The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle by Kent Monkman & Gisèle Gordon

Author:Kent Monkman & Gisèle Gordon [Monkman, Kent & Gordon, Gisèle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

I swung my handbag with the full force of my fury and knocked him down. I’d had enough of this pretender who dared to tell me I was inauthentic!

Duel After the Masquerade, 2007. Acrylic on canvas. 20 in. x 30 in.

Kane grabbed his paint kit and ran after me with Lefroy and three other friends also dressed in ceremonial masks.[324] I grew ever more furious at the thought of these men wearing the masks as if they were mere costumes for amusement, and not living entities with power undreamed of by these dog asses, these atimociskak! Kane implored me to stay calm—then, seeking to placate me, made the inane and offensive suggestion of painting me dressed in an “authentic” Haudenosaunee woman’s dress. Kane was another Catlin! The hubris and foolishness of these men knew no bounds. I am not Haudenosaunee and certainly not a woman! I am nêhiyaw, and although I dearly love my iskwêwak sisters, I am all genders, all forms, and nothing that can be defined by one word in any language.

I swung my handbag with the full force of my fury and knocked him down. I’d had enough of this pretender who dared to tell me I was inauthentic!

I would be back for those masks in the morning.

I slept not a wink, for I spent the night steaming with rage. When I returned soon after dawn, Kane was still sleeping off his hangover, his servant told me. I stormed past the quivering man and into Kane’s living room. “Where are the masks?!” He had no idea of what I spoke and was clearly terrified. Not wanting to punish the poor man for his master’s sins, I softened my tone. “The masks worn last night at the masquerade.”

“Master Lefroy took them, sir—I mean madame! He left just a quarter of an hour ago, headed northwest.”

I hitched my fine atimwak to my sled, urging them to run hard, and caught up to Lefroy within the hour. He was wearing the garb of a Métis hunter, and travelling with a toboggan pulled by a motley trio of European mutts.[325] I knocked his sled over with one crack of my whip. “I’ll take those,” I told him.

Lefroy began to stammer some kind of objection, but I had long run out of patience. I seized the masks. “It matters not how you got them, but these were made for ceremony. I will take them back home, to the medicine people who know how to take care of them.”

I cracked my whip once more and was away. I needed to be out of this muddy town and back amongst my people. My head was still spinning with what I had seen and heard. That man, Ryerson…taking our children—that could not be possible. He was a madman, no one would do that. But I felt uneasy.

I travelled west until there was no more snow, then, as spring break-up was well underway, unharnessed the dogs—they would find their way back to the Fur Queen.

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