Following Homi Bhabha’s Third Space theory, this study undertakes an analysis of Moniquill Blackgoose’s fantasy novel To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (2023), which skilfully delineates a multi-faceted, three-dimensional network of island-mainland spatial interaction via the protagonist’s identity practice, cross-cultural negotiation, and power reconstruction. Through a fantasy narrative in which Anequs, an Indigenous girl from Masquapaug Island, enters an “Anglish” coloniser-dominated dragon academy, the book effectively unveils three profound colonial dilemmas: colonial spatial othering that constructs islands as backward and exploitable peripheries; colonial erasure of Indigenous history and traditional knowledge; and the fragmented identity predicament of Indigenous subjects trapped in racial, patriarchal, and cultural oppression. Simultaneously, the work displays the Indigenous subject’s capacity for active resistance: Anequs rejects colonial mimicry and cultural subservience, upholds the Masquapaug traditions of human-nature symbiosis, ecological wisdom, and communal equality, and presents a pluralistic spatial community that transcends binary oppositions, respects cultural differences, and preserves communal autonomy.

islandthird spaceIndigenous identitythe Otheridentity construction