Kiss of the Fur Queen

“‘At night, when the streets of your cities and villages are silent, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them, and still love this beautiful land. The whiteman will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not powerless.’—Chief Seattle of the Squamish, 1853, translated by Dr. Henry Smith.”

The second epigraph to the book is taken from a speech attributed to Chief Seattle, a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish people. Though Chief Seattle—after whom the city of Seattle is named—advocated peaceful coexistence with white settlers, the speech shows he believed in the quiet, eternal power of his culture and people. Though white colonizers might have conquered Indigenous lands, they must not forget that the spirit of the land is tied to the spirit of its Indigenous tribes. The epigraph foreshadows the text’s themes of resistance to colonialism and celebration of Cree culture.

“‘Down! Put him down, or his little bum will freeze!’ cried Mariesis Okimasis, though she couldn't help but laugh and, with her laughing, love this man for all his unpredictable bouts of clownishness. Jumping up and down, the short Mariesis was trying to get the tall Abraham to put his World Championship Dog Derby trophy down so she could put their baby back into the warmth and safety of his cradle-board. This was, after all, a tent, not a palace, not even a house, and this was, after all, mid-December and not July, in a region so remote that the North Pole was rumored to be just over that next hill.”

Author Tomson Highway has praised the love and beauty of his early childhood, and Kiss of the Fur Queen—a semi-fictional account of Highway’s life—follows suit. Although the Okimasis brothers spend their childhood in the northern, wintry wild with little that could be called an indulgence—let alone a luxury—it is idyllic, romantic, and gorgeous because of the communion between parents and children, humans and nature.

“The journey back up to the surface was not as easy as the journey down, the spirit baby in the loincloth of rabbit fur discovered. For he had to squirm and wriggle and flail and punch his way through soil and rock and minerals so thickly layered they were all but impassable, through permanently frozen clay, tangled roots of trees and dormant fireweed, and shards of animal and human bone. He pushed and pushed until a tunnel eased his passage, replete with a viscous wetness.”

Gabriel’s birth is more difficult than Jeremiah’s, foreshadowing Gabriel’s tragic fate. Gabriel’s spirit baby excitedly jumps too deep into the snow, lands under the permafrost, and subsequently claws his way up into his mother’s womb.