Kiss of the Fur Queen

"Kiss of the Fur Queen" is a novel by Tomson Highway, published in 1998.

The novel's main characters are Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis, two young Cree brothers from northern Manitoba who are taken from their family and sent to a residential school. Their language is forbidden, their names are changed to Jeremiah and Gabriel, and the boys are sexually abused by priests. However, a wily trickster figure, the Fur Queen, watches over the boys as they fulfill their destiny to become artists.

The novel, a fictionalized account of the real-life childhood of Highway and his brother René, was a nominee for the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1998.

Franco-Ontarian poet and academic Robert Dickson translated the novel into French, and it is published with Prise de parole