Firekeeper's Daughter

Daunis ignores Ron’s advice about her relationship with Jamie as soon as Ron joins the partying adults upstairs and leaves Jamie and Daunis alone in the hotel lobby. Jamie seems distracted as Daunis tries to talk to him about preserving both their real and secret relationship. Jamie asks Daunis a few questions about how someone can find the tribe they belong to, and in the conversation Daunis learns that Jamie was adopted. That is why he doesn’t know who his family or community is. Jamie and Daunis share their first real kiss before Daunis goes to her hotel room alone, where she sees a half-naked Grant and a married woman from the booster bus leaving his hotel room. Grant harasses Daunis as he saunters over to her door in just a towel and tells her that to get her key to work, “the right move makes all the difference” (250).

When Daunis helps the team get ready for the game the next day, she opens a box of smudged hockey pucks that Coach Bobby tells her are being donated to native teams by Grant Edwards, but that she shouldn’t say anything about them because Grant wants his philanthropy to remain a secret. When Daunis gets to the girlfriend section of the bleachers, the girlfriends, whom she previously called the “Anglerfish,” present her with a Supes jersey. The other girlfriends explain to Daunis that it didn’t feel right to put Jamie’s name on the back like the ones that they have because she has so many other connections to the team, so they decided to just put her name on it. Daunis is overwhelmed with joy, and, in the midst of having a great time at the game, she gets a text from Teddie that reads, “Robin dead. TJ said meth OD” (252). 

News of Robin’s death inspires a slew of racist and insensitive remarks by the white hockey parents, including “I thought she was one of the good Indians” and “That’s what you get for taking easy per-cap money. I told you they don’t know how to handle their money or their alcohol” (253). After the game, Daunis joins the team in the lobby. She assumes the subdued energy has to do with news of Robin’s death, until Levi speaks up and reprimands the team for not playing like a team. Daunis yells at all the guys on the team for not caring about Robin or the overwhelming meth problem, even though Robin was their friend and their community is hurting. This inspires the guys to hold a fundraiser game, the high school hockey team against the Supes, next weekend in honor of Robin, and to donate the money to a drug prevention program. Jamie pulls Daunis aside and tells her that inspiring this idea was not part of the FBI’s plan. Daunis lashes out at Jamie for his disbelief in her community being capable of helping themselves in this situation and attributes that to Jamie’s total lack of community. The two make up later in the evening and then make-out in Daunis’s room for a while, where Grant sees Jamie sneak out very late that night. 

Grant sits down next to Daunis on the bus the next morning and makes a comment about seeing Jamie leave her room last night by saying that he thought she was a “good girl,” not a bad girl who doesn’t follow the rules. Daunis says that she didn’t realize “it was an either or situation” (263). During the ride home, Ron shares with Daunis what was found on Heather Nodin, including the bag of crystal meth the police found on her, and Daunis reiterates that Heather didn’t have any meth on her the night of the party. Heather was also found without a bra, underwear, or shoes on. During Daunis’s conversation with Ron, she remembers her mother and Uncle David’s secret code language and considers that her Uncle David may have left his notes about the case behind in a code for only Daunis to read. Daunis keeps this idea from Ron, and as soon as they get back, Daunis takes the ferry over to Duck Island. On the ferry ride, Daunis runs into Robin’s parents. Daunis remembers her interaction with Robin on campus and asks her parents if she can contact Robin’s professors for her. Robin’s parents look stunned and tell Daunis that Robin had been addicted to painkillers, which then turned into meth after she re-broke her collarbone last year. They tell Daunis that they had been trying to get her into rehab, not college.