Enduring colonial violence: Trauma, community and resistance in Katherena Vermette’s The Break

The present article argues that Katherena Vermette’s (Michif) novel The Break (2016) operates as a collective act of witnessing, constructed through interwoven narratives that foreground the lived realities of Indigenous women under colonial oppression in Canada. Through close analysis of the entangled stories of Phoenix Stranger and Emily Traverse, the article examines how Vermette’s use of shifting perspectives and intimate focalization conveys the individuality of intergenerational trauma while situating it within a shared history of systemic violence. To this end, the article considers the contrasting ways in which both characters respond to trauma, strategies that range from self-destructive to community-driven and how these responses reveal the novel’s larger exploration of resilience, healing and identity. Finally, the article underscores how The Break documents and ultimately reshapes harm into a narrative of resistance, affirming the transformative power of storytelling as both a site of decolonial advocacy and a vital means of sustaining community survival.