Reckoning the Fire:
Seven Themes to Consider When Reading Firekeeper
Katłıà
Firekeeper is a coming-of-age story centered on a young woman who finds herself on a reserve as a firekeeper after an unsettling childhood. As we celebrate the contributions of women throughout history, Katłıà’s storytelling invites readers to reflect on what it means for women to reclaim their histories, cultures, and identities. This listicle helps readers grapple with questions around why it’s important to be informed about the world we live in—apart from our own four walls. The setting, northern Canada, is a place with a rich culture impacted by colonialism and climate change. Witnessing the strength of a firekeeper, readers can know something of the rustic beauty the north has to offer while also immersing themselves in the reality of what life can be like through the eyes of a young Déné woman trying to overcome intergenerational colonial oppression.
Explorers: The beginning of the book refers to European explorers who traveled to the far north, and I make loose reference to the boat, the HMS Terror, Sir John Franklin’s ship, which was found at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean safter decades of trying to navigate its whereabouts. It was only once researchers started listening to the local Inuit people that they were able to find the wreckage. Thanks to evidentiary Indigenous oral histories, which some scientists incorrectly deem as “folklore,” the Inuit kept a record of what happened when they saw the explorers come off the boat. The over one hundred men on the HMS Terror had gotten sick with scurvy and died.[1] Nyla, the main character, recalls her grandfather telling a similar story, except the men who survived managed to make their way off the ship and into the community, where people like her grandfather described the men as zombie like because of the sickness that overcame them.
Pyromania: Nyla, the protagonist of Firekeeper, uses fire as a way to help her cope with her feelings of neglect and abandonment. Fire can be both a destructive and healing force. If we don’t know how to control the fire that burns within us, it can get out of control. If we learn how to harness the fire within us, we can then help others–that is the challenge Nyla has to learn to understand and overcome. It is important to know the difference between pyromania and arson. Pyromania is defined as a mental illness characterized by impulsivity, while arson is an act of criminal intent in which someone sets a fire to intentionally harm others.[2] Nyla is a pyro because she never means to hurt anyone. Traditionally, many Indigenous people designated firekeepers in their communities to keep the fires burning during important ceremonies or life events. Often times they were men. I wanted to show that women can take on this role. To this day, our community gives offerings to the fire when we gather as a way of honoring our relations who have passed on to the spirit world before us.
Agoraphobia: Approximately 1.7 percent of the population experiences agoraphobia before the age of thirty-five.[3] At one point in my life, I believe I did experience agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is the fear of being out in the open or in large public spaces and crowds. As a teenager, I experienced severe anxiety at a time when people didn’t really know what anxiety was, and I suffered alone. I’m thankful that mental health is openly talked about today; there are many more support systems in place than when I was young. Nyla spent most of her childhood in a closet for a bedroom, and I could have written her as having claustrophobia, but instead I chose agoraphobia, mainly because there were settings where she felt comfortable in small spaces such as in the crawl space of her apartment and in jail.
Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG): In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are more likely to go missing or be murdered than any other demographic. This is because Indigenous women and girls are the most marginalized and oppressed members of society, lack of worth that some people in society place upon us can often render us vulnerable targets for predatory behavior. Between 2009 and 2021, 490 Indigenous women and girls were the victims of homicide. This translated into a rate of 4.27 Indigenous women and girls killed per 100,000 Indigenous women and girls in the population—a rate that was six times higher than for their non-Indigenous counterparts.[4] Throughout the book Nyla manages to escapes many dangerous situations that could have rendered her another statistic. I included pieces of my own story of sexual exploitation in the book to break away from the shame of talking about these sensitive topics so that they can be discussed more openly. I hope this book helps to inform young Indigenous women of the importance of safety in knowing their surroundings and being careful of who they trust.
Wildfires: Wildfires in the Northwest Territories this past summer were the worst on record, with an entire city, my hometown of Yellowknife with a population of about twenty-five thousand people, having to be emergency evacuated. There was no end in sight of the string of vehicles that slowly caravaned the only highway out of town to the nearest city twenty hours away. Some had to fly out on a Herc to safety. My son was one of the firefighters who stayed behind in a rendered ghost town to help fend off a fire double the size of New York City. With global warming becoming more and more apparent, summer wildfires in the north may very well be more commonplace in the foreseeable future. In Firekeeper, Nyla becomes a community firefighter, and I recalled some of the conversations that my son shared about what it was like working on the front lines for her character.
Wolverines: Even though wolverines are prevalent in the north, I have only ever encountered one when I was working as a director of an on-the–land postsecondary program, the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning[5]. It was there that we saw a wolverine on the ice. He was too close to our camp for comfort, so one of the crew shot at it and scared it away. The wolverine in Firekeeper is a symbol of Nyla’s, at times tenacious spirit, and its strength and powerful skunk-like scent is symbolic of a form of protection from danger gifted to her by her aunt even though she believes it is a curse.
Water: I wanted to play with the elements of fire and water because they are both powerful in their own right, and are often opposing entities, but in fact they work together. Water can be a very healing life force and can put out fires. Nyla is guided to the water by an Elder after being released from jail and is able to reflect back on her life through the teachings she is given. Nearing the end of the book, Nyla travels on one of the biggest lakes in the world, the deepest in North America, the Great Slave Lake where she is awakened to her inner child.
Interesting fact: there is cameo of an Elder named Sizeh and a lake creature, both of which are prominent characters in my other novel Land-Water-Sky.
Katłıà is a northern Dene novelist specializing in intellectual property law with a focus on mitigating cultural appropriation and creating empowering Indigenous storytelling narratives. She is the author of Firekeeper: A Novel.
