By: Paulina Hernandez-Trejo 

Department of English, University of Texas at San Antonio 

Abstract 

Amid the systemic oppression against Indigenous communities in the past centuries, Indigenous authors have been actively decolonizing Western literary paradigms. The nature of decolonization is not a total rejection of Western theory and research, but rather a powerful delinking, reclaiming, and recentering of Indigenous epistemologies and stories. This analysis examines how Firekeeper’s Daughter becomes a literary force and representation for Indigenous decolonial healing, love, and representation. Angeline Boulley’s protagonist, Daunis Fontaine is constantly bridging her maternal white identity with her paternal Ojibwe identity, illuminating the complexity of Indigenous identities. Daunis and her community face generational trauma, femicide, and drug abuse, but Boulley does not leave the reader or Daunis’s community in the hopeless “reckoning of current and historical injustices,” rather Boulley explores decolonial healing and love through Daunis’s actions against these injustices. Additionally, Daunis employs her biracial identity to navigate between studying both Anishinaabe cultural medicinal practices and Western medical practices. Boulley answers Frantz Fanon’s call for Indigenous intellectuals to create a new literature, one that accurately represents Indigenous identity and centers decolonial healing, love, and representation. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction  

Western epistemologies have been systemically used to justify devastation, genocide, and white supremacy in Indigenous spaces for centuries. Amid genocide and forced displacement, American culture fomented a romanticized nostalgia for “Indianness” starting in the early to mid-1900s (Conley 175). In creating the romanticized “vanishing Indian” trope, fueled by Edward Curtis’ photography, Western films, and the many white-dominated media spaces, genuine Indigenous representation was essentially sabotaged by the white gaze, marred by colonial nostalgia and American exceptionalism.  

Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies advocates for the telling of counter-stories, which are powerful forms of resistance through the “eyes of the colonized,” providing a space for testimony and restoring spirit to “bring back into existence a world fragmented and dying” (1). The nature of decoloniality is not a total rejection of Western theory and research, but rather a powerful reclaiming and recentering of Indigenous epistemologies. Curtis’ photography perpetrated myths and stereotypes, perverting Native American representation (Katakis 3). Fortunately, many Indigenous artists have used the colonizer’s camera to reclaim their identity. Leslie Marmon Silko’s chapter “The Indian with a Camera” famously states that the “Indian with a camera,” one who reclaims their self-representative image, “is an omen of a time in the future that all Euro-Americans unconsciously dread: the time when the indigenous people of the Americas will retake their land” (178). Hence, using the colonizer’s tools, such as the camera, is decolonial because it provides space for testimony and restores spirit.  

Repurposing the camera as a tool for Indigenous empowerment and decoloniality is reminiscent of Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird’s introduction in Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, an anthology of native women’s writing. Harjo and Bird both reflect on the implications of writing in non-Native American languages, illuminating the empowerment in “‘reinventing’ in the colonizer’s tongue” and using stories to turn these images around “to mirror an image of the colonized to the colonizers as a process of decolonization” (22). The decolonial act of ‘reinventing’ and writing Indigenous stories “indicates that something is happening…[and] will politicize as well as transform literary expression” (22). Angeline Boulley’s young adult (YA) novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, is one of the many YA novels that are transforming literary expression. Firekeeper’s Daughter follows Daunis Fontaine, a half-white, half-Ojibwe young adult through a powerful coming-of-age journey in the Sault Ste. Marie and Sugar Island regions of Michigan. Daunis’ story is complex, illuminating nuances of an Anishinaabe identity with the intersectional nature of being a young woman—all while solving a mystery. The novel is described by Angeline Boulley as an “Indigenous ‘Nancy Drew’ novel” (Bates 20:14). After witnessing a murder, Daunis becomes entangled with a drug-trafficking Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation that is threatening to split apart her Sugar Island Ojibwe community and family. In addition to being involved in the investigation, Daunis’ uncle recently passed away and her grandmother suffered a stroke shortly after, prompting Daunis to change her college plans and stay close to support her mother.  

Daunis and her community face generational trauma, femicide, and drug abuse, but Boulley does not leave the reader or Daunis’ community in the hopeless “reckoning of current and historical injustices” (Boulley), rather the novel explores decolonial healing and love through Daunis taking control and fighting back against these injustices. Thus, this analysis examines how Firekeeper’s Daughter becomes a literary force and expression for Indigenous decolonial healing, love, and representation. Daunis’ story is powerful because of its elements of decoloniality, echoing Smith’s call for testimony and restoring spirit. 

