Kiss
of the Fur Queen is a trickster
novel–you had better watch out, because nothing is what
it seems, the unexpected often happens in this world, and if
you enter into it, you will not come out unscathed. Tomson Highway
recounts, in a collage of often-times clashing anecdotes, gritty
life on the reserve, complete with the uneasy relationship between
its aboriginal inhabitants and the local priest and the devastating
and seemingly hopeless dance between the inhabitants and the
bottle. Everywhere the landscape is always-already infected with
the virus of the colonial. And yet, in very poignant moments,
individual characters respond in unpredictable ways to what one
might think–especially this white one–are archetyally
horrific aboriginal experiences of anhilation–such as sexual
abuse in the residential school. Champion's interpretation of
the experience is more closely aligned with what one might expect,
whereas his brother, Ooneemeetoo, who is gay, finds an ecstatic
pleasure in the violent sexual experiences. And it is a pleasure
that, although it is forbidden, one can not deny. Who am I to
say that Ooneemeetoo is unable to construct a relation of pleasure
and power in this insane institutional world?
There are many victims
in the text, and as such, it aptly brings the reader face to face
with the historic record of the anhilation of aboriginal peoples
by European colonization. There are women who are raped with a
broken coke bottle in the back alleys of the seedier parts of Winnipeg,
children who lose their language, their customs, adults whose obligatory
relation to the Catholic church denies them even the most basic
of rights–the naming of their children. Despite the blood
that runs through the novel and is splashed across its pages, it
seems important not to represent this as either a tragedy, or a
story about how, with a little ingenuity, even victims can overcome
great odds. This is a text that performs the trauma of genocide
from a place where the joy in the moment–the funny side of
what doesn’t seem even remotely funny, is, perhaps, though
transitory, an important point of resistance and power. Dancing
with death, and having a hell of a good time. –Mary Bryson
