Firekeeper's Daughter

“Lily is usually the one who tells me about Rez happenings. This would be a chance for me to have something exciting to share with her for once.”

Daunis wants to join Teddie at the blanket party because she sees the event as a part of the Ojibwe community of which she is generally left out. Teddie’s invitation would give Daunis inside access for one evening. Daunis sees Lily as being more “apart” of their shared community than she is, of which Daunis is envious. What Daunis fails to realize in this moment is what she is protected from by not being a part of some of these more dangerous and tragic aspects of the community on Sugar Island. Daunis can’t see her privilege in this moment and Teddie is too angry to explain it to her.

“Anglerfish. That’s what I call the hockey girlfriends. A bottom-dweller fish that bites its mate and fuses with it. A parasitic appendage unable to exist separately.”

Daunis harbors many judgements about the people around her in the beginning of this story and the hockey girlfriends are one such example. Because Daunis doesn’t know who she is exactly, she has developed her understanding of herself by pitting herself against who she knows she “isn’t.” Daunis believes that she is better than the “anglerfish” and therefore knows something about herself based on her knowledge that she isn’t like “them.”