In his new collection of short stories, Kanatuut, which means “the huntress” in Innu-aimun, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine notably features the young Shatshitun, who cruelly lacks self-confidence, but who learns to overcome her fears by responding to the call of the territory. What confidence would indigenous peoples in the country display today without the intergenerational trauma inherited from residential schools, wonders the author of short contemporary stories intertwined with ancestral legends.
Residential schools aimed to “destroy the souls of people” and thus undermined the self-confidence of generations of Indigenous people, says the one who comes from the Innu community of Pessamit, on the North Shore. Sitting at a café on Laurier Avenue in Montreal, the 32-year-old woman says she now has more confidence, even if she sometimes lacks it. She also hesitated before diving into the heart of the theme of trust and the absence of it in the pages of Kanatuut. “I said to myself: ‘My God, this makes me experience things,’” she relates.
In his book tinged with magical realism, which appears on 1er November, the characters set in the current era face adversity, but they can count on mythical creatures to guide them. The sea serpent Uteshkan-manitush, which is represented on the cover of the work, emerges from the water and helps the Innue Shatshitun understand the meaning of her first name, “love”, even though she grew up in a home that has been deprived of it. “I wanted to demonstrate that it is self-love and love of our community that the spirits want to seek in us,” maintains the author.
Several protagonists of Indigenous novels in Canada seek ways to maintain healthy marital or friendly relationships, despite the traumas inherited from colonialism, continues the poet and activist. “Sometimes I think that our reality is to find how to transcend this and manage to come together even if the wounds are so great that it prevents us from being together,” she says, pressing her hand to her heart.
Travel to connect
In the book, some stories take place in Innu lands, but others take place in New Zealand, Hawaii or Greenland, places that the author herself visited. “I asked myself the question until the end: “Should everything take place on Innu territory? Should I remove stories that happen elsewhere?” » she relates.
The great traveler, however, concluded that she was moved by the stories of the other indigenous populations with whom she had visited. “I saw processes of reappropriation and reconstruction almost everywhere, and I said to myself that they were shared by so many people in the world. It is these people who, among other things, brought me back to my ancestral beliefs and my spirituality,” says the woman who is married to a Maori from New Zealand.
The laughing-eyed artist wants to send a message to young Indigenous people: deep connections can be created with other nations while traveling. “We can experience connections that do so much good, when we realize that others are experiencing similar things, that there are people who want to rebuild themselves, both themselves and their culture,” says -she, her eyes shining.
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, who has visited Greenland twice, says she “brings back dreams” for her family each time she returns from this Arctic island. “It’s predominantly Inuit, so it’s an indigenous society, despite the power of Denmark. Since I went there, I have another vision of the world and another way of perceiving our reality when I come back here. I say to myself: “What would it look like if we were much stronger as a society at home? What would our young people be like?” »
“Stronger” young people
Mme Kanapé Fontaine hopes that her dreamlike short stories will inspire Innu youth to create more. She believes that one of her roles as an artist is to guide new generations towards traditional stories. “It’s ambitious, my business,” she admits, smiling. But if young people leave their community and live in an urban environment, but if they carry their stories within them, they will already be stronger. »
The author is convinced that many young people have the ability to create, even if some are unaware of it for the moment. “Our ancestors did just that, create, every day. For them, it was about living the territory, they had this talent to survive with all the traditional ways of doing it, that is to say, to build, to deconstruct, to carry things on us, to carry our children », she lists.
However, she believes that today’s Innu sometimes have difficulty believing that this creative impulse still resides within them. “We say to ourselves: “Our ancestors were that, but that’s not us.” I say to myself: ‘No, it’s still us every day,’” she says, stroking the cover of her book.