Decolonizing Literary Structure & Conventions 

Decoloniality does not entirely reject Western standards, and in this case, Firekeeper’s Daughter does not reject all Western novel standards, in fact, it was categorized as a YA novel when it was published, abiding by mainstream genre categorization. However, just because it doesn’t overtly reject all Western conventions does not disqualify its structure from being decolonial, in fact, Firekeeper’s Daughter’s structure reclaims and recenters Indigenous storytelling practices.  

For one, Firekeeper’s Daughter does not translate Ojibwe words, phrases, or conversations for non-Ojibwe speakers, as also noted by Code Switch’s host, Karen Bates who interviewed author Angeline Boulley for the episode “The Characters Are the Light.” But Boulley is not gatekeeping or excluding non-Ojibwe readers in choosing to not translate Ojibwe in her novel, rather she intended to center her people and community in the story. Often the labor of translating and explaining different cultural practices falls onto BIPOC authors, potentially limiting the style they choose to write in or risk making their text inaccessible to some readers—but the onus of researching cultural practices and the Ojibwe language should fall onto the reader, not the author. 

Additionally, for decades, Indigenous children were forced to assimilate to English/French, forcibly removing their native tongue, while also assimilating to American/Canadian cultural practices in residential boarding schools that attempted to “kill the Indian, save the man” (Churchill 14). Indigenous languages themselves are survivors of cultural genocide, as the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians’ official website states similarly, “to lose our language would be to lose a part of ourselves…Anishinaabeg communities are working hard to regain what was lost to so many.” Thus, Boulley choosing to write in Ojibwe unapologetically and without translations is a celebration of survival, resilience, and a form of decolonial healing.  

Firekeeper’s Daughter’s narrative structure uses the Ojibwe medicine wheel, rather than the classical/Western form of the hero’s journey in three acts. The medicine wheel is usually physically configured as a circle with four quadrants (see Fig. 1), but it is also a “process (healing), a ceremony (sweats, sharing circles) and teachings (a code for living),” so it can be a place and simultaneously an action and a presence (McCabe 144). Each of the novel’s four parts are labeled by their cardinal directions: Waabanong (East), Zhaawanong (South), Ningaabii’ An (West), and Kewaadin (North). Using the Ojibwe medicine wheel in lieu of the hero’s journey is decolonial because it centers the Indigenous oral and experiential storytelling format, prioritizing cultural values over stylistic conventions. The medicine wheel, unlike the hero’s journey, is deeply spiritual and a cyclical representation of a life-long journey, and the day-to-day journeys. As Karen Bates echoes, Boulley “straight-up Indigenized the structure” (25:36). 

Figure 1: The flag of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, based on the medicine wheel. 

Waabanong – Daunis’ Differential Consciousness 

In addition to shaping the novel’s structure, the medicine wheel also shines a light on Daunis’ internal and external journeys. Each quadrant in the medicine wheel is a cardinal direction, embedded as a guide, and is connected to a part of the person. I am mainly referencing knowledge of the medicine wheel from the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians’ official website since both Daunis and Boulley are a part of this community. According to the Sault Tribe’s website, east “is the direction of the physical body…the time of change” (“Our Tribal Flag”). Part of Daunis’ generational trauma is embodying both Ojibwe and French colonial lineages, and engaging a differential consciousness helps her and the readers understand how the different parts of her identity are in conversation with each other, illuminating the complexity of Indigenous identities. Differential consciousness requires enough strength to “confidently commit to a well-defined structure of identity,” enough flexibility to “self-consciously transform that identity” as the circumstances require, and enough grace to “recognize alliance with others committed to egalitarian social relations” (Sandoval 60).   

Part I of Firekeeper’s Daughter is labeled as Waabanong (East) because “all journeys begin in the eastern direction” (Boulley 3). Waabanong introduces the readers to Daunis’ delicate balance between her Fontaine side and her Firekeeper side. She would begin her mornings by offering semaa at the “eastern base of a tree, where sunlight will touch the tobacco first,” praying to the Creator, and asking for one of the seven grandfathers to guide her through the day—essentially starting her days by connecting with her Firekeeper spirituality (Boulley 5). But she recognizes that her Fontaine side, specifically her grandmother GrandMary, does not agree with her Ojibwe spiritual or healing practices. Daunis recalls GrandMary telling her, “Indian superstitions are not facts, Daunis” (Boulley 10). Meanwhile, Gramma Pearl, her paternal grandmother, “saw connections and teachings that run deeper than our known world”—Daunis’ grandmothers’ “push and pull” on her have been a “tug-of-war [her] entire life” (Boulley 11). Based on Daunis’ description of Gramma Pearl’s ontology, we see Daunis values Gramma Pearl’s ways of seeing the world. Daunis mainly resided with her maternal side, since her parents were unmarried; and even while living with GrandMary devaluing Ojibwe beliefs, Daunis still grew up adopting Ojibwe spiritual practices—showing the strength and flexibility in her differential consciousness. In showing strength and flexibility, she committed to understanding her Firekeeper side and had the flexibility of transforming herself even while residing with her GrandMary’s prejudiced beliefs. 

