the girls share their idea that Sabrina might have been attacked by a wheetigo in the woods
the night that she and Tracey temporarily disappeared. This theory particularly alarms
Mackenzie’s mother, and she appears worried. Because all the women in the family
experience visitations and visions in their dreams, they understand that Sabrina’s
appearances in Mackenzie’s dreams are serious. Mackenzie wonders aloud if Sabrina herself
might be a wheetigo. Wheetigos are shapeshifters, and it is possible that a wheetigo took on
Sabrina’s form to visit Mackenzie.
Mackenzie’s mother and her sisters decide to ask around about the wheetigo, and they begin
a series of visits to friends, family, and neighbors that take days. The girls grow restless and
watch over one another at night in case they experience visions or visitations. One night,
Mackenzie overhears her mothers and aunties talking. They theorize that oil companies lured
the wheetigo to the area. Wheetigos are motivated by greed, and who better embodies greed
than oil companies? They think it’s possible that many wheetigos were lured to the area by
the oil companies and once the companies left, they roamed the woods, attacking whomever
they could find. Sabrina might have been a casualty.
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Mackenzie is angry that her mother and aunties have not shared their information with the
girls, and she heads back to the bedroom. She tells Kassidy and Tracey what she’s overheard.
The girls see the wisdom in the idea that oil companies drew the wheetigo to their area, and
they wonder if Sabrina was indeed a casualty of the situation. They talk further about the oil
companies, noting the way they used Indigenous communities, promised jobs, and then
packed up and left when the oil dried up. Their town is beginning to decline in the absence of
oil money, and many businesses have closed. As they are talking, Mackenzie gets a series of
texts from the ghostly number claiming to be Sabrina. They ask why she hasn’t “followed”
Sabrina to the lake. The girls vow to find out more about what happened to Sabrina that night
in the woods.
Chapters 10-13 Analysis
This section of chapters is plot-driven and action-packed. The author uses foreshadowing
and suspense to create narrative tension and show her characters’ heightened anxiety.
Mackenzie’s nightmares take place mostly in and around their family’s favorite campsite.
Near to the campsite is a large gravel pit which teenagers frequent during family gatherings in
the woods. Mackenzie begins to wonder if her dreams might be about one particular night
when Sabrina and Tracey were lost in the woods and not about Sabrina’s death. Tracey too
contemplates this theory and thinking back, she recalls, “That night she came out of the
woods, something was different. She was strange right up until she died” (169). At this point
in the narrative, the author has not revealed what happened in the woods nor has she
confirmed Mackenzie and Tracey’s theory, but she establishes increased suspense by
introducing several key questions.
In moments that contrast with a heightened sense of tension and suspense, the author
provides a series of family scenes that showcase ordinary daily life for Mackenzie, her
mother, aunties, sister, and cousin. The women play cards, cook meals, and sing karaoke
together. These scenes become another way that the author engages with the theme of The
Affirming Power of Family and Community. It is evident that Mackenzie’s family is affirming
and that, despite the stress of Mackenzie’s unexplained dreams, their lives resemble those of
other close-knit families. These scenes also highlight Mackenzie’s gradual return to her
family. Family members have already processed her absence and shared the ways
Mackenzie’s actions hurt them, allowing them to bond and reconnect. This process is key for
Mackenzie’s healing and central to the narrative’s focus on the affirming power of family and
community.
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Against the backdrop of happy time spent with family, however, Mackenzie’s dreams
intensify. The Sabrina figure begins to accuse her of abandonment, and she wakes from each
nightmare feeling worse and worse. She does learn more about her family’s history with
prophetic dreams and visions, and this shared trait further cements their bond. Because
Kassidy, Tracey, her mother, and her aunts all have had similar experiences, Mackenzie feels
even more deeply rooted within her family tree, further demonstrating The Affirming Power of
Family and Community. In this section, it is evident that no matter what happens going
forward, she will never cut herself off from her family again.
This set of chapters is the first to discuss the wheetigo, the shape-shifting creature of legend
that plays a role in many different Indigenous traditions and is a key part of Cree mythology.
Mackenzie has long suspected that her dreams are rooted in something other than
unresolved grief, and because of the deathly pale, angry version of Sabrina that her
nightmares present, her family members begin to agree with her. When she reveals that she
wonders if Sabrina might be a wheetigo taking on the shape of Sabrina, Kassidy, and Tracey
find the hypothesis easy to believe. They further speculate that Sabrina was attacked by a
wheetigo on the night when she disappeared in the woods, and when they speak to their
mother, they become even more convinced. Because wheetigos are important within Cree
legend but also across other Indigenous traditions, Johns establishes a point of narrative
connection between Bad Cree and other oral histories, stories, and works of literature. The
author links this novel both through myth and thematically to other narratives that focus on
the impact greed has on individuals and communities, helping her situate her novel within an
established genre.
The author uses the wheetigo specifically to engage with the theme of The Impact of
Extractive Industry on First Nations Communities, with wheetigos representing the result of
avaricious oil companies that prey on communities and individuals. Mackenzie and the girls
note the adverse impact oil companies have had in High Prairie: The jobs they offered were
often temporary, and the prosperity they promised to the community was largely undelivered.
They caused environmental damage and left as soon as the oil dried up. What little benefit
they provided to the community was short-lasting and not particularly impactful. All the
issues that Mackenzie, Kassidy, and Tracey discuss are rooted in the lived experiences of
actual First Nations and Indigenous communities throughout the Americas. Indigenous
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horror, as a subgenre, employs horror tropes and supernatural elements to explore real issues
Indigenous communities face, and this novel’s depiction of the extractive nature of oil drilling
places it squarely within this tradition.
Chapters 14-18
Chapter 14 Summary
The girls decide that Mackenzie is going to try to bring dream Sabrina (whom they speculate
is a wheetigo) back from her dream. Tracey and Kassidy will stay awake to watch over
Mackenzie as she dreams. They play a game of cribbage while discussing their plan and
agree that if Mackenzie can bring back Sabrina/wheetigo, they will kill her. After the girls
finish their game, they stay up talking. They feel like little kids again, and Mackenzie is happy
to be home.
