Abstract
This essay offers an examination of various ways Angeline Boulley’s best-selling, award-winning Indigenous Young Adult novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter attends to and educates about settler colonialism. At the core of this analysis is the guiding question: In what ways does Firekeeper’s Daughter illuminate the ongoing social structure of settler colonialism within the context of what is currently known as “The United States”? Specifically, this analysis focuses on the topics of Native identity, including colonial mechanism of blood quantum; and the ways institutions such as the FBI operate from values and epistemologies of compartmentalization and deficit notions of Native Peoples. Across this analysis, the overarching goal is to demonstrate how Firekeeper’s Daughter educates about how settler colonialism as structural, contemporary, and ongoing—baked into current social systems.
Author Biography
Dr. Robert Petrone
Dr. Robert Petrone is associate professor at the University of Missouri, where his work examines, using a Youth Lens, the cultural production of adolescence, including intersections of Native American youth and settler colonialism. He also collaborates with Native American youth and teachers to develop curriculum focused on critiquing settler colonialism, revitalizing culture, and advancing tribal sovereignty. He is (co-)author of three books: Re-thinking the “Adolescent” in Adolescent Literacy (with Drs. Sophia Sarginiadies and Mark A. Lewis); Teaching English in Rural Communities (with Dr. Allison Wynhoff Olsen); and Dropping In: What Skateboarders Can Teach Us about Learning, Schooling, and Youth Development.
Recommended Citation
Petrone, R.
(2025).
“I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help”: An examination of how Firekeeper’s Daughter educates about settler colonialism.
Occasional Paper Series,
(54), 73-85.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1559
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