Jonny remembers a picture of himself and Tias playing with a dead porcupine as kids. That day, when he came home and told his kokum about it, she slapped him and made him bury the porcupine properly. She brings a tobacco offering, makes him skin the porcupine, and makes the body into a stew which she forces him to eat for every meal until it’s gone. She does all this to teach him a lesson about respecting animals and using the entire animal.

One night Jonny snoops through Tias’s nightstand, where he finds a photo of a toddler-aged Tias with an elderly man. When he asks Tias about the photo, Tias says that this was his birth grandfather. Tias was removed from his grandfather’s care because the social services agency thought that the grandfather was too old to care for him. Tias never saw his grandfather again.

Jonny also remembers taking trips to Selkirk, a local town, to visit the grocery store with his mother and grandmother. His mother searches for painkillers and alcohol as his grandmother lets him rent a video. On every trip, Jonny chooses to rent the film DEUCE BIGALO: MALE GIGOLO.