Firekeeper's Daughter

Jamie mistakes the boys’ firecrackers for gunshots. Daunis asks him if he’s lived in some rough neighborhoods because that’s the only thing that would explain his response. Daunis explains to Jamie that she’s not dancing in the powwow because she is mourning her uncle’s death. Daunis and Jamie find Lily and Granny June right before Travis shows up to talk to Lily again. Daunis and Jamie both see a coffee filter floating like a globe inside Travis’s Mountain Dew bottle, at which point Daunis decides to try to keep him away from Lily. Things backfire when Jamie tries to help and Lily turns on both Jamie and Daunis before running off to find Travis to talk to him, like he requested, before Granny June sees him. Daunis tells Jamie that Travis has been using meth, even though Lily made her promise not to tell anyone. 

Daunis and Jamie go for a run to blow off some steam at the powwow. On their run, Daunis tells Jamie about the growing meth problem on the reservation and in town. She explains how Travis’s mom is nicknamed the “Meth Queen” and how Lily caught Travis making meth over Christmas break. Meth is cheaper than alcohol, and since Lily caught Travis making it, Daunis believes more and more people have been seen using it. Jamie is increasingly interested in the reservation and Daunis’s knowledge of Sugar Island and the town on the other side. When they are back in the powwow grounds, he buys a Native manifesto called Custer Died for Your Sins at Daunis’s recommendation and shares a piece of fry bread with her.

Daunis brings Jamie to where Teddie and Art are camping with Perry and Pauline. While Jamie is getting dinner, Daunis asks Teddie why she snapped at her for wanting to go to the blanket party. Teddie explains to Daunis that she has certain privileges that will keep her safe: her light skin, her last name, her money, and even her body size. While Teddie expresses being grateful that Daunis has those advantages, she is also angry and scared that her Black and Ojibwe daughters don’t. After dinner, Teddie encourages Jamie to take Daunis to the young people’s powwow over on Sugar Island. Levi finds Daunis at the keg at the party and taunts her about Jamie. Levi brings up Daunis’s ex, whom he faults for leaving her jaded. Daunis has already been drinking pretty heavily. When she tries to stumble back to Jamie’s truck, she sees Lily and Travis walking together. Lily looks upset and tries to run ahead. Travis pulls a gun on her that he then turns on Daunis when Lily looks in Daunis’s direction. When Lily tries to get the gun from Travis, he shoots her.

Once Travis shoots Lily, he turns the gun on himself. In the moments after Daunis witnesses the death of both of her friends, she thinks about every secret she has been keeping and imagines telling them to Jamie: the truth about her Uncle David’s death, why she doesn’t play hockey anymore, what her mother did after she found Daunis’s dad in bed with Dana (Levi’s mom) the night that she planned to tell him about Daunis, how “Guy Lies” (lies told by men) started, etc.

When Jamie finds her, Daunis thinks clearly that her suspicions about Jamie not being who he says he is are probably true. Daunis makes a list of the things that don’t make sense as she remembers overhearing a girl at the party ask Jamie how he got his scar and him saying it was a car accident. Teddie had told Daunis that the scar was too straight to be accidental. Jamie’s easy entrance onto the hockey team, his persistent questions, his response to the firecrackers, and his checking Lily’s pulse all confirm to Daunis that Jamie is a cop. Daunis tries to run away from him when she realizes this, but Jamie convinces her to get in the car and let him drive her to her mother’s house. There, he instructs her not to tell anyone what happened, especially not Teddie. Jamie reveals to Daunis that he is an undercover cop. He can’t tell her anything else at the moment, but he warns her that she needs to keep everything she saw and heard tonight to herself. 

