“Aho, Nokomis!” Summer and some of the other women acknowledged the rock as their grandmother. Bugz scowled.

Bugz set herself down in a camping chair with a long sigh, still wrapped in the blanket. She would spend the ceremony here. Outside. Excluded. Anishinaabe culture, like every Indigenous culture she knew, prohibited women from participating in ceremonies when they had their periods. Bugz couldn’t believe this silly rule was preventing her from joining her friends and family.

The ceremony was supposed to be about healing, life, and the interconnectedness of all beings. All are related. Except for her, apparently. Or anyone else on their “moon time.” And yet Feng, who knew absolutely nothing about this way of life, got to sit inside, front-row center, just because he was a boy. Bugz stewed on this slight. Superstition. Her frustration grew. She shook her head at the spiritual teachers—including many women Elders, including her own mother—who insisted on upholding this tradition. Sure, they’d dress it up in seemingly progressive talk, saying women on their “moons” were too powerful, too connected to the life-giving force inside them to participate, that their bodies would overwhelm the medicine men conducting the ceremonies. There’s something too powerful about women’s bodies, alright. Bugz knew it had nothing to do with magic, only fear. It was simply old-fashioned rule-making, condescension, and telling a woman what she could and couldn’t do, as far as Bugz could tell.

She fumed. A ribbon of sparks exploded from the fire as Waawaate rolled a burning log over and pulled another red-hot rock from the center of the blaze. The pitchfork seemed to pull Bugz’s anger out of her body for all to see. Her scowl matched the fiery intensity of the rocks the pitchfork retrieved. Everything infuriated her. She looked inside the door of the Sweat Lodge and saw Liumei sitting up very straight and looking incredibly focused. Bugz rolled her eyes. Does she think this is yoga class? Oh my god, I hope she doesn’t say “om.” To Liumei’s left sat the woman who’d loudly reminded all the other women earlier that night not to go into the lodge if they were on their time. Women like her seemed to take special pride in broadcasting how much they knew about the culture—especially about all the protocols that kept women in “their place.” This woman seemed to believe the stricter her scolding, the more virtuous she looked, and hence the closer to the Creator she became. Traitor. To the traitor’s left sat Bugz’s mom. Bugz looked away quickly and back to the fire. She seethed at her mother. How could her mom—their community’s first woman chief in modern times, for crying out loud—think in such a backward way when it came to her body and what it did every month?