Bad Cree

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.