Jonny Appleseed

“I didn’t understand why we’d sung about him at camp—I wanted to know about Louis Riel, Chief Peguis, and Buffy St. Marie, but instead we were honouring some white man throwing apple seeds in frontier America.”

At a Christian summer day camp, the other campers sing a song about Johnny Appleseed, whose name is the basis for the titular character in the novel. Changing the name subtly from Johnny to Jonny represents the protagonist’s desire to remain apart from the symbols he encounters in white culture, even as he embodies them. At the camp, he is puzzled why they are learning about an irrelevant historical important historical figure like Johnny Appleseed and not Indigenous figures that directly impacted First Nations and Canada.

“I always wondered how he performed that magic, how he shapeshifted his body in the dark, how his edges poked me but never cut me, how he fit into me like a nipple fits into a baby’s mouth, how I could read him upside down. His transforming body wrapped around me, blanketed me, made me sweat ceremonially.”

Jonny's first sexual encounter is with a white boy at a reservation party. Throughout the novel, the narrator uses ceremonial and religious imagery to describe sexual experience; the case is no different here, where shapeshifting is described as happening in the dark, and how the sweat of sex becomes ceremonial, as in a sweat lodge.

“I always got a tickle out of how you could anthropomorphize yourself within the gay animal kingdom: 'bear,' 'otter,' 'wolf,' 'fox,' 'cubs.' If only these gays knew how powerful Mistahimaskwa could really be."

Here, Jonny sees a connection between his Cree identity and his queer identity. Gay men often use animals to group themselves: for example, a gay “bear” is a large, hairier man. “Mistahimaskwa” refers to Big Bear, a powerful 19th-century Cree chief who was involved in the resistance to the theft of Indigenous land.

“All my life I wanted to leave the rez—and every time I was about to, I stopped myself. It hurt. [...] I can’t pray to a God I’m afraid of; and believe it or not, even in the twenty-first century, two brown boys can’t fall in love on the rez.”

Jonny wrestles with whether or not to leave the reservation because it’s painful to leave home. Ultimately, he does move to the city of Winnipeg because he believes that two brown boys can't be happy together or live openly on the reservation.

“He doesn’t mind, but he also says he isn’t gay and I tell him me neither. I still don’t think he gets what that means, even when he’s inside me. At first he used to will himself to love me if I made myself more feminine..."

Despite having a lifelong romance and sexual relationship with Jonny, Tias refuses to acknowledge his queer sexual orientation. Even when he’s penetrating Jonny, Tias does not think of it as a gay or queer sexual act; this manifests early on as his desire for Jonny to perform femininity. This tension results in Tias choosing an Indigenous cis woman, Jordan, as his partner instead of Jonny.

“We ready ourselves to find a promised land on the other side with the Fur Queen and Whisky Jack waving us home, but instead we see that the water has not calmed, and there are waves as far as the eye can see. The waves are coming—they are here to take back what is rightfully theirs; we are all due—a thunderbird and Nanabush both.”

In this passage, Jonny recounts a recurring dream he has of riding an eagle through a post-apocalyptic landscape and coming out the other side unscathed. Though the eagle hurts him a bit, it ultimately saves him. In the dream, Jonny hopes to see the legendary mythical Cree figures Fur Queen and Whisky Jack, but the rough waters that obscure them from view represent his separation from being able to take refuge in his home culture.

“I played straight on the rez in order to be NDN and here I played white in order to be queer.”

When he can, Jonny passes as white among the other queer people in Winnipeg so that he doesn't have to answer questions about his identity that could lead to him being ostracized from the queer community. On the reservation, he plays straight among other Indigenous people so that he can be accepted as one of them. This double life takes an emotional and psychological toll on Jonny because he never feels safe being himself.

“Jonny, m’boy, your kokum old but she ain’t dull. You’s napêwisk-wewisehot, m’boy, Two-Spirit. You still my beautiful baby grandkid no matter what you want to look like or who you want to like.”

