Warrior Girl Unearthed

• Author: Angeline Boulley
• Genre: YA Mystery
• Publication Date: May 2, 2023
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Series: Firekeeper’s Daughter #2

Perry Firekeeper-Birch was ready for her Summer of Slack but instead, after a fender bender that was entirely not her fault, she’s stuck working to pay back her Auntie Daunis for repairs to the Jeep.

Thankfully she has the other outcasts of the summer program, Team Misfit Toys, and even her twin sister Pauline. Together they ace obstacle courses, plan vigils for missing women in the community, and make sure summer doesn’t feel so lost after all.

But when she attends a meeting at a local university, Perry learns about the “Warrior Girl”, an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in the museum archives, and everything changes. Perry has to return Warrior Girl to her tribe. Determined to help, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items. The university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains, and Perry and the Misfits won’t let it go on any longer.

Using all of their skills and resources, the Misfits realize a heist is the only way to bring back the stolen artifacts and remains for good. But there is more to this repatriation than meets the eye as more women disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse. As secrets and mysteries unfurl, Perry and the Misfits must fight to find a way to make things right – for the ancestors and for their community.

Ever since reading Boulley’s incredible debut, I have been waiting to get the time to read the follow up, another book in the series. It’s important to read them sequentially though, since reading this does have spoilers for the first book, taking place years after the first book and involving different characters. Special shout out to Erin @ Still Life, with Cracker Crumbs — a fellow blogger who I’ve gotten to know and admire, for sending me a copy of this wonderful book. If you haven’t checked out her blog yet, I encourage you to do so. She’s a bit of a superwoman, so no matter what your jam is, she’s probably got a post on it.

To start with, the twins from the first book that are nieces to young Daunis are growing up fast. They’re done with school for the summer and aren’t thrilled about the interruption to their planned Summer of Slack, but make the best of it. I really enjoyed seeing all the ways that the Anishinaabe tribe came together to keep members engaged across all age groups. The older teens are involved in an internship to learn about different career roles within the tribe, and how each of these roles fits beside others to form a wider picture of the tribe. 

In Firekeeper’s Daughter, Daunis deals with some pretty difficult topics, and I was surprised to see that this book only touches on some of the issues that arise to affect Perry’s life. Instead of really getting into these topics, it feels like Perry’s storyline reads a lot more sheltered and young, while Daunis had a lot of tough issues on her plate at a similar age and didn’t necessarily have the same supports that Perry has in the present day. Although I will admit that Daunis left some big shoes to fill, and I was really happy to see her adult self playing one of Perry’s strongest cheerleaders and supports, along with Pauline, Perry’s twin. I would have liked to see Boulley dive a little deeper into these topics that are impacting Perry’s life which people unfamiliar with Anishinaabe culture might not be aware of, such as discrimination, enrolled status, and 

Although Erin was wonderful and gifted me a print copy of this book because it’s really good PLUS set in her area, I’m glad that I squeezed this in as an audiobook read. Isabella Star LeBlanc does a much better job with Anishinaabemowin (the Anishinaabe language) that I could ever hope of doing, and I really enjoyed not only her easy pronunciation of these unfamiliar words, but also her storytelling skills and ability to convincingly portray the different ways of speaking among generational groups—teens are more likely to use slang words and speak faster, while elders tend to pull out a story to maximum dramatic effect, and LeBlanc has a wonderful ability to switch between teens and adults of all ages effortlessly (or at least appearing to be effortless). 

Boulley strikes a nice balance between including plenty of Anishinaabemowin and explanations of what it means within the paragraph in a natural way, and going over some of the tribe’s rituals or practices, including both traditional and more contemporary traditions. At the center of this story is an issue that it’s shameful is still an issue—the collection of Indigenous bones and artifacts to exhibit rather than repatriating them to the tribes. There is a good explanation of NAGPRA, the federal law designed to help tribes have their ancestral remains and ritual objects returned to the tribe. 

When Perry starts to intern as an archaeological assistant, she sees the remains of an Indigenous woman that are being exhibited in a local museum along with some objects that she can trace back to her own family line, she really starts to take things seriously, and understand the importance of the work she’s being trained to do. But when legal efforts don’t have the desired outcome, Perry and her crew (The Misfit Toys) decide that the only way to bring Warrior Girl and the other dozen ancestors home is to steal them. 

Along the way, Perry starts to learn about the kind of person she wants to be, and begins to really find her place in the world, after comparing herself to Pauline, the twin who has her future mapped out, while Perry basically has all of her options open to her as she works to discover her own path in life. The one major issue that the story does dive into is the topic of MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls), and ongoing fight against the significantly increased risk that Indigenous women face in the US and Canada. To learn more about this issue, click here. 

Overall, this was a powerful read, although I found that I preferred Firekeeper’s Daughter a tiny bit over this one. However, I liked that while it addresses the MMIWG crisis, it does so in a way that humanizes the people most impacted—not only the missing person, but also the collective echoes these disappearances and deaths have to both their loved ones and those within the wider community of tribe members and their direct affiliates. In addition, I can’t help but think of the wider ripple effect that came after centuries of colonization, physical and cultural genocide, and forced displacement have left a legacy of devaluation of both Native bodies, and doubly so for Native women, leading to a passing down of intergenerational trauma at the same time as the protective influence of community and ritual. I thought that the book did a good job of finding the joy as well as the pain that comes with being Native American/First Nations, or at least it did through my own lens. Books like this really make me see the ways in which Indigenous groups around the world really do share some significant similarities, and allowed me to find a lot more identification with the characters, even if our stories are different. And I thought this did a great job of showing the importance of family supports on people of all ages, but especially as these teens start growing up and facing issues that can have a major effect on the path their life takes. It was wonderful to see an adult Daunis having a positive impact on the lives of her nieces and others within the tribe, and I especially appreciated the valuable and important role that tribe elders play in the story even with the comic relief provided by the older women.  

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase through my links.