Trickster and Weetigo : Tomson Highway's Fur Queen

Abstract

This project paper discusses the Cree mythology present in Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen. I contend that Highway’s conflation of the two mythological characters, Weesageechak and Weetigo, in the figure of the Fur Queen allows the dramatization of the interaction and confrontation between the aboriginal culture and colonizing culture. Through careful attention to imagistic references to the Cree Weetigo tradition, I contend that the Fur Queen is a complex metaphorical representation of the complicated reality faced by Highway’s characters. Through the Fur Queen, Weesageechak, the trickster, acts as a positive figure overseeing the success of her Aboriginal charges, while the cannibal Weetigo aspects of the Fur Queen represent the negative impacts and dangers faced by her charges within and from the colonizing Euro-Canadian culture.