David A. Robertson and Scott B. Henderson’s 7 Generations A Plains Cree Saga marks its 15th anniversary this year, and the newly released collected edition offers a powerful reminder of just how emotionally devastating, and quietly resonant, this story remains. It’s been recoloured and relettered, which makes its message all the more powerful. At its centre is Edwin, a young man who cannot find a reason to live. When his mother discovers him at death’s door during an unplanned visit, even a desperate rush to the hospital seems insufficient. The book opens not with hope, but with exhaustion.
It’s a moment many people encounter at some point, particularly during the holidays, when expectations, memory, and pressure collide. In that sense, Edwin’s despair feels painfully recognisable. I couldn’t help but feel for him, namesake coincidence aside. What changes everything, though, is the way life reasserts itself, not as a lecture or a solution, but through story.
His mother begins to share the experiences of their ancestors, revealing how pain moves cyclically through generations. Her hope is that those stories can help give her boy the strength needed to go on. As each generation carries something heavy, what differs is how that weight is borne, reshaped, or passed forward. Although she doesn’t want to burden this lad, her hope is not to erase the suffering. She wants to help him understand where it comes from and how it fits into a much longer continuum.
The book’s flashbacks, if that term even applies, are where this illustrated work finds its emotional power. These are not digressions, but parallel lives unfolding alongside Edwin’s present. There are four ancestral stories, and each one informs the next. The amount of spirituality imbued within the narrative is what made this sweeping epic what it is.
But at this graphic novel’s (compilation) core, what binds them is a recurring trauma centred on two brothers: one must suffer so another may live. It’s a familiar narrative device, but here the wound never heals. Instead, it tightens, curling inward across time until it manifests in Edwin himself.
This is where this graphic novel series reveals its heart. The narrative focuses on ancestry and inherited trauma. Each generation carries echoes of the last. The artwork supports this without ever overwhelming it. Henderson’s illustrations complement the narrative rather than competing with it, grounding the story.
Yet the argument is strikingly similar: actions ripple forward; stories repeat; power structures mutate but persist. Those unfamiliar with Cree ideology will not notice the details, namely in how cultural inheritance is understood. The people see it as cyclical and relational, not a straight march forward. I didn’t catch this until my second reading and a deeper dive into this particular nation’s spiritual practices.
In terms of literary meaning, what’s presented is powerful, and I can’t help but be reminded of Cloud Atlas. While this tale is philosophical and outward-facing, 7 Generations is inward-looking, and deeply grounded in land, survival, and historical consequence. It isn’t asking abstract questions about humanity; it’s confronting what has been endured and what remains unresolved.
Visually, the book avoids ritualisation or spectacle. From a reader’s perspective, the art feels deliberately naturalistic, like peering through a looking glass rather than being invited into myth. It isn’t heroic, fantastical, or ornamental, and it refuses to settle into a recognisable comic-book style. Some panels appear half-finished by design, which kept pulling my mind back to the rotoscoped pencil aesthetic of A-ha’s “Take On Me” music video.
That fragile realism, the exposed linework, the expressive faces, the sense of figures caught between states, hits a similar emotional register. The stories feel liminal, suspended between generations, memory, and the lived present. The unease is the point. We aren’t meant to feel closure.
By the end, 7 Generations leaves the impression that history is still being drawn. The lines are incomplete, and so is the story itself. We are not meant to fully understand the ending, because the consequences have not finished unfolding, and perhaps never will. With an author of Indigenous descent, and one honoured with a Doctor of Letters from the University of Manitoba, what Robertson offers readers is more than a lesson in courage. It is an invitation to see life as something we mediate, carry forward, and remain accountable to.
5 Stars out of 5
This Pain Is Not Limited to 7 Generations A Plains Cree Saga: A TEDxTalk
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