Firekeeper's Daughter

How does Levi act as a foil to Daunis? In some ways they are almost twins (hockey, their dad), but in others (their tribal status, financial status, family heritage) they are very different. What does Levi reveal to Daunis about herself when she finally sees who he has become?

Daunis begins and ends the story with her name. How does her relationship with her name change throughout the novel?

Ideas of privilege are troubled throughout the novel—what events, specifically, have caused Daunis’s ideas and understandings of different privileges and protections and how they function to change by the end of the book? 

What in Daunis’s life has caused her to view the world in this either/or binary that we see at the beginning of the novel? What is an example of Daunis’s change in thinking in her ability to accept that two seemingly disparate things can be true at once?

What does Daunis learn about the “danger of a single story,” i.e. the problem of thinking that one knows someone and their story without knowing the “whole story” of their life? How has Daunis experienced this herself? 

What is Stormy’s refusal to speak in English after the meth bust symbolic of? Why would he choose silence even though he knows it will keep him in jail indefinitely? 

When Perry and Pauline share what they have learned about the history of the Indian boarding schools with Daunis, she says their knowledge of this history breaks her heart. But she also knows that knowing the truth will make the two girls stronger. Why does Daunis believe this to be true? How can a truth both break someone and cause them grief and also make them stronger? Provide examples from the text.

Why is it significant that the group of elders on the ferry saved Daunis? What does this say about the novel’s overall message concerning the past and present? Provide textual evidence.