Interview with Natasha Kanapé Fontaine | Tell stories to reclaim your culture

A soothing tranquility emanates from Natasha Kanapé Fontaine’s new collection of short stories, Kanatuut. A feeling which also reflects that which inhabited the author when she wrote it.

When we met her in a café in Plateau Mont-Royal, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine had just returned from Winnipeg, where she was directing a play. Poet, actress and multidisciplinary artist, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine also currently teaches at the National Theater School. And if she evolves with so much ease around these various forms of expression, it is because they form the same whole in her creative process, without distinction.

“Knowing your culture brings peace,” she says gently. And we still underestimate the power of this knowledge. »

After spending part of her childhood in Pessamit, on the North Shore, and then moving to Baie-Comeau, the young woman returned there at the age of 18 to seek the answers she was missing, find her grandparents and learn about ‘innu-aimun.

“I needed to come back to feel like I belonged.” »

Then, at the dawn of her thirties, she felt it was time to bring together all the stories that lived within her. This is how was born Kanatuut – which means “the huntress”.

The 10 stories in the collection draw their inspiration from dreams or Innu legends transmitted by oral tradition – and of which there are multiple variations from one community to another, altered among other things over time by missionaries who wanted to replace the beliefs of the First Peoples, she explains.

For more than two years, she also searched the archives to find traces of these legends; read works like The Living Forest – Founding stories of the Innu peopleby the anthropologist Rémi Savard.

“I constructed stories from what I had access to, both materially and orally; I also relied on what I heard from other nations, I made connections to try to understand how our stories were transformed. I know that it is tiny compared to all that we had in terms of knowledge; but I figured at least I can start somewhere. »

From one legend to another

Beyond the immense Innu territory, news of Kanatuut also takes us to meet other First Peoples, following in the footsteps of the author’s multiple travels.

In Honolulu, Hawaii, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine found an “extension” of her family, the Kanaka Maoli siblings. In New Zealand, where her husband comes from, her adopted Maori sisters took her to the Waipoua forest, where there is a giant kauri tree, two thousand years old. In Nuuk, Greenland, she had an evocative dream that concludes the collection with poetry.

“There are stories that are international; we have a version of it and a people on the other side of the earth will have their version. In Honolulu, they have the story of the dragon in the mountain; We have hill guards, but people don’t know it,” she illustrates.

Her fear is that we will end up losing them if we don’t call them back, she said thoughtfully. “They are so important in the history of humanity. If we lose them, we lose a memory. »

Perhaps this collection of short stories is only a first exercise in her process of reconstruction and cultural reappropriation, she adds. Next fall, she will present, with the artist Ivanie Aubin-Malo, a show inspired by their traditional stories which is currently in production.

Until then, she hopes the legends revived in Kanatuut will be able to “start the conversation”. Above all, she would like her book to help her people find the stories that have been lost through oral tradition; that those who know one version or another of these legends start to tell them, so that they are freed and finally welcomed with all the respect that she shows them through her writing.

“This is how we will learn about our history and the history of each nation,” she insists.

Kanatuut

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine

Stanké

120 pages