Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
The wind can turn at any time and take away what we thought was immutable. It takes strength to face it and move forward despite setbacks.
This is the lesson we learn from the biography of Florent Vollant, singer and ambassador of the Innu people. Beyond the biographical aspect of the work, this book offers an inside view of the Aboriginal realities of Quebec over the past 60 years. An X-ray necessary nowadays.
At the age of 5, young Florent Vollant saw “government agents” knocking on his door to convince his family and those who lived around Lake Wabush that their children would be better treated if they were entrusted to the boarding school. from Maliotenam, 15 hours by train. One morning in September 1964, the seven young Vollants left their parents for the promise of a better future. “Overnight, the account was seven to zero for the government. »
Florent Vollant understood that it was better to pretend to fall into line and obtain exemplary marks to avoid reprisals.
The author will realize that if he has gained knowledge, he has above all lost the ancestral knowledge of the Innu people. Knowledge that he will have to relearn through prolonged contact with the elders.
Written in three parts which always begin with a hard blow, a headwind, the book therefore approaches life at the boarding school. The second part recounts the turbulent adolescence where the author borders on delinquency and even stays in prison before reconnecting with his Aboriginal roots.
Florent Vollant reaches adulthood — and the third part of this book — by plunging headlong into musical creation. The young Innu has a revelation at a show by Morley Loon, who sings his songs in the Cree language. “If he sings in Cree, we can sing our stories in Innu. »
He recounts the creation of the group Kashtin with his sidekick Claude McKenzie, the first successes and the surprise of discovering that their songs, written in Innu, are played on all the radio stations in Quebec.
Florent Vollant also sounds the alarm on the systemic racism of which the Aboriginal people of Quebec are victims. The drama of Joyce Echaquan deeply upset him. “I know some Native people who would rather wait out in the woods to die than go to a hospital like the one where Joyce Echaquan was carelessly left to die,” he wrote.
The book was born out of a long process in which the two co-authors were going to walk on Mount Royal. The singer was telling his story and Justin Kingsley was taking notes. What emerges is a story in short chapters, written in a language close to oral language which allows us to be faithful to the ambassador of the Innu people. Songs in Innu punctuate the reading, sometimes accompanied by a description in French.
The reading, punctuated by short chapters, thus gives the reader the impression of walking the paths of Mount Royal in the company of Florent Vollant and hearing him reflect on his life and Quebec society.
Extract
I have known about racism since the day I boarded the train to boarding school. Let’s not just lie, okay? There are people unable to accept reality. As I write these lines, I am thinking of François Legault, the premier of Quebec. Same thing for Ian Lafrenière, the Minister responsible for Aboriginal Affairs. If these two leaders do not want to recognize that we suffer from systemic racism, it is because they have not understood that, to cure the evil, it is necessary to diagnose and name the wound.
Who are Florent Vollant and Justin Kingsley?
Innu singer-songwriter, Mr. Vollant made a name for himself by forming the duo Kashtin with Claude McKenzie in the late 1980s. He founded the Makusham studio on the North Shore to support the dissemination of music and indigenous culture. Communication professional, Justin Kingsley has worked for the firm Sid Lee. He signed the biography of Georges St-Pierre, The meaning of the fightin 2013.
Ninanimishken – I walk against the wind
Florent Vollant and Justin Kingsley
Preface by Richard Séguin
Flammarion Quebec
240 pages