Gradually, they tire, and Mackenzie falls into a deep sleep. She dreams she is back at the lake,
searching for Sabrina. Snow swirls around her, and she shivers. She sees a figure ahead of
her in the clearing which she assumes is Sabrina. She moves closer and realizes that it is not
Sabrina but Tracey. She hears Kassidy and knows that she is also in the dream. Tracey is
standing with her arms outstretched, whimpering. Mackenzie wonders if she is finally
witnessing what happened that night in the woods. Suddenly, Sabrina enters the clearing. She
is upset and calls out to Tracey. Tracey does not respond. Her eyes are milky white, and she
appears to be whispering, although Mackenzie cannot make out the words. Sabrina
approaches Tracey, and Tracey seizes her wrists. She leans forward, revealing sharp, pointed
teeth. Just as she bites down on Sabrina’s throat, she explodes into dust and vanishes. Then,
she sees Tracey run out of the woods. Mackenzie is confused because she just saw Tracey
turn into dust, but she turns and sees Sabrina. Sabrina stands up, brushes herself off, and
runs down a nearby trail.
After she leaves, another Sabrina is lying on the ground. Mackenzie approaches her and
realizes that it is not Sabrina but a wheetigo. The creature opens its eyes. It is a terrible sight:
Its eye sockets are empty, and it is undead. It tells Mackenzie that there is no use trying to kill
it because it already invaded her home and touched each of the girls. When Mackenzie
wakes, she sees Tracey’s body covered in mushrooms that only grow on dead things. She
begins to scream.
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Chapter 15 Summary
Mackenzie’s screams wake Kassidy first. She tells her cousin that she saw the wheetigo get
Sabrina in her dream. It pretended to be Tracey to gain access to Sabrina. Tracey’s body is
still covered in mushrooms, but when she wakes up, they vanish. Mackenzie’s mother and the
aunties come in, and Mackenzie is forced to tell them everything. They are upset that the girls
did not consult them before attempting to kill the wheetigo on their own, but they try to come
up with a plan to go forward. Mackenzie’s mother, upon learning that the wheetigo told
Mackenzie that it was already in her home, burns the scrap of bloody clothing Mackenzie
brought back from her dream. It was the wheetigo’s blood, not Sabrina’s. They decide not to
burn the crow feather because they all now think that crows are helpers who also hate the
wheetigo.
The girls learn that the wheetigo sightings did indeed start with the oil boom. It brought so
much unhappiness to the area: broken promises, environmental destruction, and an uptick in
missing and murdered Indigenous women. Wheetigos feed on greed, and the oil boom
provided that. They realize that the wheetigo fed on Sabrina. Like most other victims of the
wheetigo, it took her a few years after her attack to die. They resolve to find a solution. It is
too late to get Sabrina back, but they must rid their family of the wheetigo.
Chapter 16 Summary
Mackenzie crawls into bed with Kassidy and Tracey. The girls decide not to wait for their
mothers before doing something about the wheetigo. They will go to the lake that night,
together, because the wheetigo isolates its victims. They reason that they will be safe if they
are part of a group. They are, however, nervous. They have never killed anything before and
are unsure how to kill the wheetigo.
The next morning, Mackenzie helps her mother knead dough, and the two talk. Her mother
apologizes for keeping her out of the loop during her family visits and explains that she would
have told her everything she knew about the wheetigo when the time was right. She says that
she too is a “bad Cree” because the Cree believe parents are supposed to just guide their
children and let them make their own choices. She should have told Mackenzie what she
knew so that Mackenzie could make up her mind about how to proceed.
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Later, the girls tell their mothers the plan: They are going to go to the woods at night to kill the
wheetigo. Their mothers express a desire to accompany them, but the girls are firm that this
is something they must do on their own. The night before they go, Mackenzie has a
nightmare in which Tracey is frozen, and Kassidy has a dream about the lake. She tells
Mackenzie that under no circumstances is she to enter the water. The girls set out. The night
is still. Mackenzie, who now knows the crows are her protectors, clutches the crow feather
she brought back from her dream.
Chapter 17 Summary
As the girls make their way toward the lake, the trees appear to be clutching at them,
hindering their progress. One of the trees grabs Tracey, but the girls do not realize it until they
arrive at the lake. Mackenzie and Kassidy decide to go back for her, but just then, they see the
wheetigo, in the form of Sabrina, rising out of the water. Mackenzie feels drawn toward the
form of Sabrina, and although she was told not to, she enters the water. The Sabrina-shaped
wheetigo has tiny, sharp teeth. She berates Mackenzie for leaving her on the night that she
and Tracey disappeared in the woods. Her mouth is bloody. Mackenzie feels terrible guilt and
cries out an apology.
Just then a murder of crows flies up and distracts the wheetigo. Kassidy comes into the
water after Mackenzie and helps her to shore. They hear a terrifying screech from the woods:
Tracey is alone with the wheetigo. They did not follow their mothers’ advice. They allowed the
wheetigo to separate them. They run into the woods to rescue Tracey and find her in a
clearing with the wheetigo. It looks like Sabrina, but it is bloody, ragged, and covered in ice. Its
bones and tendons show through its skin in places. Mackenzie tries to distract Tracey, but
she is transfixed. The wheetigo is whispering. Mackenzie removes her aunt’s knife from her
backpack and lunges forward, stabbing the wheetigo. The crows arrive in the clearing and fall
onto the creature, tearing at it. It is finally vanquished. After they are sure the wheetigo is
dead, the girls wash off in the lake and then head home.
Chapter 18 Summary
The girls go home. Their mothers were waiting for them and are happy that they have arrived
in one piece. They clean up and rest, and the next day, they fill everyone in on what happened
at the lake. Mackenzie also calls Joli, who finally answers. Joli claims to have received no
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calls from Mackenzie, and the girls are sure that the wheetigo was keeping them apart.
Mackenzie makes plans to return to Vancouver but knows that she will be back for a visit
soon and continue to visit her family regularly.
She, Tracey, and Kassidy spend one final night together, walking together to the 7-11 for
slushies and beef jerky. Mackenzie realizes that she should have been a bigger part of her
family after Sabrina’s death and that she was bottling up her grief. She knows that there is
“bad” inside her but also good. On their way back, the girls see a flash of something ominous
and unexplained in the woods. They cannot quite figure out what it is, so they try their best to
ignore it and make their way home.
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
This set of chapters continues to discuss the adverse impact of the oil boom on Indigenous
communities, further highlighting The Impact of Extractive Industry on First Nations
Communities. Johns highlights the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women further
as the girls discuss how many women went missing or were murdered during the oil boom.
The girls know that area law enforcement cannot be relied upon to investigate the deaths of
Indigenous women with the same attention that they give to cases of violence against white
women, and the narrative thus reveals the oil boom to be particularly dangerous to women.
