“Sorry, Mom.” Bugz slid the device into her pocket and placed a bowl on the table, nudging it toward her mother. She placed the second in front of herself and sat.

“Anama’edaa,” her father said.

Bugz’s mom said a quick prayer in Ojibwe, thanking the Spirits, Mother Earth, and the Creator for the meal—and, yes, the animal for giving his life to sustain theirs. As she finished, the family tore into their dinner.

“How’s it going with the new school, babe?” Bugz’s father asked her mother.

“Not bad, but we’re hitting a snag with the government. They want us to do another needs assessment.” Bugz chewed the tender meat and savored it as she listened to her mother speak. She loved moose, the finest of all wild meats as far as she knew. Her mother continued. “It doesn’t make sense. Practically all the kids live on the Rez, and yet Bugz and Waawaate have to take the bus to the school in town.”

“Same old story,” Frank grunted. “It’s not like they teach Anishinaabe kids what they need to know in school anyway.”

“Well, that’s the goal. Have a school that works for us.”

“I don’t know why we have to go to school anyways,” Waawaate piped up. “We do most of our homework online.”

“Correction,” Frank said between bites. “You’re supposed to do most of your school work online. Last I checked, you hadn’t done anything.” Everyone at the table smiled at the joke.

“I did some.” Waawaate drew out his answer for laughs.

“Waawaate’s right, though,” Bugz said after she stopped giggling. “The only thing we really do together is first period, homeroom. The rest of the time we’re just on our own, submitting assignments online and watching tutorials on our phones.”

“It didn’t used to be like that, you know.” Frank rose and cleaned his bowl. “When your mom and I were kids, we were in big classes all the time with all the other students. All day. Every day. Then when we were in twelfth grade, bam, they canceled our school year. Can you imagine that? We never had a graduation.”

“We had a grad,” Summer said.

“Yeah, a virtual grad. But you know what I mean. We didn’t get to go party with our friends, or walk across a real stage,” Frank responded. “Anyways, that first pandemic changed things. The next two after that even more so.”

“Thanks for the history lesson, Dad.” Waawaate grinned. “And everything cost less than a dollar too, right?”

“School is basically just a warehouse for kids,” Bugz said. “There aren’t enough teachers to actually teach us. They’re just trying to keep us off the streets and out of our houses so our parents can work.”