Warrior Girl Unearthed

Locations
Call Number: Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline, Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Pittsfield Branch, Traverwood Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-23-2024
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 04-29-2024
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-02-2024
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024
Downtown Teen, 1st Floor 4-week checkout	Teen Fiction / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-19-2024
Pittsfield Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Westgate Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 04-26-2024
Malletts Teen Books 4-week checkout	Teen Book / Fiction / Mystery / Boulley, Angeline	4-week checkout	Due 05-06-2024

With the rising number of missing Indigenous women, her family's involvement in a murder investigation, and grave robbers profiting off her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry takes matters into her own hands to solve the mystery and reclaim her people's inheritance.
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.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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Summary / Annotation
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Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Teen thriller submitted by mowjac on June 11, 2023, 7:46pm Steeped in Ojibway culture and language, this second book by Boulley is action packed, topical and has a great strong female character. While some of the secondary characters are thin, the family and culture surrounding Perry gives the reader a sense of modern indigenous community.

Also recommended for adults submitted by mbertrand on June 11, 2023, 8:33pm Very much in the spirit and world of her first book the Firekeeper's Daughter, Warrior Girl Unearthed is as much of a page turner while also opening eyes about serious issues facing native american women today. Though at times the plot came secondary to issues, I was grateful for an enjoyable, culturally-grounded introduction to the repatriation movement in a way that really helped me to understand what was at stake for indian communities.

SO Good! submitted by literary_punk on June 25, 2023, 7:12pm I like Perry a bit better than Daunis. My only criticism is that the big reveal sort of came out of nowhere; and that I wish everything had gone off without a hitch. Though I will say that maybe someday we'll get a story or book about Stormy Nodin, which could be pretty great.

Another Great Book by Angeline Boulley! submitted by pamhockey25 on June 26, 2023, 12:02pm I've been looking forward to reading Angeline Boulley's second book ever since reading FIREKEEPERS DAUGHTER. This book follows many of the characters introduced in the first book. So it might be worthwhile rereading it to get them fresh in your mind. However, that being said, this can be read as a standalone--although you will appreciate the characters more if you've read FD.

This book picks up 10 years after the events in the first book and focuses on Perry Firekeeper-Birch, who is both Native American, (Objiwe) and Black. She identifies most strongly with her Native American heritage. She is a twin to Pauline (the 'good' twin). The summer before their Junior year, Pauline is doing an internship while Perry plans to spend the summer relaxing and fishing. A bear walking in front of Perry's car changes her plans when she ends up owing money for the repairs and is forced into doing the same internship as Pauline.

Perry's first assignment is working for the museum and she starts learning about the cultural artifacts that were taken and not returned per the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, NAGPRA. As she learns more about what's happening, she decides to take matters into her own hands and reclaim what belongs to the tribe.

The book is excellent. I learned a lot, loved the characters, and highly recommend it. I look forward to more from Angeline Boulley! Someone noted that listening to the book gave them an appreciation for the language, and I plan to do that next.

A worthy sequel submitted by redwood on June 26, 2023, 7:04pm This sequel to Firekeeper’s Daughter, which I loved, follows Perry, the younger cousin of Daunis from the first book, ten years later. Perry identifies as a bit of a slacker, and she’s not planning to join her twin, Pauline, in the Sault Tribe’s summer internship program. That changes when she crashes her car and has to pay Auntie Daunis back for the repairs. She’s placed with Cooper Turtle at the tribal museum, an odd duck who turns out to be a fantastic mentor, introducing Perry to issues around NAGPRA and repatriation. Perry yearns to put the titular Warrior Girl, a skeleton held at a fictional college, to rest. Cooper insists on following procedure, but Perry doesn’t understand why they can’t just steal back what was stolen from their people, especially given how slimy the academics and collectors are (there were moments that made me gag).

Of course, there are also twists and turns. As someone who professionally runs internship programs, I was horrified by this one: interns are switched between placements with little warning, and every Friday, they all have to compete against each other in weird team challenges (To my relief, the ending had an explanation for this travesty of a program). Perry befriends the other members of her “Team Misfit Toys,” who are all sweet characters. As the summer goes on, Perry continues wading into issues that are ethically clear-cut but without clear-cut solutions. The novel also deals with the epidemic of sexual violence against Native women (including fallout from events in Firekeeper) and MMIW.

Firekeeper’s Daughter was a story that Boulley had been itching to tell since she was a teenager. Warrior Girl Unearthed feels like it’s from a different part of her heart—perhaps, knowing what a blockbuster her first novel became, she wrote this one to be more didactic. It’s got a little less romance and a lot more citation. It manages to be didactic without being grating because there is sincerity and emotional purpose behind the didacticism, and while the plots and characters are a bit flatter than those in Firekeeper, they’re still interesting and lovable.

Great read submitted by dailyreader on July 14, 2023, 10:50am This book was both a page turner and an education about harms that continue against indigenous people. I highly recommend the book as a way to understand cultures and policies as well as to get swept away in a good story.

YA for Everyone submitted by khrobinson on August 4, 2023, 7:24pm The second novel is set in the same community as Firekeepers Daughter, but several years later, with a main character who was a minor character in the first book. It absolutely stands on its own, and tells and compelling fictional story about a very real present day issue.

A great summer* read for anyone, and may lead to further action *not just for summer ;) submitted by AndAReaderToo on August 17, 2023, 12:46am As others mention, this is the second book by Angeline Boulley, and while it contains a few characters from the original, they aren't the stars of this book and it isn't necessary to have read Firekeeper's Daughter beforehand. This reads well as a standalone book (or if you're too foggy to remember all those characters), but it does act as a more satisfying epilogue for those characters.

Technically, the book follows the character of a Native and Black teen through her summer internship program as she goes off the beaten path, gets into trouble, hurts and repairs relationships, learns from her mistakes, and grows as an individual. That makes it sound boring, which it isn't, but I don't want to give spoilers. ;)

This book delves into some of the inner workings of the Native American Graves Repatriation Act and how that plays out with different types of institutions. The book includes many informative resources throughout, and then compiled at the end. After following up on those, I was surprised to find that, after 30 years, our own esteemed university AHEM right here is still sitting on almost half of the 1675 human remains of Native Americans that haven't yet been returned to tribes. The book is clearly intended to create some momentum for repatriation acts such as these, and to stir up some action.