Daunis also has enough grace to recognize that she was white and benefited from white privileged as a result. Some of her fellow Ojibwe family members, like her Uncle Art and nieces, are Afro-Indigenous, which affects the way some people speak to them. Daunis’ best friend Lily also has a darker skin tone and was often told by her white father and stepmother to not go out in the sun during the summer (Boulley 13). Both Lily and Daunis would joke about the “Acceptable Anishinaabe Skin Tone Continuum,” where they both analyze how the Anishinaabe “who land on its outer edges have to put up with different versions of the same bullshit” referring to how Daunis’ whiteness is not “Indian enough” and Lily’s skin tone is darker than the standard skin tone in their community (Boulley 13). Daunis’ differential consciousness helps her understand how she is both privileged by her proximity to whiteness yet also expected to shun her Ojibwe side.  

Daunis’ identity struggle does not perpetuate the “vanishing Indian” trope nor does it fall into the trope of the “tragic mixed-bloods who most often end up dead” in problematic representations of young adult Indigenous characters (Perez 286). It is because Daunis engages in differential consciousness that her struggle is decolonial and liberating. Boulley’s inclusion of these struggles—both the tug-of-war between her Fontaine and Firekeeper ontologies and Daunis’ awareness of the “Acceptable Anishinaabe Skin Tone”—show how Indigenous characters, like Daunis, navigate these injustices through a decolonial framework. This powerful literary representation gives hope toward decolonial healing.  

Zhaawanong – Decolonial Medicinal Healing 

Part II is Zhaawanong (South), denoted as “a time for wandering and wondering” in the journey (Boulley 121), and “represents maturing life…the direction of full understanding” (“Our Tribal Flag”). By this part, Daunis has already experienced the death of her best friend Lily, learned about Jamie’s (her love interest) real identity as an undercover agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the FBI, and also learns that her uncle was a confidential informant for the FBI who died while investigating Sugar Island’s inner drug trafficking ring. She has decided to become Ron and Jamie’s new confidential informant, investigating who in the tribe is responsible for the new methamphetamine in the region.  

Daunis is certainly “wandering and wondering” and maturing during this part of the journey, as she constantly has to go back and forth between deciding how much of her Ojibwe medicinal knowledge she should share with the FBI. Daunis aspires to be a scientist, specifically a doctor, and prides herself on bridging her traditional Ojibwe medicine with Western science and medicine. Daunis recalls during this part of the journey that Gramma Pearl would pour pee into her ears to cure earaches, and later “discovering what [Gramma Pearl] had known: urine is sterile and a substitute for hydrogen peroxide” (Boulley 148). Daunis’ ability to see through Western medicine’s domineering over non-Western healing practices is key. She understands that decoloniality means holding her own culture’s medicinal practices to the same (or higher) regard as Western medicine.  

When the FBI lab informs her that the new strain of methamphetamine could be laced with traditional medicine, Daunis reflects that “this feels wrong” and how she always wanted to show “people that our traditional healers are—and always have been—scientists who use plants as medicine. But this? Looking for traditional medicines to experiment with meth at the request of the FBI? It’s not right. In [her] heart, [she knows] this” (Boulley 130). In decolonizing Western medicinal practices by including her own Ojibwe traditions in her practice, Daunis also understands that decoloniality entails defending her Ojibwe culture. The FBI may see the benefits of this research as “serving a greater good ‘for mankind’ or serving a specific emancipatory goal” for this oppressed community, but historically, “research is not innocent” within Indigenous communities (Smith 2, 5). In agreeing to research traditional Ojibwe medicine for the FBI, Daunis understands the colonial implications. The FBI is trying to eradicate a dangerous drug at whatever cost, even if it means taking a precious medicine away from a community at the slight suspicion that it could be the ingredient laced in the meth. Daunis feels that it is not right in her heart, showing that she is resolute in defending her Ojibwe culture against outsiders with non-innocent intents, a truly decolonial notion. As it later turned out in the novel, Daunis was right—traditional medicines were not used to make methamphetamine.  

