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My grandmother Mary—I call her GrandMary—
I was expected to be a Fontaine and other times when it was safe to be a Firekeeper.
We are descendants—rather than enrolled members—of the Sugar Island Ojibwe Tribe.
she insisted he had been sober for over thirteen years.
“Cherokee, ma’am. But I didn’t grow up around any family.”
And the less frequent but more heartbreaking instances when my Firekeeper family sees me as a Fontaine first and one of them second.
“Yeah. It’s your identity, but it gets defined or controlled by other people.”
If you know the story of her regalia—who and where and why each item came to be—then you know her.”
Jamie Johnson is a cop.
Jane Austen has mediated their tumultuous relationship my entire lifetime.
Instead, these trees absorb contaminated groundwater and breathe virulent fumes.
Women are at their most powerful during menstruation, connected to life-giving forces.
we carry our own medicine and fire within.
If I’m right, that’s what I’ll call Firekeeper’s Daughter from now on. Her own identity: Zaagaasikwe.
“Oh, and a young woman’s missing.
I’m the only person looking at the whole person, not just the wound.
Each scent finds me: WD-40, pine, Travis’s stink, damp moss, decaying bark, ammonia.
the Little People.
One of the Elders had mentioned the Little People.
Why didn’t I just hit that goddamn deer instead of swerve? Why did I lie and say Levi was driving? Why?”
found him in bed with Dana,”
Dad was married to Dana. And Levi was born.”
My dad was the first guy who ever lied to me. I was seven years old. It still hurts.
mushroom.Whatever was added to the batch of meth-X, it didn’t cause hallucinations.
Because the Little People are real.
But most who know about bad medicine aren’t going to leave it lying around unprotected. In the wrong hands, people can do harm by not knowing what they’re messing with.”
It’s okay to listen to what people say and only hold on to the parts that resonate with you. It’s okay to leave the rest behind. Trust yourself to know the difference.”
The Nish kids in Minnesota didn’t have a shared group hallucination. They had a shared encounter with the Little People warning the kids to leave the bad medicine alone.
she realized what he was doing. He made his grand romantic gesture: offering her love medicine. No details of where or how he had come into possession of it. They could make plans to take it together, on Valentine’s Day.
Travis told me that the Little People were mad at him. I just wanted her to love me again.
What he thought was a love medicine was actually the opposite of love.
Every single one got sick. Not lovesick for some girl they’d never met, but infected with an insatiable desire for more meth.
It is a beautiful dream. You are fluent in a language when you dream in it.
One more person sacrificed to the hockey god.
my brother—is setting me up.
“Love means wanting you to have a good life, even if I’m not in it.
