Chris Horkins - 3/2/08 - ENGL 385

“With these magic weapons, make a new world”

Cultural Fusion and DuBoisian Double Consciousness in Tomson Highway’s Kiss of
the Fur Queen

My Thesis: Kiss of the Fur Queen is an act of

cultural fusion. Tomson Highway aims to
uncover the inner tension between Native and
White identities that operate within the aboriginal
QuickTimeª and a mindset. It is not until these conflicting identities
decompressor are reconciled through acts of cultural fusion in
are needed to see this picture. the final act of the novel that Jeremiah and
Gabriel are truly able to overcome this inner
conflict, celebrate their Cree heritage and begin
the healing process of dealing with emotional
baggage left over from their experiences in
residential schools.

Quotes/references:

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this

sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,
of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an QuickTimeª and a
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
-W.E.B. DuBois, from “The Souls of Black Folk”

“Boom” the voice went, “Boom Boom.” Something about “Abraham Okimasis, forty-three years
old, caribou hunter, fur trapper, fisherman, boom, boom.” Something about “Abraham Okimasis,
musher, from the Eemanipiteepitat Indian reserve, northwestern Manitoba, boom.” Something to
do with “Abraham Okimasis, winner of the 1951 Millington Cup World Championship Dog
Derby, boom, boom.” Something about “Mr. Okimasis, first Indian to win this grueling race in
its twenty-eight year history…” The syllables became one vast, roiling rumble. (p.6)

Like a bullmoose ramming its antlers into those of some fearsome, lust filled rival, Annie
Moostoos charged ahead. “His name,” she stated, “is Ooneemeetoo. Ooneemeetoo Okimasis.
Not Satanae Okimasis.” …. (skip to the bottom of the page)“Gabriel Okimasis,” the oblate
stated, as if to nail “Gabriel” permanently between quotation marks. (p. 37)

“The dance floor seethed with Clarabelle Cow St Pierre, Bugs Bunny Starblanket, Minnie Mouse
Manitowabi, Big Bum Pegahmagahbow, Petunia Pig Patchnose, all mixed into one riotous,
bubbling stew” (p. 256)
Chris Horkins - 3/2/08 - ENGL 385

“had practiced his English-Canadian accent for this occasion until his tongue had hurt” and later
that “his ts and ds had improved these past two weeks, and he was determined that this become
public knowledge” … “What use is there pretending to be what you are not? You and me and
your little brother, we’re the only three Indians in a school filled with two thousand white middle
class kids. We can’t let them walk all over us” (Ch. 19, p. 146-)

“Something about Jeremiah Okimasis, twenty years old. Something about Jeremiah Okimasis,
from the Eeemanipiteepitat Indian Reserve. Something having to do with Jeremiah Okimasis, first
Indian to win this grueling contest in its forty-seven-year history” (p. 214)

It was said among the judges – being from England, they had to be excused their ignorance of
facts aboriginal – that he was a Commanche Indian whose forebears had performed the chase
scenes in the movie Stagecoach. Others claimed he was Apache and therefore a cousin to that
drunken lout Geronimo. Still others claimed that he came from the country’s most remote and
primitive hinterlands, where his father slaughtered wild animals and drank their blood in
appeasement of some ill-tempered pagan deity. And all because this tuxedo-clad, flowing-haired
Indian youth – Apache, Commanche, Kickapoo – was about to perform Rachmainnoff (p. 211)

“I wrote [Kiss of the Fur Queen] for a Cree readership. . . . I hope to reach the
kids in the mall in Saskatoon and Winnipeg”
“I didn’t have a choice… I had to write this book. It came screaming out because this story
needed desperately to be told.”
-Tomson Highway, quoted in McKegney, p. 102, and Methot

“Like Highway, Jeremiah reconceptualizes his life in narrative terms of Cree spirituality and
traditional Orature, made relevant to the contemporary moment through creative adaptation,
invention and augmentation, a process that affords him the creative weaponry to defeat the
Weetigo of his past.”
-McKegney, p. 102

“Gabriel knew that his magic had worked, for the audience was speaking to some space inside
themselves, some void that needed filling, some depthless sky; and this sky was responding.” (p.
267)

Works Cited

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Souls of Black Folk”. The Norton Anthology of African American
Literature. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y McKay. W. W. Norton: New York, 2004.

Highway, Tomson. Kiss of the Fur Queen: A Novel. Random House: Canada, 1998.

McKegney, Sam. “From Trickster Poetics to Transgressive Politics: Substantiating Survivance in

Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen”. Studies in American Indian Literatures. (17) 4, 2005.
pp. 79-113.

Methot, Suzanne. “The Universe of Tomson Highway.” Quill and Quire. Nov. 1998.
Chris Horkins - 3/2/08 - ENGL 385

<http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=1216>

Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Lincoln: U of

Nebraska P, 1999.