The novel Motorcycles & Sweetgrass takes place on the Otter Lake Anishnawbe reserve in Ontario. The book was a finalist for the Governor General's literary awards. It is written by Ojibway writer Drew Haden Taylor. In the novel characters struggle to maintain Ojibway beliefs. Dakota struggles to maintain her Ojibway beliefs because her parents did not teach her. Virgil also has trouble maintaining Ojibway beliefs since he was taught little about the religion. Maggie struggles because she does not believe in Nanabush or the stories about him. The characters Dakota, Virgil and Maggie struggle to maintain their Ojibway beliefs and traditions while living in a modern Canadian society.

Dakota is the cousin of Virgil. Dakota struggles to maintain her Ojibway belief because her parents didn’t teach her. In chapter 23 Virgil tells Dakota about how John is Nanabush. Dakota asks; “’Virgil, who’s Nanabush?’” (298). Dakota clearly has not learned about Ojibway religion since she does not know who Nanabush is. Nanabush is the creator in Native religion. In the same conversation in between Virgil and …show more content…
The first example of this is in chapter 18 when she is talking to Virgil. Maggie says to Virgil “And you did all this to talk…to gossip behind my back, and come up with the idea that John is in fact, Nanabush, a fictional character from Native mythology” (211). She clearly does not believe in native mythology since she calls Nanabush fictional. A second example of Maggie not believing is in the same chapter when she is thinking to herself. She thinks; “Nanabush. Maggie didn’t believe those stories when she was a kid, and there was less chance that she’d believe them today. Those stories were fun, for little kids”(214). By what is in this quotation, Maggie thinks that Nanabush is made up, some type of stories for kids like Santa Claus. Maggie struggles to maintain native beliefs because of these