Kiss of the Fur Queen

Blurb

Kiss of the Fur Queen is a novel by Tomson Highway. It was first published by Doubleday Canada in September 1998.
The novel's main characters are Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis, two young Cree brothers from Eemanipiteepitat in 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.
Francophone Ontarian poet and academic Robert Dickson translated the novel into French. Released under the title Champion et Ooneemeetoo, the French edition was published by Prise de parole in 2004.