Here, too, the author engages with an issue that is relevant across Canada and the United
States, grounding her work within the lived experiences of Indigenous women all over the
Americas.
The wheetigo, although supernatural, represents the dangers of the oil boom and contributes
to Johns’s aforementioned theme. It is an undead embodiment of the spirit of greed and
violence that underpins the oil industry and so many of its workers. The girls find out that the
“wheetigo sightings started happening about ten years ago, the same time as the oil boom”
which sediments their belief that the dream Sabrina is a wheetigo (214). The idea that Sabrina
herself was the victim of a wheetigo speaks to the dangers of oil and outside industry on
Indigenous communities. Historically, the presence of such industries in Indigenous
communities victimizes women at greater rates than men. Although the oil industry has
exploited Indigenous men and harmed entire communities, it is women who are most often
victims of physical violence at the hands of outsiders, and Johns underscores this through
the narrative.
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The Affirming Power of Family and Community remains important even during the novel’s
final chapters. Part of the wheetigo legend is the wheetigo’s habit of isolating its victims. It is
a cautionary tale told to children to prevent them from wandering away from their families in
dangerous situations. However, in a broader sense, it sends a message about the importance
of family and community: The individual is stronger (and safer) when part of a group.
Group cohesion is a key value in Mackenzie’s family and culture. Mackenzie can defeat the
wheetigo only because she works together with her other family members. It is their shared
knowledge and analysis that allows her to formulate a plan, and she never would have
vanquished the creature on her own. In addition to help from her family, Mackenzie receives
assistance from crows. This bird, which once symbolized foreboding to her, now represents a
sense of protection and togetherness. The way that the crows’ symbolism shifts throughout
the narrative speaks to Mackenzie’s journey of discovery: She finds that she is incorrect in
many of her assumptions, and correcting her misinterpretation, would not have been possible
without her family. This reasserts the central role her family plays in her life—underscoring
that she must no longer stay isolated from them.
The novel finishes with a series of scenes of family togetherness and belonging. Mackenzie,
although she does plan to return to Vancouver, will not remain isolated from her family
members and will re-focus on family relationships going forward. The importance of family is
the key lesson that she learns throughout her struggles, and the novel ends on a hopeful note,
even as something ominous catches the girls’ attention. In the final section, Johns asserts
that Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation was possible for Mackenzie due to The
Affirming Power of Family and Community and her ability to reconnect with the strength of
her Indigenous roots.
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Character Analysis
Mackenzie
Content Warning This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and substance
misuse.
Mackenzie is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. She is a member of the Cree First Nation.
Mackenzie grew up in High Prairie, a small, rural community in Canada, and was part of a
large, extended family network. After the death of her beloved grandmother, Mackenzie
moved to Vancouver. She now lives alone in a small apartment and works as a cashier at
Whole Foods. The narrative introduces Mackenzie initially through her recurring nightmares.
She dreams about her deceased sister, Sabrina, and the text initially presents her nightmares
as symptoms of unresolved grief over the loss of her sister and her grandmother. In addition
to nightmares, Mackenzie also experiences an ominous series of visitations by crows. They
come to her both in dreams and real life, and she is fearful of their presence and what they
might portend. She worries that they mean her harm and observes, “I know the crows aren’t
looking for an owl, they’re looking for me” (18). Although the narrative will ultimately reveal
her dreams to have meaning beyond their relationship to loss and the crows will prove benign,
Mackenzie is a character mired in melancholy and immobilized by worry.
Johns also characterizes Mackenzie by her desire for solitude and the distance she has
placed between herself and her family. She fled High Prairie after the death of her
grandmother blanketed their home in sadness and did not return when her sister Sabrina
unexpectedly died. She is initially both unable and unwilling to process these losses with her
family members, and her move causes a rift between her and her mothers, sister, cousin, and
aunts.
Mackenzie’s move is part of why she characterizes herself as a “Bad Cree,” and her journey of
both self-discovery and self-healing will ultimately revolve around reconnection with family.
Mackenzie does manage to re-integrate herself within her family unit, and she does so in part
through recognition of shared history and traits. Like the other women in her family,
Mackenzie has meaningful dreams that contain messages from beyond and warnings about
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the future. Because she can analyze these dreams with the rest of her family and remain
unified in her quest to end them, she eventually processes the loss of her grandmother and
sister and renews her connection with the rest of her family.
Mackenzie’s Mother
Mackenzie’s mother is deeply embedded within her family and community. She has close
relationships with her husband, sisters, daughters, and niece, and taps into the vast
knowledge base of her extended family in multiple instances. In a novel devoted in part to
highlighting the strength and resilience of Indigenous families, she is an important matriarch.
Although she and Mackenzie initially have a fractured relationship because of Mackenzie’s
move to Vancouver, she deeply loves her daughters, and it is evident even during strained
conversations that she cares for her children.
The text characterizes her by her energetic nature. Mackenzie observes that she “has that
busy energy” (128), and she is constantly at work on one project or another. She is an avid
scavenger and frequently spends time driving around the region looking for discarded items
that she can repurpose. During one of these outings, she encounters a white man whose body
language, demeanor, and communication style spell danger for her and the girls. Mackenzie
observes the way she deftly diffuses the situation, using humor and a self-effacing attitude to
ensure their safety. Like all the rest of the women in her community, she has long lived with
the constant threat white men pose to Indigenous women, particularly those employed in
outside industries like oil, and has developed a set of behaviors to keep herself safe. She
passes on this situational resourcefulness to her daughters, and Tracey is especially adept at
self-protection. Mackenzie’s mother is also gifted (or perhaps cursed) with the power of
prophetic dreams, and this ability becomes an important point of connection between her and
the other women in her family.
Kassidy
Kassidy is Mackenzie’s cousin. The narrative initially characterizes her by the strength of her
familial bonds and her close relationships with her family members. She still lives in the rural
community in which she was raised, and unlike Mackenzie, she does not struggle to maintain
relationships with her loved ones. Johns also characterizes Kassidy by her strength and
resilience. She and the other Indigenous women in her small, remote village grow up with
near-constant taunts and harassment from white men, and she is easily able to brush this
unwanted attention off and remain unbothered by racist verbal abuse.
