Alliah Bolanos

Professor Morgan

ENGL 101

October 28, 2022

“The Marrow Thieves” Pre/Post Reading Questions

The topics that I got from the book is a bone marrow, Indigenous people, and their ability

to dream. The knowledge that I know from this is that a bone marrow is a piece of a bone found

in the center of most bones and blood vessels. You can even get surgery which is called a bone

marrow transplant. And to dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that

usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The knowledge I have

about the Indigenous people is that they fought hard for their land and for their rights as well.

They are people who are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to

people and the environment. They also have a distant language, culture and beliefs. Their

economic, social and political systems are different than ours because it’s only within their

group. They resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as

distinctive peoples and communities. People get them mixed up with natives which are a

complete opposite. Natives are defined as “belonging to a particular place at birth" which in

other words they have certain lands for certain tribes. Indigenous are defined as “produced,

living, or existing naturally in a particular region or environment” which means they stay in a

group with other indigenous people.

In my opinion the book is going to be about how their life was growing up and the

struggles that came from them. The information that I got from the quote was from where it says

“the way whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar
spirits.” This quote spoked to me because the way I read this it showed me that the characters in

the book are going to go through so much struggles in life. Every culture goes through tough

times especially when the parents do so much just so their children can have a better life. This

book’s theme is very political and educational. Even though I haven’t read the book yet I did get

to read the quote which gave me that feeling. This book is both political and educational because

the educational part is in both the beginning and end part of the quote. And the political part is

the middle part where it starts with “the way whites are taking care of the Indians” and a little

part of the beginning where it says “the way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams”.

Others may not think that that the book’s theme is political because you wouldn’t get that from

the quote. But when I read this quote and the back of the book it shows me a lot of political

points. I say this because Indians have gone through a lot to get their culture and lands back

regardless if it’s Natives or Indigenous, they all suffered. I can’t wait to read this book so I can

gain more knowledge about the struggles they go through and reading how the author describe

every part of their survival.