Empire of Wild

When Joan reaches out to Ajean for help in getting Victor back, Ajean recommends the use of bone salt. Ajean explains that some individuals grow bones out of random body parts; once those bones fall off, they can be scraped or ground to produce a fine powder. Ajean explains to Joan, “[I]f you need to contain the rogarou, you put it around him. If you need to keep your house safe, you put it around that” (147).

The bone salt symbolizes the continuity of tradition and history and the power of ancestral wisdom that is passed down through Indigenous culture. Bones are enduring and remain when the rest of the body decays. Bones thus symbolize how individuals who may have been dead for a long time still have a haunting presence and their wisdom can still be pertinent. Joan is not familiar with bone salt, how to make it, or how to use it, but Ajean passes down this wisdom to a younger generation. While all individuals are going to die eventually, something is going to remain after they are gone, and this can include their bones as well as their teachings.

Since bones persist for a long time, they are also a reminder that the past does not simply disappear: Traces of it always remain. The bone salt that Joan uses comes from bones grown by her mother and brothers; her mother’s people can be traced back to the Red River. In the Prologue to the novel, Dimaline also describes how “this salt came from the actual bones of one particular Red River family, who drew their own boundaries when the hand of God did not reach down to do it for them” (2). The Red River colony was a 19th-century settlement located in what is present-day North Dakota and the province of Manitoba; the settlement was home to a significant Métis community and was the birthplace of Louis Riel, a Métis leader who led uprisings against the Canadian government in the 1800s. Through the symbolism of the bone salt, Dimaline evokes a sense of interconnection between different Métis communities in Canada. The bone salt symbolizes a desire for control and safety: The early Red River settlers used it to try to lay claim to a place from which they would no longer be displaced, and Joan later uses it to demarcate boundaries that a rogarou cannot cross.