Growing settlers thinking about settler colonialism: Robert Petrone, ‘”I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help”: An examination of how Firekeeper’s Daughter educates about settler colonialism’, Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 54, 2025, pp. 73-85 | settler colonial studies blog

Growing settlers thinking about settler colonialism: Robert Petrone, ‘”I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help”: An examination of how Firekeeper’s Daughter educates about settler colonialism’, Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 54, 2025, pp. 73-85

21Nov25

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.

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