In Violet Duncan's first work of middle-grade fiction, Buffalo Dreamer, the Plains Cree and Taino from Kehewin Cree Nation author, performer, and educator tells an intimate and absorbing story of an Indigenous girl encountering hard truths.
Twelve-year-old Summer usually spends her summers on the Cree reservation in Alberta, Canada, where her mother's family lives. She hangs out with her favorite cousin, Autumn, picks berries with her kokom (grandmother), and braids sweetgrass with her mother. This season, however, is different--Summer begins having intense dreams. In her dreams, Summer is running away from one of the many residential boarding schools that stole Indigenous children away from their families and forced them to assimilate to white Canadian culture. The dreams become nightmares when it's revealed unmarked graves have been found at the residential school her mosom (grandfather) was once forced to attend. At a rally, community members share their traumatic experiences at the boarding school and the tween hears a story she knows intimately--is Summer dreaming the past?
Buffalo Dreamer, told in Summer's kind and heartfelt first-person narration, is intimate and compelling. Duncan makes a violent and devastating component of Indigenous history emotionally appropriate for middle-graders by connecting the author's rich and sensitive past to a hopeful present: "We are the living proof of our ancestors' resilience and the strong spirit of our people." This deeply and proficiently written novel is a welcome addition to the often-underexplored history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer