Aggie & Mudgy: The Journey of Two Kaska Dena Children

Aggie & Mudgy is the story of a contemporary young girl, Maddy, who is growing up with her mother and Nan, her grandmother. Maddy’s finding a photograph of two young girls and then her asking Nan about them leads to Nan’s sharing the story of the book’s title characters

Aggie and Mudgy were two Kaska Dena sisters who lived along the BC-Yukon border until they were taken to a Lejac Residential School which was located far from their home and those they loved. The church, where the girls were baptized, changed their traditional names, Mac-kinnay and Beep, to Agnes and Martha, but the girls quietly renamed themselves Aggie and Mudgy.

Wendy Proverbs’ story follows Maddy and her family in their modern quest to maintain their Indigenous roots while also paralleling the journey of Aggie and Mudgy and their 1600 kilometer trek to the residential school where they were forced to reside. Nan provides the details of the girls’ story, allowing Maddy to form her own opinions and realizations of what the girls and countless other Indigenous children went through during their obligatory education under the Canadian government’s colonial system.

In Aggie & Mudgy: The Journey of Two Kaska Dena Children, the author weaves back and forth through the two stories – present and past – delicately and respectfully. The stories intertwine with ideas and feelings and allow Maddy to ask questions as to the way Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools and explore how Aggie and Mudgy must have felt on their long journey.