Ningaabii’ An – Windigo Footprints 

Part III is Ningaabii’ An (West) and is the part of the journey that focuses on “a time for constant change” (Boulley 405), it is the “direction of the emotional part of ourselves” (“Our Tribal Flag”). Part III is full of change and emotions—Daunis finds out that her stepmom Dana, her half-brother Levi, and other trusted members of the Ojibwe community are responsible for the production and distribution of methamphetamine.  

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes a chapter toward the end of her book titled, “Windigo Footprints,” which follows the folklore and beliefs behind the Windigo, which is “a human being who has become a cannibal monster” and “its bite will transform victims into cannibals too” (Kimmerer 304). Starvation was a prominent issue within Indigenous American communities, even during the pre-colonial years, so cultivating the story of the Windigo reinforced the taboo against cannibalism to dissuade community members from succumbing to such an awful and dehumanizing practice. The Windigo has an insatiable hunger, which becomes more ravenous the more it consumes. Kimmerer takes us beyond the folklore of the Windigo and shows us how the Windigo walks among us through the form of an individual in the community that prioritizes their own needs over their community’s needs, and oftentimes at the expense of their community’s wellbeing. Dana, Levi, and the others involved in the methamphetamine operation were Windigos through their selfishness. This selfishness “overpowered their self-control to the point that satisfaction is no longer possible” until they became Windigos (Kimmerer 306). Travis, Heather, Robin, and Lily’s deaths represent the consequences of this insatiable greed.  

What do you do when members of your community are responsible for the downfall and deaths of many lives? Where does decoloniality fit when it’s members of the community, not outsiders, that are hurting the whole community? Daunis remembers the Elders, “I’m reminded that our Elders are the greatest resource, embodying our culture and community. Their stories connect us to our language, medicines, land, clans, songs, and traditions. They are a bridge between the Before and the Now, guiding those of us who will carry on in the Future” (Boulley 453). When Daunis is being kidnapped, it’s the Elders who help her escape. The Elders were not just present to save her life, but they have been present throughout the entire book, helping Daunis learn more stories and traditions. Native and Indigenous Americans have traditionally used oral storytelling and family stories to learn and deal with terrible incidents that happen within one’s family (Silko, “Language” 52). The tragic Native American family stories serve a useful purpose, they bring incidents “down to a level we can deal with,” promoting the idea that if “others have done it before, it cannot be so terrible” and “if others have endured, so can we”—one does not heal by oneself but rather within a community (Silko, “Language” 52). A strong community, one rooted in prioritizing the community’s needs and wellbeing over their individual needs will survive. Indigenous people have survived cultural genocide because of the Elders passing down knowledge through these stories. Firekeeper’s Daughter does not leave the reader or Daunis’ community in a hopeless abyss, rather the novel explores decolonial healing and love through Daunis and her community taking control and fighting back against these injustices. 

Kewaadin – Decolonial Healing & Love 

Lastly, Part IV is Kewaadin (North) and is a “time for resting and reflecting in the place of dreams, stories, and truth” (Boulley 457), a “time of wisdom…representative of those things that are positive” (“Our Tribal Flag”). Kewaadin encompasses decolonial love and healing. Decolonial healing for Daunis entails healing from the novel’s traumatic events through traditional ceremonial remedies. On Lily’s death anniversary, Daunis prays for “Zaagidiwin. Love” (Boulley 483). To celebrate this love and the end of the mourning period, she’ll also be dancing at a powwow for the first time since her Uncle David died. She partakes in braiding her nieces’ hair, using this time with her family and her people to heal communally from the year’s traumatic events.  

Daunis also experiences decolonial healing and love when she participates in another communal healing ceremony, helping her and other women heal after experiencing sexual violence. After Grant Edwards raped her, Daunis felt shame, but she never had a proper time to heal from this trauma until the end of the novel. She is at her Aunt Teddie’s house with other women in her Ojibwe community, and after hearing a story, they all pass a basket with pansies around, picking one up. All the women line up to burn their pansy in the sacred fire, and Daunis reflects on how she feels “comfort in watching the smoke rise to the full moon” (Boulley 481). This is the first time Daunis has felt relief after the traumatic rape.  

