The Marrow Thieves: Story: Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Miig picks up where he left off on the night when Rose arrived. He says that the earth broke: the north melted, sea levels rose, and there was a flurry of tornados, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Pipelines broke and poisoned forests and lakes. Millions of people died, and the survivors migrated inland. Those in power refused to change. They made people work harder and longer as the sun disappeared for weeks at a time. People got sicker, stopped dreaming, and started to kill themselves and others. Many refused to work. Governments, churches, and scientists started to look for a cure to restore dreaming.

People with money hired sleep counselors and hypnotists, and many people turned to Indigenous people like the New Agers once did, with openness and curiosity. When the Indigenous people refused to let others into their ceremonies, the white people started to look for ways to take the ability to dream and co-op the ceremonies. The government began to move Indigenous people off of their lands, just like in the past. The Indigenous people still had each other, so they weren't worried until the church and the scientists came up with the solution to the dreamlessness.

They first asked for Indigenous volunteers and paid people, but not many volunteered. They started pulling people out of prisons, and rumors spread that they'd come up with a way to pull dreams out of Indigenous bones. People were taken away and never came back. Miig says that it got to the point where the scientists needed more bodies, so they turned to history and looked at the residential schools to build new ones. Now, Indigenous people go to the schools and their dreams are stolen from their bone marrow. Indigenous people die, join the ancestors, and hope that there are enough dreams left in the world for the next generation.