Kiss of the Fur Queen

In “A Note on the Trickster,” a section preceding the novel, Highway notes that the Trickster—variously Weesageechak (Cree), Nanabush (Ojibway), Raven, or Coyote—is a figure as central to Indigenous belief and culture as Jesus is in Christian cosmology. Comic and clownish, the Trickster spirit's role is to change forms and teach humans invaluable lessons about existence on Earth. One central motif in Kiss of the Fur Queen is the presentation of the Fur Queen as Weesageechak. The Fur Queen appears from the novel’s first chapter to its last, watching over the lives of the Okimasis brothers and sometimes intervening in their experiences, such as when a fur-clad woman hands the brothers tickets to a ballet. The Trickster also appears before Jeremiah as a showgirl-like arctic fox who says things like, “These audiences are too much for me, if you really want to know my little honeypot, they’re a buncha fucking pigs” (231). The Fox-Woman confirms her link to Weesageechak when she tells Jeremiah, “You’re talking to Miss Maggie Sees. Miss Maggie—Weesageechak—Nanabush—Coyote—Raven—Glooscap” (247). At the novel’s end, Gabriel reveals that he has always thought of the Fur Queen in Abraham’s championship portrait as the Trickster.

This unusual presentation of Weesageechak as female is befitting of the novel because it echoes Gabriel’s interest in genderfluidity.