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Kassidy is additionally empathetic and compassionate. She has more forgiveness in her heart
for Mackenzie than Mackenzie’s sister does and seems to understand that Mackenzie
separated herself from the family because she was grieving and needed space not because
she did not love them. Like all the women in Mackenzie’s family, Kassidy has prophetic
dreams. Mackenzie is shocked when Kassidy tells her, “I see the future in my dreams” (45),
and Kassidy’s admission becomes a new point of connection between Mackenzie and her
family. Kassidy’s dreams help Mackenzie better understand herself and contextualize herself
within her broader family unit.
Sabrina
Sabrina was Mackenzie’s sister and Tracey’s twin. She is no longer living by the time the
narrative begins, but her presence informs its events and haunts its narrator. Like many of the
novel’s characters, she helps the author explore the importance of The Affirming Power of
Family and Community. Sabrina was closely bonded with her sisters, her mother, her cousin,
and her aunties, and Mackenzie feels her absence acutely. In the wake of Sabrina’s death,
Mackenzie struggles to maintain her family relationships and recalls, “Sabrina was always the
glue between me and Tracey” (111). Although all three girls were close, Sabrina’s role in their
triad was important. Part of Mackenzie’s healing journey is renewing her bond with Tracey
and learning what their relationship will look like without Sabrina.
The narrative also characterizes Sabrina by the encounter she has with the wheetigo. The
wheetigo attacked her after she became separated from her sister Tracey in the woods during
a family camping trip. The wheetigo represents greed, specifically the greed of white men and
predatory oil companies. The family notes that white men victimized many women during the
oil boom, and Sabrina’s victimization at the hands of the wheetigo is a symbolic
representation of the dangers that outside industry poses to Indigenous women in small, First
Nations communities.
Tracey
Tracey is Mackenzie’s sister and Sabrina’s twin. She is tough and resourceful. Tracey grew up
in a small, rural First Nations community and was often the target of racist taunts and
harassment. Because of this, she learned to protect herself physically as well as guard
herself emotionally, and she is a figure of strength and resilience within the novel. Of her
sister, Mackenzie recalls, “When I was ten, Tracey taught me how to headbutt” (69). Tracey
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additionally taught Mackenzie how to fight, instructing her to “punch” with her elbow instead
of her fist, and that domestic beer bottles break easier than do imports, making them better
for hitting someone over the head.
In addition to her strength, the text also characterizes Tracey by the depth of her familial and
community bonds. She and Sabrina were twins, and Sabrina’s death deeply impacted Tracey.
She briefly misused alcohol to self-medicate, but she ultimately finds resilience and healing
through family ties and music. She is hurt by Mackenzie’s rejection and need for distance, but
she eventually forgives her sister, and their reconnection speaks to how important family is to
Tracey. Tracey, like the other women in her family, also experiences prophetic visions and
dreams. Along with Kassidy, she and Mackenzie vanquish the wheetigo, reaffirming for each
girl that there is strength in unity.
Joli and Dianne
Joli and Dianne are close family friends of Mackenzie’s mother. They live in Vancouver and
become an important part of Mackenzie’s support system away from home. They are
members of the Squamish First Nation and live between Vancouver and Squamish. Because
Dianne is friends with Mackenzie’s mother, she becomes a surrogate mother figure for
Mackenzie, and Mackenzie is especially drawn to her during the period when she is quasiestranged from her own family. Because of their fierce love for Mackenzie and the support
they provide to her, Dianne and Joli become emblematic of extended familial (both bloodrelated and chosen) support networks that operate in and around First Nations communities.
Mackenzie’s relationship with the two characters is another way in which the novel engages
with the theme of The Affirming Power of Family and Community. Their bond echoes the bond
Mackenzie observes between her father and her sisters. Although not related by blood, they
are closely tied to one another. Joli is an important friend to Mackenzie, as both characters
are in their early twenties. Joli is “tall with a round face that drew in light like the moon draws
in the tide” (7). Joli uses they/them pronouns, but their gender identity is not a focal point
within the narrative.
Mackenzie’s Aunts: Verna and Doreen
Verna and Doreen are Mackenzie’s aunts. Verna is an avid cook, and Doreen is artistically
gifted. She is famous for her beadwork which she crafts to supplement her income as a high
school guidance counselor. They are closely bonded with their sister, Mackenzie’s mother,
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and are part of the broader network that helped to teach Mackenzie their familial and cultural
values and traditions. Although Mackenzie moves away from her family and tries to put
distance between herself and her family members, she does retain a connection to both
Verna and Doreen. She consults them about her nightmares, and both women love Mackenzie
and want to provide her with assistance and support, even though she has tried to push them
away.
The text additionally characterizes Verna and Doreen by their dreams. Like Mackenzie, her
mother, her sisters, and her cousin, Verna and Doreen experience prophetic dreams and
portentous visions. These dreams are a shared trait that unites the women in Mackenzie’s
family, and they become a point of connection between Mackenzie and her relatives. The
Affirming Power of Family and Community is one of Bad Cree’s key themes, and the strong
familial bond that is evident in Mackenzie’s relationship with her aunts speaks to both the
importance of togetherness in the narrative and the inherent strength of Indigenous families.
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Themes
Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation
Content Warning This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and substance
misuse.
The impact of grief and loss on individuals and families is one of this novel’s most overt
themes. Johns initially introduces Mackenzie, the narrator and protagonist, through the
framework of grief and loss. Very early in the narrative, the author reveals that Mackenzie has
lost both her beloved grandmother and her sister Sabrina. Mackenzie’s unwillingness to
confront her melancholy has caused a rift in her family, and she is isolating herself in
Vancouver, far from the small hamlet in which she was raised. Mackenzie’s self-imposed
separation from her family renders her, in her eyes, a “bad Cree,” and her self-reflective,
healing journey will ultimately come due to a focus on reconnection with family and
community.
Mackenzie’s family is large, and many of the novel’s characters are her family members.
Although plot-driven and not particularly invested in in-depth character development,
characterization is nonetheless important in Bad Cree for the way that it speaks to Indigenous
family structure in Mackenzie’s community: Her Cree settlement is close-knit. Many of her
family’s neighbors are also their relatives, and everyone looks out for one another. When
Mackenzie’s mother and aunties want more information on local wheetigo sightings, they
make a round of visits to extended family members to gather data. Against the backdrop of a
society in which the Cree (and other First Nations communities) are marginalized, exploited,
and even preyed upon, they maintain strong family support networks.
