Grandmother Ignatia Thunder is Carleen’s mother and a great storyteller. During the summer of 1988, an anthropology student studies her. She was married several times, but it is not clear how many times. She is an old medicine woman who is occasionally visited by her grandson Zack and his friends, Joe, Cappy and Angus. 

She likes talking about her sex life with Mooshum and her friend Mrs. Bijiu. She talks about erections in old age and the fat Indian she was once married to who died while having sex with her.

Later, she moves to the Elder’s Lodge where she is bound to a wheelchair and carries a oxygen tank. Regardless of her impairments, she still looks young and beautiful when she smiles. She dies in 2003.