Firekeeper’s Daughter

• Genre: Fiction; young adult thriller
• Originally Published: 2021
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile HL720L; grades 10-12
• Structure/Length: 4 parts; 57 chapters; approx. 496 pages; approx. 14 hours, 13 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine, who has a French mother and an Ojibwe father, witnesses a murder and reluctantly uses her knowledge of both cultures to help the FBI investigate the case.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Drug abuse, suicide, rape, relationship abuse

Angeline Boulley, Author

• Bio: Lives in Michigan; graduated from Central Michigan University; member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians; formerly worked as the Director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education; her father is a traditional Firekeeper
• Awards: Printz Award (2022); William C. Morris YA Debut Award (2022); American Indian Youth Literature Young Adult Honor Book (2022)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• The Individual’s Responsibility in the Community
• Seeing Someone’s “Whole Story”
• Trusting One’s Sense of Self

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Gain an understanding of the historical and social contexts surrounding elements of Ojibwe culture, the crucial backdrop against which Daunis’s conflict plays out.
• Study short paired texts and other resources to make connections via the text’s themes of Community, Trusting One’s Sense of Self, and Seeing the “Whole Story.