The importance of such networks is evident in Mackenzie’s relationship with her grandmother
(often referred to by the Cree word for grandmother, “kokum”). Much of this novel unfolds in
flashbacks, both in the form of dreams and memories, and Mackenzie spends countless
hours remembering her grandmother. She played a key role in the lives of not only her
children but also her grandchildren, and they all took care of her, especially during the last
year of her life. She lived with Mackenzie’s family, and Mackenzie was as closely bonded to
her grandmother as she was to her mother.
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Her grandmother’s death, even after a long illness during which everyone had prepared to lose
her, shook the family. Mackenzie struggled with the sadness that seemed to permeate the
household and struggled even more with the gradual loss of detailed memories of her
grandmother. She reflects at one point that “[w]hen someone dies, you stop remembering
them completely” (21). This process was as devastating to her as her grandmother’s death,
and it eventually drove her from her home. She moved to Vancouver hoping to distract
herself.
Mackenzie’s grief intensifies after the sudden, unexpected death of her sister, Sabrina.
Sabrina died after Mackenzie moved to Vancouver and, fearing a repeat of the difficulty she
faced at home in the wake of her grandmother’s death, Mackenzie did not go home for the
funeral. At this point, her already strained family relationships begin to fracture: Both her
mother and her surviving sister, Tracey, are deeply hurt and confused at Sabrina’s choice to
remain in the city rather than grieve with her family. Because familial relationships and family
networks play such an important part in Cree cultural identity, Mackenzie feels the additional
weight of guilt on top of her sadness: She has become a “Bad Cree.”
Mackenzie’s melancholy lessons only when she returns to her family and can process her
feelings with her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties. The women spend time together, support
one another, and work together to vanquish the wheetigo and put an end to Mackenzie’s
nightmares. Their shared ability to dream prophetically further unites them, and Mackenzie
learns that family relationships are too important to be cast aside in the manner that she did
after her grandmother’s death. The way to heal from grief is through family unity, and
Mackenzie learns to reconnect with and lean on the strong women in her family.
The Affirming Power of Family and Community
The importance of family and community is another of the novel’s key themes, closely tied to
its exploration of processing and healing from grief and loss. Family relationships are
important in Mackenzie’s community. In addition to the close bond that she shares with her
grandmother, Mackenzie has strong relationships with her sisters, cousins, and aunties. Her
aunties are surrogate mothers for her, especially as her relationship with her mother becomes
strained in the wake of Sabrina’s death. Verna and Doreen care deeply for Mackenzie, her
sisters, and her cousins, and they play an active role in the lives of Mackenzie’s generation of
the family. From Verna and Doreen, the girls learn about important cultural traditions like
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beading and better understand what it means to be part of the Cree First Nation. Johns
shows that the girls’ identity development happens as a result not only of parental instruction
on both familial and cultural values but also due to input from extended family as well.
Prophetic dreams and visions are one of the ways the author illustrates the strong ties in
Mackenzie’s family. The shared experience of meaningful dreams and visions unites all of the
women in the family. Additionally, the interpretation of these dreams is communal:
Mackenzie is not able to analyze her dreams on her own. She only determines their meaning
after speaking with her aunties, her mother, her sister, and her cousin. The communal nature
of interpretation also speaks to the importance of family and community in the novel.
Mackenzie and her family members must work together toward common goals, and their
cooperation strengthens them. Mackenzie experiences family belonging both through shared
traits and working together.
Mackenzie does struggle during this process. Her dreams are upsetting, and their intensity
destabilizes her. She notes, “That’s the best and worst thing about being connected to
everything, you are a part of it all, but you can’t choose what gets sent out into the world or
what can find you” (34). What “finds her” is the wheetigo, but she can kill it with the help of
her family. The wheetigo isolates its victims, and Mackenzie, Kassidy, and Tracey learn from
their mothers and aunties that when fighting the wheetigo, it is important to stay together.
The wheetigo is a creature that appears in many different Indigenous traditions both in
Canada and the United States, typically interpreted as a cautionary tale. The wheetigo’s story
encourages individuals to avoid greed and remain connected to friends and family in a
meaningful way. In Bad Cree, the wheetigo becomes part of the novel’s emphasis on the
importance of togetherness and belonging: It cannot be killed by a person alone.
In addition to blood family, Bad Cree also focuses on broader kinship structures and
belonging to chosen family. In Vancouver, although isolated from her mother, aunties, and
other relatives, Mackenzie forms close relationships with her mother’s friend, Dianne, and
Dianne’s child, Joli. These two characters become Mackenzie’s support system away from
home, and they are no less devoted to her than her mother, aunties, sisters, or cousins. This is
especially important for Mackenzie in a city like Vancouver where many of the people she
encounters are white and have deeply ingrained racism and anti-Indigenous bias. Like its
depiction of the importance of large family networks in First Nations communities, this
novel’s illustration of a chosen family also highlights additional important forms of
togetherness and belonging across different Indigenous cultures.
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The Impact of Extractive Industry on First Nations Communities
Johns ultimately reveals that Mackenzie’s dreams are connected to the impact of extractive
industry (much more so than grief and loss). Additionally, this theme connects Bad Cree to
other works of Indigenous literature, particularly works produced during the last several
decades as outside industries (like the petrochemical companies depicted in Bad Cree) have
gained an increasing foothold across Indigenous lands.
Mackenzie grows up in High Prairie, a small, remote Cree hamlet that saw little outside
involvement for centuries. The oil boom changed that, and after oil was discovered in the
area, companies descended upon the town. They promised jobs and prosperity, but
Mackenzie and her family observe that jobs given to Indigenous workers are often temporary
and less lucrative, and prosperity is limited. Although new businesses opened during the
years the oil company was active in the area, they quickly closed when the oil dried up, and
High Prairie was left much as it had been before the boom, although more dilapidated.
Additionally, the oil companies caused indiscriminate environmental damage, the impact of
which is not yet fully understood. Mackenzie observes, “We don’t know all the damage that
was done to the land when we started extracting from it” (214), and other characters in the
novel echo this sentiment.
Another dangerous effect of outside industry is the uptick in missing persons and murder
cases in the area. Both Canada and the United States are amid an epidemic of missing and
murdered Indigenous women, and industries like oil are notorious for the dangers that they
pose to women who live in and around the towns where plants, pipelines, and other
infrastructure are put in place. This epidemic is the result of a complex constellation of
factors including racism, the unwillingness of authorities to investigate crimes in which
Indigenous women are victims, and endemic violence amongst communities of oil workers.
