Firekeeper's Daughter Essay

Firekeeper’s daughter in Post-Colonial lens
Angeline Boulley’s novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, highlights the struggles Indigenous people face after colonizers try to force their culture and way of life on them through residential schools. The novel follows an 18 year old girl, Daunis, who is both white and Ojibwe. She discovers the effects residential schools cause on her Indigenous community which contributes to loss of culture and identity by exploring the mysteries that occur after colonization and continue through generations. Daunis learns the impact residential schools have on parenting, since children who attend those schools go through traumatic experiences concluding in having limited understanding of love and care. Additionally, the

Robin Bailey, an Indigenous girl and Daunis’s former hokey partner pass away due to meth addiction and her funeral is held at a church. Daunis says, “Her parents are Catholics who don’t follow Ojibwe traditions about the four-day journey. ”(Boulley, 287) In this quote, the intergenerational impact of colonization on Indigenous families can be seen on families such as Robin Bailey’s family, who no longer follow and believe in Ojibwe religion and traditions. It can be seen how their ancestors are traumatized by the colonizers through residential schools, where kids are abused in order to forget Indigenous culture and become Christians. Their past makes it difficult for future generations to reconnect with their Indigenous self as the traditions and faith are not passed onto them but instead, the trauma. It shows the attempts of colonizers taking away the Indigenous side of Indigenous people and replacing it with theirs and how it ends up in Indigenous people rejecting their Indigenous side of them because of their suffering. This proves that by forcing Indigenous children to forget their culture and follow another affects generation after

Daunis says, “Some Nishnaabs blend their religious faith and traditional Ojibwe spirituality, like adding semaa to the incense during mass.” (Boulley, 287) In this quote, the author is utilizing that many Ojibwe in Daunis’s community who are forced to adapt to the colonizers faith results in mixing their Indigenous culture and Catholic religion inorder to keep themselves safe while remembering who they are. This shows how they resist colonizers' attempts to forget their Indigenous part of them by trying to keep a part of them alive by practicing what they can remember when being torn apart from who they are. They become both Catholic and Indigenous and pass their faith to future generations. This shows how Indigenous people try to be strong through the hardships they go through but colonizers still manage to change a part of them and that affects future