Daunis sleeps through the night thanks to a pill her mother has given her. She wants to take another one in the morning but remembers that it is Lily’s first day of her four-day journey from this life to the next. On Lily’s first day, she mourns her loved ones. Daunis knows she cannot sleep through Lily mourning her, so she takes tobacco to the poplar tree to honor Lily. Daunis visits Granny June and sees Art lighting the ceremonial fire that will last for the four days and four nights of Lily’s journey. Daunis feels proud to come from people who serve their community the way her Uncle Art and Aunt Teddie do. Lily’s estranged mother Maggie shows up on the second day, and Daunis silently criticizes her for taking so long to arrive. As Daunis is thinking about Maggie’s tardiness to her own daughter’s funeral, she remembers Teddie interrupting a conversation Lily and Daunis were having once about Maggie not being a good mother with a story of Maggie’s own mother and what she was like after coming home from a boarding school where she was abused and had all of her culture and teachings beaten out of her. Teddie tells Lily and Daunis to remember that Maggie was raised by a woman who experienced all of that and didn’t kill herself, like her sister did, after getting home. Daunis recognizes how quick she is to judge Lily’s mother without thinking of her life and history.

On the third day of Lily’s journey, Jamie and his “uncle” show up at the funeral home to talk to Daunis. Ron introduces himself as a member of the FBI, and Jamie tells her that he is a law enforcement officer on loan from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Daunis agrees to talk to the two men, and they drive to Daunis’s old high school. Daunis thinks about her Ojibwe grandmother’s saying about bad things happening in three and how Lily was the third bad thing that happened (the first being Uncle David’s death and the second being GrandMary’s stroke). Once they are in her Uncle David’s old classroom, Ron and Jamie explain why they are working undercover. They are following a pattern of meth distribution that is showing up in the Great Lakes area and are trying to find who is cooking it. They believe the meth they are tracking has been laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms from Sugar Island. When Daunis asks what any of this has to do with Uncle David, the two men explain that Uncle David suspected someone in his chemistry class was cooking the meth, although he wouldn’t give names until he knew for sure. Daunis remembers that Uncle David had been acting strange for months before he went missing and then was found dead of what they said was a meth overdose.

Daunis asks to know more about the investigation. Ron tells her that, a year ago, a group of kids on a reservation in Northern Minnesota got really sick and were found hallucinating on meth. Ron says they knew something about that batch of meth was different, they call it “meth-X.” Ron tells Daunis that Travis was a person of interest as was she—for her knowledge of science as well as her cultural practices. Ron believes that the person adding things like mushrooms is culturally practicing, is Ojibwe, and knows the plants in the area. Daunis defense herself, and Ron tells her she’s no longer suspected of being involved. She then pointedly asks why they are talking to her: She remembers Jamie’s earlier comment, “you know your science and you know your culture.” Daunis knows she’s being asked to take her uncle’s place in the investigation. 

Daunis bristles at the thought of helping the cops. Before she can storm out, however, Ron tells her that this is her opportunity to help her community. Ron asks her to please consider being a Confidential Informant (CI) like her Uncle David was. Back at the funeral home the next day, Daunis takes stock of how many tribal council members are not at Lily’s funeral. Lily, like Daunis, was not an enrolled member of the tribe, but Travis was. Daunis knows that the council members are at Travis’s funeral; there are registered voters in Travis’s family, and Daunis knows that so much comes down to politics. Teddie speaks at the funeral, and Daunis notices Levi standing in the back with Jamie. She wonders if she would have been able to save Lily if she hadn’t spent the last week with Jamie and had been looking out for Lily instead. As everyone goes to their cars to follow the casket, Daunis sees Travis’s mother outside in the parking lot. Angie, Travis’s mother, says she has come to pay Lily her respects, as she was like her own daughter. Daunis yells at Angie: Since her son killed Lily, she should pay her respects somewhere else. Jamie pulls Daunis away and tells her that this isn’t Angie’s fault, that what is happening is bigger than Angie, and that it’s going to keep happening. Jamie offers to take Daunis to the cemetery, but she is busy putting sprigs from prayer ties in her shoes, the heels that Lily told her to buy, as it’s something she’s seen Teddie do to protect herself from bad intentions. At this moment, Daunis has made her decision to help Ron and Jamie with the investigation.