When Jonny tries to come out to his grandmother, she tells him that there's already an Indigenous word for his gender identity. She accepts him as he is, and having her support allows him to feel secure in his identity in ways Tias does not. Knowing that he is Two-Spirit and that there is an Indigenous term for his identity helps Jonny feel connected to Indigenous culture rather than outside of it.

“When everyone would go home for the night, Tias and I used to hang back and make out in the bushes. Everyone knew but no one acknowledged it, they were all happy enough to leave two faggot boys to tinker with each other so long as we were out of sight, out of mind.”

Even though the others on the reservation know that Jonny and Tias are romantically and sexually intimate with one another, they don't acknowledge it openly. The unwritten rule of gay sexual activity on the reservation is that it's acceptable as long as it is not made public.

“I’m fine with that, son, Creator, he made you for a reason—you girl and you boy and that’s fine with me, but what’s not fine is you selling yourself short.”

Jonny's mother accepts his Two-Spirit gender identity and his queer sexual orientation. However, she's angry with him for making a beaded thunderbird as a gift for a boy who doesn't love him back when he could be selling it instead. Jonny says this passage is the best advice she ever gave him.

“I wondered how cold the rapids in Peguis were right now, those fat leeches waiting for a fish to suckle off; here, my penis, wriggling in the bath, I too am cheap tackle.”

This passage illustrates a common recurrence throughout the book: Jonny’s connection of images of his own body to images of the land and water in Peguis. He does not shy away from potentially repelling bodily imagery, such as here, when he compares his penis to a leech.

“All the land is horny as fuck. The treaty land has awakened and the berries are thick with juice that threatens to burst out of their infant seeds.”

Furthering the connection between the erotic and the landscape, Jonny describes the land itself as being charged with sexual energy. There's the undercurrent of history in describing the land as "treaty land"—especially the history of the theft of land from Indigenous people in Canada.

“He digs through my body, feels for the bean in me, buzzes against it, looks for the bone that holds my tapwewin. [...] And as he pulls out, he jiggles the bean again, makes me come into the mud, licks the salt from my eyes—all of this treaty land is filled with me.”

Here, Jonny describes a recurring dream in which imagery of the erotic and the natural world are deeply intertwined. A literal bear (an animal) tops him, which is a pun on the gay “bear” identity. The passage combines the feelings of fear and satisfaction that Jonny associates with sex and with his Indigenous identity.

“Tias wiped up the spots of blood and bits of nail from the counter... One nail was split wide open, cut straight down to the bed: a bloody, mushy layer that looked like an exposed brain.”

When a babysitter lets Tias and Jonny paint their nails with glitter polish as kids, they fail to wash it off before Tias’s parents come home. Tias’s adoptive father physically abuses Tias’s hands by splitting his nails and cutting them too short as punishment. The abuse Tias suffered as a kid for any performance of femininity leads to Tias being terrified of being queer as an adult and makes impossible for him to come out.

“[W]hen we arrived at the sweat lodge, the elder wouldn’t let me in. “Modesty,” he repeated, “is key.” My skirt apparently did not meet his ceremonial expectations; he told me to take it off and put on a pair of XXL Adidas shorts he had, or to return at another date in proper attire.”

In this passage, Jonny is excited to participate in a traditional sweat lodge ceremony. His grandmother sews herself a ceremonial skirt to participate, and when he asks, she sews him one as well. But the elder refuses to let him wear it inside—his Two Spirit identity is not recognized, and he is expected to wear men’s' clothing instead. The Adidas shorts that the elder asks Jonny to wear have to ties to traditional culture and are another example of Jonny being “othered” in the Indigenous community for his queerness.

“[T]radition is an NDN’s saving grace, but it’s a medicine reserved only for certain members of the reservation, and not for self-ordained Injun glitter princesses like me.”

