Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to violence, including sexual violence and child abuse.  

“Use your utmost endeavors to dissuade the Indians from excessive indulgence in the practice of dancing,” reads one of the two epigraphs to Kiss of the Fur Queen. The quote is from a 1921 circular issued to “Indian agents” by Duncan Campbell Scott, then a deputy superintendent with Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs.

The epigraph is an apt example of how the project of colonialism has dehumanized and infantilized Indigenous Canadians and other colonized people around the world. Kiss of the Fur Queen details this project in precise detail, highlighting how colonialism makes the colonized doubt their own heritage through constant devaluation. It is not a coincidence that Scott’s letter singles out the practice of dancing as a problem area; the dancing is problematic because it is a strong ritual feature of many Indigenous cultures. By dissuading Indigenous people from dancing and couching the activity in shame, the colonization project aimed to dismantle Indigenous cultures themselves. Similarly, the tonsuring of the boys at Birch Lake deliberately strikes at the Indigenous association of hair with strength and pride.

In divesting the colonized people of their cultural symbols, the colonizer creates a blank slate for the purposes of colonialism.