Kiss of the Fur Queen

Strong-willed, beautiful, and resilient, Mariesis is a quilt-maker and the mother of Marie-Adele, William William, Chichilia, Josephine, Chugweesees, Jeremiah, and Gabriel. She had five other children who died in infancy and childhood. The multiple losses have made Mariesis a fiercely protective mother, ready to battle danger to save her surviving children, such as when she nearly rushes into a stampeding caribou herd to rescue Jeremiah and Gabriel. She is also devoted to Abraham but questions him often, as when he decides to send Jeremiah and Gabriel to residential school. She survives Abraham’s death to grow into a busy matriarch, watching TV and playing poker with the village elders; she even picks up some English, a language that was once her bugbear. Mariesis also shows her agency by inviting Black-eyed Susan back into the Okimasis home after Abraham’s death. This is her subtle way of resisting patriarchal authority.

Like Abraham, Mariesis clashes with her sons over the subject of Christianity, urging her children to follow Catholic ritual even when they leave home and fighting to get a priest to administer last rites to Gabriel. However, her very presence in the latter scene signifies that she is ready to adapt to a new world order made by her children. In the text, Mariesis symbolizes the security of the womb, the strength of Indigenous women, and the celebration of life despite adversity.

One of the novel’s two protagonists, Jeremiah is a concert pianist, composer, playwright, social worker, and Cree-language teacher. Jeremiah, first named Champion, is the son of Abraham and Mariesis Okimasis and has an idyllic early childhood in Eemanapiteepitat with his many siblings. A harrowing stay at Birch Lake Indian Residential School, run by Christian missionaries, disrupts this edenic upbringing. At the school, he loses his name (becoming Jeremiah), his language, and his culture; he is also sexually abused by the principal, Father Lafleur.

Music becomes Jeremiah’s survival mechanism through this terrible period, but he also responds to the psychological and sexual abuse by repressing his memories and developing a distaste for his Cree heritage. In his early adulthood in Winnipeg, his sole aim is to become an award-winning pianist and distance himself from “other” Indigenous people, like those living on the streets. Over the course of the novel, however, Jeremiah has many spiritual crises—some of which the Fur Queen and other Trickster figures precipitate—that lead him back to his heritage.

Jeremiah shares an incredibly close bond with his younger brother Gabriel, though Jeremiah’s rejection of his Cree-ness and his refusal to accept or honor Gabriel’s orientation drive a temporary wedge between them. Once Jeremiah realizes that winning a classical music competition will not make him white, he abandons music, takes up social work, and slips into alcoholism. It is Gabriel’s encouragement and the Fur Queen’s visions that gradually help Jeremiah see that the path to healing lies through combining his love for Western music with a celebration of his Cree heritage. A dynamic character, Jeremiah shows tremendous growth by the novel’s end, entering a loving relationship with Ojibway actress Amanda Clear Sky, accepting the details of his sexual abuse, nursing Gabriel through his fatal illness, and defending Gabriel’s last wish to have an Indigenous rather than Catholic last sacrament. Jeremiah’s growth represents the arc of a colonized person first rejecting and then reclaiming their heritage. His transition from musician to playwright is especially symbolic; it signifies that he is now ready to tell his own story in a language incorporating both Cree and English elements. Mirroring a similar movement in Highway’s career, Jeremiah can also be considered a stand-in for the author.

A protagonist of Kiss of the Fur Queen, Gabriel is younger than Jeremiah by three years, but the two brothers share a twin-like bond, often serving as complement and counterpoint to each other. Joyful, rebellious, and blessed with astonishing physical beauty, Gabriel is named Ooneemeetoo, or “dancer,” at birth. However, Father Bouchard changes this to Gabriel at his baptism, symbolizing Ooneemetoo’s break from the safety and comfort of his culture. Like Champion, Gabriel attends Birch Lake Residential School, where he is deracinated and physically and sexually abused. Father Lafleur’s violence scars Gabriel deeply, and he begins to associate sexual pleasure with trauma. Gabriel’s rebellious nature also tends to get him into trouble more than Jeremiah; in school he often slips into Cree, receiving caning from the priests.

Gabriel’s readiness to stand up for his identity and beliefs is especially important because he is openly gay at a time when being so was dangerous, especially for an Indigenous man. Gabriel’s hesitation to share his sexuality with his parents, Jeremiah’s opposition to Gabriel’s sexuality, and the anti-gay taunting Gabriel encounters at a powwow all highlight how fraught a topic being both gay and openly gay was in the 1980s and 1990s.

Rejecting Christian hegemony, Gabriel often emphasizes that Indigenous religions are more evolved and less judgmental than newer, monotheistic faiths. For Gabriel, Christian symbols are often triggering, bringing back memories of his abuse. Though self-centered in the first half of the novel, Gabriel becomes a more giving and empathetic person in the second half, helping Jeremiah out of a crushing depression. Along with Amanda, it is Gabriel who urges Jeremiah to infuse soul and magic into his creations. After being involved in relationships with skewed power dynamics for most of his life, Gabriel finally finds peace with Robin Beatty, a singer his own age. Gabriel dies of AIDS-related complications at the end of the novel; however, deeply tragic as his death is, his last words to Jeremiah are to “be joyful.” It is Gabriel who explicitly identifies the Fur Queen with the Trickster, revealing his deep wisdom. His character is inspired by the famous Cree Canadian dancer René Highway, Tomson’s younger brother.

The most repugnant character in and the chief antagonist of the book, Father Lafleur is a French-Canadian white man who is the principal of Birch Lake Residential Indian School. Described from the very onset in terms of his inappropriate behavior with the children, Father Lafleur hides his cruelty and sadism behind the veneer of Christian piety. He is often described as having “meaty-breath” or “hairy hands,” oozing evil, and patting children on their buttocks or thighs. The priest’s repellent physicality contrasts with the pure beauty of the children, for whom the priest resembles a beast or monster. The descriptions of his rape of Gabriel and Jeremiah form two of the most difficult passages in the book. Both the brothers and the novel identify Father Lafleur with the flesh-eating Weetigo, crouching over children and feasting on their flesh.

What makes Father Lafleur’s abuse even more of a betrayal is that it operates in tandem with his devaluation of the children’s Indigenous cultures. He shows the children paintings of a hell populated with dark-complexioned people sitting in “dank-looking flame-lined caves” (60), as if to suggest that the darkness of their skin makes Hell an inevitability. Further, the caves are filled with fire and smoke, which for the Cree have positive associations with campfires, tobacco smoking, and community gatherings. Thus, the priest aims to denigrate all of the children’s positive cultural associations. That he lectures them about sin during the day while attacking them at night reveals his complete hypocrisy.

Significantly, the text always refers to Lafleur by the honorific “Father” because his priesthood is central to his abuse of the children. Because he is in a superior, paternal position to the children, he can commit his crimes with impunity. He can even convince himself that his acts are justified discipline of the “savage.” Father Lafleur represents the corrosive, devouring force of Christian colonization.