Jonny refers to himself repeatedly throughout the book as an “Injun glitter princess.” This self-proclamation incorporates both his Indigenous and his Two-Spirit identities in an affirming way though he recognizes that in embracing his authentic identity, he finds himself separated from many aspects of Indigenous culture.

“I used to dream about a dress that had the colours of the medicine wheel: black, white, yellow, and red. I finally made one from some clearance clothes... I hole-punched recycled soup can lids and sewed them to the dress instead of bells. It jingles gloriously when I dance around my living room in it.”

Jonny dreams about a dress he hasn't been allowed to have and would not have been allowed to wear on the reservation. Instead of waiting for someone else to approve him wearing it, he makes his own out of clearance rack clothing and soup can lids. This passage represents how he forges a space for himself instead of waiting for someone else to make one for him.

“I found my own sustenance from making straight NDN boys love me like their pow wow trail hookups. They’d cuddle me at night and then kick me out in the morning, denying any closeness and blaming it all on the drink.”

Jonny finds a complicated self-acceptance in having sex with "straight" boys. They tell him that they love him and hold him physically close. Jonny interprets their behavior while drunk as being indicative of what they really want though they deny it. Because of the homophobia around him, Jonny often finds himself in relationships with men that alternate between acceptance and rejection.

“'Can’t you read?' a voice shouted from behind me. 'No loitering!' I brushed the man off with my hand and felt him shove a corn broom against my back. 'Goddamn Indigenous people, always sitting around here. Hurry up and leave before I call the cops.'"

When Jonny gets a snack from his local convenience store, he sits outside on the curb to eat it. But instead of leaving him in peace, the store owner assaults him and threatens to call the police. The event is emblematic and exemplary of the treatment he experiences in Winnipeg: discrimination against Indigenous people by white people. The store owner’s use of the phrase “always sitting around” shows the stereotype white people hold of Indigenous people as being lazy.

“Tias didn’t invite me up to join him and his family for breakfast—he was hiding me in his basement bedroom like a rat. I wondered if Jordan had been here too. Had he invited her upstairs for breakfast?”

When Jonny stays over in Tias’s basement bedroom, Tias hides him there rather than showing him to the rest of the family. Jonny wonders about the difference in how Tias treats him versus how Tias treats Jordan. This is an example of Tias’s internalized homophobia as well as the homophobia he experiences from his family. Jonny constantly compares himself to Jordan because the community accepts her opposite-sex relationship with Tias whereas Jonny’s same-sex relationship with Tias remains taboo.

“She was one of those real traditional Nates who always scared me—the kind whose gait looked like a jingle dance and whose arms were thick as logs because her daddy taught her how to trap.”

Jonny characterizes Jordan, who is Tias’s girlfriend and his rival for Tias’s affections, as authentically, effortlessly Indigenous. Jonny sees Jordan as more deeply inhabiting Indigenous identity than he does because Indigenous cultural activities, such as dancing and trapping, are part of her muscle memory from years of practice. This characterization is an example of how Jonny struggles with feelings of inferiority regarding his Indigenous identity.

“Tias stood behind me and his brown hands were around mine, our fingers interlaced like a woven basket.”

Even though Jonny struggles with the intersections of his Indigenous and queer identities, he sees a ceremonial aspect in his queer identity. For example, here, he sees the romantic meeting of his and Tias’s fingers as being like a traditional woven basket. The basket is a metaphor for holding and being held, which indicates the mutually supportive nature of their relationship

“[L]little ol’ gay me vogued in the middle of the circle—a little Willi Ninja went a long way to a bunch of breeders, but you know, you got to earn your street cred somehow. They round danced around me at a pace that seemed impossible”

At a house party, Jonny performs a traditionally queer dance form—vogue—as his friends perform a traditionally Indigenous dance form—the round dance. Here, the reader sees the joyful and sorrowful merging of Jonny's identities; he's found a place among other Indigenous people where all aspects of himself can be embraced, but his queerness still sets him apart from the other members of his culture.