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-Told through the eyes of a survivor of sexual abuse and is trying to overcome the trauma of sexual abuse.
-Bernice was molested at a very young age by her uncle. She would watch t.v with her uncle Larry and he would touch her private area. Uncle Larry also raped her before the age of 11, he attacked her in her little room under the stairs.
-When Bernice got raped, she was traumatized obviously and because of what she had experienced, she decides to stop talking.
-Bernice may think that it is fine for her to be sexually abused by these men because of what happened to her when she was younger.

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-The tree of life plays both a symbolic and a cultural role in this book “In actuality, the tree itself represents that there is wellness, beauty, and potential for regeneration through nature… Metaphorically, it is a reminder that life is outside ourselves, that regardless of what is going on in our minds, our spirits and bodies have an obligation to our natural environment to behave in reciprocal, healing and positive ways.”
-The tree itself represents that there is wellness, beauty and potential for regeneration through nature.
-The Pimatisewin is a large part of this work, means "the good life"
-The owl in her dreams is her, she dreams of herself as owl trying to find herself in the dust of the world

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-"Somebody referred to residential schools as the bomb that went off in your community. I think that colonization is a bomb, and now that that bomb’s gone off, Bernice, as a protagonist — she’s sort of somewhere back here, but her great grandmother was hit first.” In Birdie, as in life, Bernice and other Aboriginal people are not alone with having to contend with the aftermath of individual and historical trauma.
-Cree law, Lindberg says, is relational — one very important tenet is that all human beings treat each other like relatives, that we have a reciprocal obligation to take care of one another as if we were universally bound by family ties.
-Lola is also affected by the bomb, and it is borne out in the novel.

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-Indigenous people have had a history fraught with colonization, abuse, and discrimination in Canada, and we know that it continues today.

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https://unu.edu/publications/articles/residual-colonialism-in-the-21st-century.html

https://www.speakertv.com/news/latest-news/dont-fooled-colonialism-still-exists-today/

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In Tracey Lindberg’s novel Birdie, fiction illuminates fact through the utilization of the subjects including sexual abuse, structuralism, and colonialism to epitomize the lives of Indigenous Canadians in both the past and the present tense.

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In Tracey Lindberg's novel Birdie, fiction illuminates fact through the use of metaphors to exemplify the lives of Indigenous Canadians and the trauma they experience in both the past and present tense.

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https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/maze-of-injustice/

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Canada is a nation of opportunity and freedom. People from all around the world immigrate to Canada to start a new life, to get away from war or poverty. Canada opens their arms to them and accepts them, but how about those who were here from the very beginning, before anyone else landed in Canada. Over the past decades, Indigenous Canadians have been oppressed by society through issues including colonialism and sexual assault. Tracey Lindberg's novel Birdie addresses these issues by having it told through the eyes of an Indigenous Canadian woman. Excellent authors use their works of fiction to project real world facts in order to convey the messages to the reader. Tracey Lindberg does this in her novel by using metaphors to exemplify the lives of Indigenous Canadians and the trauma they experience in both the past and present tense.

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https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14631-eng.htm - Each year, more than 460,000 people are sexually assaulted in Canada. Out of every 1000 assailants, 997 walk free. Most cases aren't reported to the police because the victim is usually black mailed to not to tell anyone, and those cases that have been reported are usually charged or just recorded as a crime (N.d, 2014). Out of these 460,000 victims, the vast majority are from the indigenous community. 57% of indigenous women have been sexually assaulted, most assailants were reported be someone out of the indigenous community, and the rest were someone from their family or someone they knew.