Mackenzie and her family note that the oil industry “changes men into worse men” (214), and
they all know several women who went missing after the oil boom came to High Prairie. There
are many texts, both fiction and nonfiction, that explore this epidemic, and Bad Cree’s
interrogation of violence against Indigenous women places it in dialogue with other works of
Indigenous literature.
The wheetigo also becomes a key point of engagement with the impact of the extractive
industry, for it is a creature that is “made by greed” (214). The wheetigo’s relationship to greed
is a characteristic that is common across all the Indigenous traditions in which it appears.
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The decision to connect the oil boom with the figure of the wheetigo is a key way the author
brings Indigenous myth and oral tradition into dialogue with a contemporary issue an
increasing number of Indigenous and First Nations communities face. Mackenzie’s mother
and aunties date the first appearances of wheetigos in their community to the early days of
the oil boom, and none are surprised at this outcome. As Johns shows through the narrative,
the oil industry is largely motivated by greed, and this causes it to indiscriminately harm
Indigenous people, communities, and their land. Killing the wheetigo becomes a metaphor for
Indigenous resistance, resilience, and reclamation. In defeating it, Mackenzie frees not only
herself but also her family and community.
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Symbols & Motifs
Crows
Content Warning This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and substance
misuse.
Crows are one of the novel’s key symbols. They speak to the themes of Processing Grief and
Loss to Overcome Isolation and The Affirming Power of Family and Community. They also
help the author explore the unknowable, hard-to-parse nature of loss and the difficulty
Mackenzie has in processing her grief. Initially, Mackenzie encounters crows in the recurring
nightmares she has about her sister, Sabrina. She begins to see crows circling her as she
walks to work and perched on the fence outside of her apartment. She interprets the crows,
both in her dreams and in her daily life, as ominous messages. She is sure that they mean her
harm and that their message is foreboding.
Because she initially interprets her nightmares as a manifestation of unresolved grief over the
loss of her sister and her grandmother, the crows suggest haunting. They are the embodiment
of her inability to move beyond her loss, but she comes to understand that the crows are
protectors. They help her fight and kill the wheetigo, and she realizes that they began to
gather around her during her dreams to keep her safe. The mutability of the crows as a
symbol speaks to Mackenzie’s journey of self-discovery and healing: Like the crows, she
realizes that she misinterpreted many of her early feelings about Sabrina’s and her
grandmother’s deaths. She was sure that she needed to put space between herself and her
family and that they would never understand her grief. However, she ultimately realizes that
her family understands her better than anyone else and that she needs their presence in her
life to find healing and resilience.
Dreams
Mackenzie’s dreams contain important visions and messages. She is not the only member of
her family to experience prophetic dreams and visions; the shared ability to tell the future
through dreams becomes a trait that connects Mackenzie to her mother, sisters, cousins, and
aunties. In a novel so thematically interested in The Affirming Power of Family and
Community, dreams are a way for the author to explore the ties that bind people together
within families. Mackenzie’s dreams reveal the presence of a wheetigo, a mythically undead
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creature that feeds on greed and despair. The wheetigo isolates its victims before attacking
them, and banding together to protect themselves from the wheetigo becomes a central way
that Mackenzie and her family members renew and strengthen their connection. For
Mackenzie’s family, togetherness is the glue that binds everyone together, and they are
stronger together than they are apart. Their shared ability to dream prophetically and the
shared goal of defeating the wheetigo evidence the importance of togetherness, and dreams
become a powerful motif in the novel.
“Bad Cree”
The phrase “Bad Cree” is a motif as well as the text’s title. It is a pejorative that both the
novel’s protagonist and her mother use to label themselves, and it speaks to the theme of The
Affirming Power of Family and Community. “Bad Cree” refers to an individual who separates
themselves from their family and community. Mackenzie considers herself a “Bad Cree”
because she fled her family in their time of grief to live alone in the city. She does not discuss
their shared loss and knows that she has created a rift within the family. Similarly, her mother
considers herself a “Bad Cree” when she is unable to slow down and experience life within a
family. She gets caught up in the necessarily solitary hustle and bustle of powering through
grief by making her way through a series of to-do lists.
Although Mackenzie is less involved in her family’s affairs than her mother, each woman
understands that togetherness is a key familial and cultural value within their community.
Each loses some of their familial bond and community connection through their isolationism.
By the novel’s conclusion, each woman has reconnected with their family and community,
and each has vowed to remain connected through whatever difficulties might come their way
in the future.
Anti-Indigenous Prejudice
Mentions of anti-Indigenous prejudice and racism abound within the novel and become one
of its key motifs. These incidents speak to the theme of The Impact of Extractive Industry on
First Nations Communities, depicting social friction between Indigenous and white
individuals and the danger that outside industry poses for families like Mackenzie’s.
Moments of anti-Indigenous prejudice range from small microaggressions or threats to an
engagement with the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in both Canada
and the United States. Mackenzie and her family members are used to white men harassing
and catcalling them, and they develop a thick skin in these situations. They have also been in
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interactions during which the behavior of white men indicated the very real threat that they
posed to Indigenous women’s safety. Additionally, Mackenzie and her family discuss the
uptick in missing persons cases and murders in First Nations communities that are a
dangerous result of the oil boom and extractive industry.
The Wheetigo
The wheetigo (alternately spelled Windigo, Wendigo, Wiindigo, and others) is a mythical figure
found in many Indigenous and First Nations cultures in both the United States and Canada.
An undead, malevolent creature, it is capable of shapeshifting and feeds off greed, despair,
and vulnerability. Said to be borne out of unchecked greed, the wheetigo isolates individuals
to feed on them. In many cases, when a wheetigo feeds on a human, that human becomes a
wheetigo. Indigenous people traditionally interpret the wheetigo as a cautionary tale against
greed and additionally use it to instruct children about the dangers of obsession and the peril
that lies in store for them if they wander off alone. Within Bad Cree, the wheetigo symbolizes
the unchecked greed of oil companies who bring damage and blight to First Nations
communities and the white oil workers who often prey on Indigenous women.
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Important Quotes
1. Content Warning This section includes depictions of anti-Indigenous racism and substance
abuse.
“Before I look down, I know it’s there. The crow’s head I was clutching in my dream is now in
bed with me.”
(Chapter 1, Page 1)
Mackenzie’s macabre dream begins the action of this novel, and as she continues to reflect
on her nightmares, it becomes apparent that the dreams connect to her unresolved grief over
the death of her sister. Bad Cree uses supernatural elements to explore the processes of
grieving and healing, and Mackenzie’s dream is one of its most central supernatural
experiences.
