Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley Book Analysis Essay Sample

Firekeeper’s Daughter brought to light new perspectives on relationships that I hadn’t considered before reading this book. The most important thing about relationships that it taught me was that relationships and intimate spaces never stop existing altogether, even in death or separation. Losing loved ones does not mean that our relationships with those passed on don’t exist anymore. We still carry their experiences, feelings, memories, and presences with us. What is so powerful about this is that even with separation, these intimate spaces still can change, develop, or grow. Daunis’ relationships with her Uncle David, her father, and Lily evolve positively as she learns more about them and what they’d been dealing with unbeknownst to her before the investigation. In reflection, reconnection, and forgiveness, Daunis heals her relational spaces with her Uncle David and her father. All the while, her relationship with Lily acts as comfort and motivation for Daunis throughout the novel. This has encouraged me greatly, that even distant or lost relational spaces still have the opportunities to change, heal, and impact us.

I also discovered a better understanding of how the labels of family or roles may mask how we perceive those in our lives. Daunis was extremely and devastatingly betrayed by her brother to where she struggled to know how to see him. That was her brother, she’d struggle with, in denial that he of all people, her little brother could be involved with something so dire. When she finally understood who her brother truly was, tragically when he persisted with trying to convince her to join his drug enterprise, she was able to see him for the person he was, beyond the role he played in her life. This revelation is something that I have been experiencing as I have grown into young adulthood. In recent years, I have been able to perceive and get to know my parents and family members for who they are, beyond the mask of what roles or labels they have in my life. Sometimes these labels can act as barriers to intimacy, where we do not feel the need to discover them beyond what roles they play. Going forward, this is something I want to be more mindful of so that my own relationships might be able to grow and mature.

The conversations I had in our discussion groups really helped solidify all of the ideas and themes regarding intimate spaces we were experiencing and exposed to in the novel. With so many twists and turns throughout, it helped that we were able to come together to talk about how each relationship continued to evolve as Daunis learned more throughout her investigation. Paulina, Josh, and I would talk about instances where we related to Daunis, often relating with her and her relationships with her mom and family. Together we discussed how Daunis’ community setting was so different from what we had grown up with and found appreciation in the traditions and unique relational spaces such a close-knit community creates. With each of our perspectives and personal insights, it helped me form a more well-rounded and nuanced understanding of relationships and intimacy. We may all come from different upbringings, but we all are able to relate in one way or another to foundational themes and structures of intimate spaces, just as I remember Dr. Kelley mentioning in our meeting last week. 

This book painted such a strong intersection between culture, communication, and identity. Daunis is placed at the center between two worlds, her white Fontaine family and her Anishinaabe Firekeeper family. Her identity, as she comes of age and into young adulthood is at a tipping point, especially when she makes the choice to go through with enrolling in her tribe officially when her community banded together to grant her enrollment. She is at a point in her life where she is having to choose her educational and career pathways, navigate her personal relationships, as well as affirm her mixed cultural identities. On top of that, Firekeeper’s Daughter adds another layer to identity as she is thrust into the meth investigation as a confidential informant and copes with the murder of her best friend Lily and the danger her community is in. She struggles with finding her “normal” and future “someday,” who she is now while she is forced to lie to her family and community in order to protect them, who she is as she investigates and approaches her relationships and communication with the FBI, Ron, and Jamie, as well as who she is in her romantic relationship with Jamie - especially when Jamie’s identity is questionable in itself for the majority of the novel. With the complexities of this intersection, I have gotten to reflect and discover ways in which our situations and the communities around us shape how we navigate our identities. This is especially important when navigating and reflecting on our genuine selves and the faces or masks we might wear, just as Daunis constantly had to do throughout this novel.

Firekeeper’s Daughter is Angeline Boulley’s love letter to her own Anishinaabe upbringing in the same area she set the novel in. The novel’s premise is based on a meth drug bust Boulley had experienced in her high school days, though she was uninvolved and fictionalized that event in her book. This being said, there is truth behind the devastation meth and drug abuse have had on indigenous communities. Throughout its many chapters, she characterizes Daunis’ relationship with her Anishinaabe traditions such as traditional medicines, spirituality, the guiding principles of the seven Grandfathers, mourning and funeral processes, language, dance, song, dress, and empowerment of menstruation. Her community is fleshed out, as is her relationship with her tribe, consisting of many families, elders, tribe judges, and its own tribal police. Boulley includes how the tribe and federal governments interact with each other and the devastating implications of how Daunis and so many other indigenous women, have federal blind eyes turned toward them and their cases of assault. On top of this, tribes face economic struggle and discrimination which prevents full protection of rights and the law. I was not familiar with how tribal justice and the federal justice systems divide and conflict before this, and to say the least, it is upsetting. Overall, Boulley uses her upbringing as a way to characterize Daunis and to inform the novel’s narrative as a whole.

In reading this book, I have been able to experience a whole new way of experiencing the crossroad between relationships and culture. With my own brief connection with my Apache heritage through my late grandmother, all indigenous cultural experiences I had were few, and I never had the community aspect of culture around me in the way it was for Daunis and Boulley. Daunis’ relationships with her family are deepened by their cultural values, the Anishinaabe highly valuing close relational ties, especially between their women and with their elders. The women come together to grieve and heal, they experience both pain and healing together, and they protect and avenge one another. The elders tie their community together. Ultimately, because of Daunis’ relationship with her community and their shared values, her community and culture save her life. Overall, this book has given me a glimpse into the deep power culture has within communities and relationships, and I have developed a deeper appreciation for my own family and loved ones both here and long gone as a result.