Daunis engaging in these different forms of decolonial healing are representative of Gerald Vizenor’s term “survivance,” which is active resistance against ongoing oppressive forces (Perez 287). Many YA novel protagonists fight against systems of oppression, much like Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games, but unlike many fictional YA protagonists, Indigenous young adults are still experiencing ongoing oppression because there is not a sole enemy. These forces of ongoing oppression are complex, and it’s up to these YA Indigenous novel protagonists like Daunis to seek decolonial healing through their culture to provide hope and examples of “survivance” during these times.  

Conclusion 

Firekeeper’s Daughter also answers Frantz Fanon’s call for an accurate representation of Indigenous identity that centers decolonial healing and love. It is a counter-story, showing resistance through the “eyes of the colonized,” providing a space for testimony and restoring spirit (Smith 1). Firekeeper’s Daughter reinvents the colonizer’s tools (and the enemy’s language, like Harjo and Bird did in their anthology) by utilizing the “Young Adult” novel framework and then restructuring its pages using the medicine wheel. Boulley’s medicine wheel structure provides a beautiful foundation for decoloniality, which is empowering and centers on the Indigenous experience. Each of the four parts aligns with Daunis’ journey as processes for healing, incorporating ceremony, and teachings—all entailed within the medicine wheel as actions and presence (McCabe 144). Part I, Waabanong (east), explored the beginning of Daunis’ journey and her body (identity) within her white and Indigenous communities, engaging in differential consciousness. Part II, Zhaawanong (south), illustrated how Daunis bridges traditional medicinal practices with Western scientific forms of healing and methodology—a deeply decolonial practice. Part III, Ningaabii’ An (west), showed how Windigos perpetuate prioritizing the individual over the community, and how Daunis and her community fight against their own Windigos. Lastly, Part IV, Kewaadin (north), ends the book through Vizenor’s idea of survivance, enabled by decolonial healing through community and ceremony.  

Daunis and her community experience a variety of injustices through the meth trafficking ring, drug abuse, femicide, and generational trauma; which is common among many books with Native and Indigenous American characters, reminiscent of Sherman Alexie’s quote, “I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed” (Perez 290). And like other Native and Indigenous authors, Boulley also arms Indigenous readers with hope within her novel, while realistically depicting the pain and struggle that birth hope. In the Code Switch episode, Boulley reflects that “when you tell a story about your community and you make everyone perfect, that does a disservice. And likewise, if you all that you focus on is trauma then you do a disservice” (26:50). Decolonial love is rooted in the hope for a better tomorrow for people of color, and in this case, decolonial love represents hope for Firekeeper’s Indigenous readers amid the liberatory fights against injustice. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Works Cited 

Bates, Karen G, host. “The Characters Are the Light.” Code Switch, NPR, 17 November 2021, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1056349778. 

Boulley, Angeline. Firekeeper’s Daughter. Henry Holt and Company, 2021. Print. 

Churchill, Ward. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools. City Lights Publishers, 2004. Print. 

Conley, Paige A., et al. “8. Strategically Negotiating Essence: Zitkala-Sa’s Ethos as Activist.” Rethinking Ethos: A Feminist Ecological Approach to Rhetoric. Southern Illinois University Press, 2016. Print. 

Harjo, Joy, and Gloria Bird. “Introduction.” Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writing of North America. W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. Print. 

Katakis, Michael. Excavating Voices: Listening to Photographs of Native Americans. University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated, 1998. Print. 

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed, 2020. Print. 

McCabe, Glen. “Mind, Body, Emotions and Spirit: Reaching to the Ancestors for Healing.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 21.2 (2008): 143-52. Print. 

“Ojibwe Language.” The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Official Web Site, 13 Jun. 2019, https://www.saulttribe.com/history-a-culture/our-culture/103-ojibwe-language. 

“Our Tribal Flag.” The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians Official Web Site, 28 Jan. 2017, https://www.saulttribe.com/history-a-culture/our-culture/1334-our-tribal-flag. 

Perez, Domino Renee. “Not Another Dead Indian: Young Adult Fiction, Survivance, and Sherman Alexie’s Flight.” The Lion and the Unicorn. 41.3 (2017): 285-306. Project MUSE. Web. 

Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. 2000.Web <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=310494. >. 

Silko, Leslie M. “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective.” Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. Simon & Schuster, 1997. 48-59. Print. 

———. “The Indian with a Camera.” Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. Simon & Schuster, 1997. 175-79. Print. 

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books, 1999. Print.