Toronto At Dreamer's Rock By Drew Hayden Taylor

Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock is a magical story showcasing the past, present, and future of Canadian First Nations people from Rusty, a teenager's perspective. The author Drew Hayden Taylor shows how quickly and drastically someone's life can change based on experiences and people who come into their lives. Rusty at first isn’t confident as a First Nations boy and has little care about his culture, but later on, is taught the importance of it which leads him to try to make his dreams of becoming Grand Chief a reality. Rusty learns that getting a proper education will help him achieve his goals, which changes his negative opinion of school. Rusty starts off with low self-esteem and looks down on himself and his culture. Later he learns that he

“The girl doesn’t know I exist. I don’t know if it’s because I’m Indian or because she thinks I’m a flake”. At the beginning of the story, Rusty doesn’t believe that the girl he likes would ever like him back because he is Indigenous. This causes him to become more ashamed of who he is and he doesn’t try to talk to her. “This says I’m going to be Grand Chief of the Aboriginal government. And it’s dated 2023”. “That’s a pretty powerful title, Rusty. I hope you can find it in yourself to live up to it”. Rusty gains confidence because of Michael's prophecy about him becoming Grand chief. Rusty decides to try and work hard to fulfill this dream. Rusty learning the importance of confidence in his culture is very important to his future, his future is also later affected by his stance on

He later realized that this wasn’t the path he wanted to go down so he gave up drinking and his reckless behaviour. “He looks around, shrugs then holds up his beer bottle in a mock salute. To Dreamer’s Rock, the one place on Manitoulin you won’t find beer bottles”. Rusty went to a place that was sacred to his culture and decided to get drunk there. This would have been seen as very disrespectful and Rusty didn’t acknowledge or care much about this. “All I know is I came up here to get drunk and be alone for a while. So much for that idea. I never thought about all this Indian stuff before. I just sort of took it for granted. I guess I have some more thinking to do. I think the main thing about being Indian or Odawa is … we’re better-looking. Rusty learned the greater meaning of who he is and the importance of respecting his culture. He decided it was time to move on from his heavy drinking and start focusing on figuring out who he is. Rusty is able to learn how to respect himself and grows to become interested in finding out who he is, showing another form of character