2. “You can always tell the time of day in Vancouver by the crows. In the winter, they fly to
roost in Burnaby at 5 pm, at 8 pm in the summer. They move through the sky like a thunder
crowd, collecting more kin as they fly home.”
(Chapter 2, Page 17)
Crows are one of this novel’s key symbols. They represent unresolved grief and the pain of
losing a family member. As the narrative unfolds, Mackenzie learns more about crows and
begins to understand why they seem to haunt her, following her everywhere she goes.
3. “The dreams I’m having now are different. I can move and speak. But both types feel like a
warning, a deep siren of something to come.”
(Chapter 2, Page 21)
Dreams are one of the novel’s most important motifs. Like crows, they speak to the narrative’s
interest in unresolved grief and healing. Dreams are messages, but they also signal to
Mackenzie and everyone in her family that she has not yet processed Sabrina’s death.
4. “Kokum was my parent, just as much as my mom and dad. She was part of my life, like
waking up and going to sleep at night.”
(Chapter 3, Page 34)
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The Affirming Power of Family and Community is an important thematic focal point within the
novel. Although many of the characters struggle with grief, loss, and other issues, they find
strength and support in the friends and family who understand and love them.
5. “That might be the worst thing about death: It doesn’t stop anything. The world keeps
moving, even though the pain is just as real as the day it settled in.”
(Chapter 4, Page 44)
Mackenzie’s unresolved grief over the loss of her sister is at the core of the novel. This
passage reflects Mackenzie’s experience of grief at the beginning of the narrative. She has
yet to process her loss, and this absence of self-reflection mires her in unhappiness and
melancholy. Because she has not truly moved on, she feels just as anguished as she did on
the day that her sister died.
6. “This place wasn’t built to believe us, and white people will stamp out anything they don’t
understand.”
(Chapter 5, Page 62)
Racism and anti-Indigenous prejudice are evident in many of the interactions between
Indigenous and white people in the novel. The Indigenous characters learn to deal with
microaggressions and threats of violence but dealing with these kinds of stressors takes its
toll on the Indigenous characters.
7. “I thought if I stayed away after Sabrina’s death, the ugly would pass me by like a car that
has some better place to go. I didn’t know how wrong I would be.”
(Chapter 6, Page 68)
Processing Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation is a theme that permeates the novel,
underpinning all of Mackenzie’s thoughts and actions. She is resistant to the idea that her
dreams and visions are rooted in unresolved sadness over the loss of her sister and
grandmother, but she cannot deny that she has not yet processed their deaths.
8. “As soon as the doctors had moved kokum from our house into hospice, we know that
whatever hope we’d had that she’d make it was gone. For the whole last month she was there,
a family member was with her every hour of the day and night.”
(Chapter 7, Page 80)
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In this passage, Mackenzie recalls how the family rallied around her grandmother during the
final months of her life. The Affirming Power of Family and Community is one of Mackenzie’s
primary values, and part of her uneasiness in Vancouver is due to the nagging sense that she
should have gone home to visit her parents, sisters, and aunties at some point during the
past three years.
9. “One thing Cree people are supposed to do when we’re grieving is stop. Stop work, stop the
everyday of our lives. We’re supposed to rest.”
(Chapter 7, Page 81)
This quote, spoken by Mackenzie during a moment of reflection on her grandmother’s death,
speaks to the novel’s title. “Bad Cree” is an epithet of which Mackenzie worries she is
deserving. She feels this way due to her refusal to see her family during her time in Vancouver
and not participating in the grieving rituals she was supposed to attend after her sister died.
10. “A month after Sabrina died, I saw her on the bus. It wasn’t her, of course. But in one
moment of forgetting, a moment in another life where I didn’t lose her, I saw her.”
(Chapter 8, Page 107)
Memories of her sister haunt Mackenzie, so much so that she sees her face on the street, on
buses, and in crowds. This novel uses elements of the supernatural to explore Processing
Grief and Loss to Overcome Isolation. Moments like this support the idea that Mackenzie’s
dreams and visions are manifestations of unprocessed grief.
11. “When I left, I thought the result would be two-fold: I wouldn’t worry about anyone
anymore, and no one would have to worry about me. But now I see that’s not how it works.”
(Chapter 8, Page 112)
Part of what makes Mackenzie a “Bad Cree” in her mind is the fractured relationship she has
with her family and community after she moves to Vancouver. Togetherness, belonging, and
mutual support are important values within both her family unit and her hometown. Through
ignoring these teachings, Mackenzie loses important familial and community connections.
Her healing journey begins when she realizes the importance of community and belonging,
and this passage illustrates one of the key realizations she has during that process.
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12. “Sometimes the bad isn’t a hole, a lack, a place where something is missing. Sometimes
feeling bad is a true warning, something that could save you.”
(Chapter 9, Page 127)
Mackenzie makes this observation after she and her mother have a tense exchange with a
white man whom she can see means to harm them by her mother’s body language. There are
multiple such exchanges with predatory white men in the novel, and part of what Mackenzie
learns growing up is how to trust her instincts and keep herself safe during potentially
dangerous encounters.
13. “Mom, Auntie Verna, Kassidy, and now me have all had strange things happen in our
dreams. This has to be coming from somewhere in our blood, something that started long
before us.”
(Chapter 10, Page 142)
The importance of family and community ties is one of the novel’s key themes. Mackenzie
shares with her mother, aunties, sisters, and cousins the ability to see the future or receive
warnings through dreams. Realizing that she has this trait in common with her family is part
of Mackenzie’s journey back to her family after her self-imposed isolation in Vancouver in the
wake of her grandmother’s death.
14. “It’s only then that I look down and realize my hands are balled into fists. Clutched in one
of them is the piece of bloody flannel from Sabrina. When I blink, it doesn’t vanish.”
(Chapter 11, Page 160)
This moment is illustrative of how the novel uses horror tropes and imagery to discuss
themes related to Indigenous lives and experiences. Here, the cloth is revealed to be
saturated with blood from a wheetigo, a mythical creature who feeds on greed and victimizes
the High Prairie Cree community after predatory oil companies summoned it into existence.
15. “I wonder if this is our family tradition, tamping down dreams before they have a chance
to take shape, cutting off a part of ourselves once the fear sets in.”
(Chapter 12, Page 166)
Mackenzie’s desire to stop her dreams represents her unwillingness to come to terms with
grief and loss. Just as she shares the ability to dream prophetically with her family members,
she also shares the habit of trying to hide from unpleasant experiences that nonetheless help
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individuals to process loss and find resilience amid grief.
16. “Not all hurt is visible.”
(Chapter 12, Page 168)
The impact of grief and loss on both Mackenzie and her family is one of this novel’s key
thematic focal points. Although Mackenzie appears “normal” to many of the people she
encounters in Vancouver, she nurses a deep inner melancholy that she initially struggles to
process and move past.
17. “There’s more than one way to eat someone up. They feed off greed, and our world
creates enough of that to keep them nice and full.”
(Chapter 12, Page 170)
The wheetigo is a legendary creature in Indigenous myth. It is an undead beast said to feed
off greed and to kill its kind. People associate it with winter, often using it as a cautionary tale
told to children to prevent them from running off alone. Here, the girls speculate that this
creature had something to do with Sabrina’s disappearance from the gravel pit.
18. “The wheetigo didn’t appear here by accident. Greed lured them here, like bears to
spawning fish. Or maybe they were turned here, created and set loose. Just like those damn
pipelines, built underneath our feet and then abandoned.”
(Chapter 13, Page 180)
Wheetigos appear in many different Indigenous traditions. Here, the author uses the mythical
creature to explore the adverse impact that outside, extractive, non-Indigenous industry and
its overwhelmingly white oil workers have on Indigenous communities’ safety.
19. “The wheetigo said it’s already been in our home. It said it watches Tracey as she sleeps. I
didn’t bring it back home from the dream tonight. It was already here.”
(Chapter 15, Pages 211 - 212)
This passage is a metaphor for how the oil boom harmed Indigenous communities. With the
promise of jobs and economic development, it made its way into reserve life. However, rather
than deliver prosperity, it brought pain and destruction.
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20. “I think about the toxic environment in the oil patch, the high rate of depression among
people based in camps for weeks and months on end, working every day. The way the
industry changes men into worse men. The spike in missing Indigenous women, girls, and
two-spirit people with the rise in industry.”
(Chapter 15, Page 212)
Mackenzie’s family and community feel the impact of the oil boom is felt in various ways. The
extractive nature of outside industry in rural, First Nations communities is one of the novel’s
key themes and allows Johns to engage with lived experience in Indigenous communities in
the Americas. Here, Mackenzie reflects on the damage that the oil boom brought to High
Prairie and feels a deep sense of sadness and loss on behalf of her community.
21. “This thing feeds off the helpless and the needy, and we are none of those things.”
(Chapter 15, Page 217)
The author shows that solidarity and cohesion are key to defeating creatures like the
wheetigo, or the greed of an oil company. Mackenzie’s mother decides that because they are
united, they are strong and capable of fighting back against the wheetigo. They are
successful in their quest to vanquish the wheetigo because they remain united, and their
experience with the mythic creature teaches them the value of togetherness.
22. “I’ve always had trouble with that. The letting go part. I’m a bad Cree sometimes.”
(Chapter 16, Page 225)
Both Mackenzie and her mother describe themselves as “Bad Crees.” What they mean in each
case is that they struggle with togetherness and connectivity to their community. Because
both familial and community unity are important Cree cultural values, each woman views
herself as having failed to live up to the values with which she was raised. Mackenzie’s
journey of self-discovery and self-healing is rooted in the idea of returning to community, and
it is only through reconnecting with her family that she can heal.
23. “I think about the crows that have been following me since the dreams started, both in
real life and in dreams, the protectors I now understand have been on my side since the
beginning.”
(Chapter 16, Page 230)
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Crows are an important symbol in the novel. They speak to the unknowability of grief in its
early stages and how Mackenzie can understand her feelings better once she takes the time
to process them. Although she thinks them an ominous sign at first, she realizes after some
thorough analysis that they are, in fact, helpers. The crows, like her grief, changed form upon
further reflection and understanding.
24. “‘All of this pain can end.’ Sabrina’s voice pulls me back to her. ‘Just come to me.’”
(Chapter 17, Page 237)
The wheetigo is a figure found in many different Indigenous myths and traditions. Part of its
power lies in its ability to shape-shift and mimic other forms. Here, it is alluring because it has
taken the form of Sabrina and promises to absolve Mackenzie of her guilt for having left
Sabrina in the woods. In reality, Mackenzie herself must come to terms with her actions. The
wheetigo cannot “forgive” her.
25. “I created all that hurt. Not coming back for Sabrina’s funeral and not being here for all of
you.”
(Chapter 18, Page 250)
It is only at the end of the novel that Mackenzie realizes her mistakes. She is a “Bad Cree”
because she does not allow herself to grieve or help her family through their grief. Despite
past wrongdoings, she also realizes that there is good within her. She vows to do better in the
future and knows that the bond she shares with her family is unbreakable.
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Essay Topics
1. How does Bad Cree explore the tension between maintaining Indigenous cultural identity
and pressures to assimilate into dominant, white Canadian society?
2. How does the novel integrate Indigenous folklore, mythology, and oral tradition into its
narrative structure? How do they relate to the characters’ broader personal and cultural
struggles?
3. Analyze how the novel addresses mental health and trauma among Indigenous
communities, including intergenerational trauma and racist violence. How do the characters’
experiences with death and violence—on the personal and systemic level—influence their
behaviors and relationships?
4. Compare and contrast the experiences of Indigenous characters living in urban versus rural
settings as depicted in the novel. How does the setting influence their experiences and
interactions with their culture and community? How does location influence the narrative?
5. How does the novel’s portrayal of grief and loss challenge traditional, linear narratives of
emotional healing?
6. Examine how Bad Cree fits within the Indigenous horror subgenre. What elements of the
traditional horror genre does the novel incorporate, and how does it adapt or subvert these
narrative conventions through an Indigenous lens?
7. What is the role of individual and collective memory in Bad Cree?
8. Examine the role of rituals and traditional practices in Bad Cree. How do these examples
contribute to the characters’ sense of identity or lack thereof (for example, Mackenzie’s
relationship to sage)?
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9. Explore how Bad Cree combines reality and the supernatural. How does the novel integrate
supernatural elements into its narrative, and what effect does this have on its key themes?
10. Examine the novel’s representation of systemic anti-Indigenous prejudice and racism
through the lens of the microaggressions and threat of violence various characters
experience. How do these textual examples contribute to the novel’s broader critique of
societal prejudice and racism against Indigenous people in the Americas?
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