Marc Cassivi: Does the form of expression you choose change your look or your subject? What is for you the difference between poetry, essay, song, spoken word or romantic story to express your thought?
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine: It’s me in different forms! [Rires] For me, it’s the same quest. I see the novel as a way to put even more words on the universes that inhabit me. In my collections of poetry, these are universes that are in me, but with an economy of words. Music is another way of relating to the public. The EP is the recording of the songs that I have been performing for three years. While the novel is another way of telling, which is more concrete, less in abstraction than poetry. These are things that I do in parallel. I’ve been working on the album and the novel for three years. The novel is also a way of responding to everything that has happened in recent years.
M. C .: Notably the residential school injury, which has been talked about a lot recently …
NKF: This is what was the most difficult to write. It’s been talked about a lot in the news for some time, but especially this year. It was hard because it triggered all kinds of feelings. It was hard to get through it, and not knowing how to approach it in the novel, for the natives and for the non-natives. There was a lot of thinking and work to get people to where I wanted to take them with it. It was a challenge.
M. C .: The residential school issue is addressed in such a way that it is understood that these traumas are passed down from generation to generation. Was that the premise of the novel?
NKF: It happened in the middle of the writing, when there were the discoveries [des dépouilles d’enfants à Kamloops]. I found it difficult. I was already talking about filiation and boarding schools in poetry, in a more abstract way, without necessarily naming things. In Nauetakuan, this is the result of my mature thinking. I discovered in recent years that I was the granddaughter of a survivor. I live with a lot of traumas that have been transmitted to me in a transgenerational way. What are the consequences of residential schools in our lives or in our communities? We don’t have any education specifically on that.
M. C .: How do we defuse them?
NKF: We come to that reflection. To weigh the magnitude of the consequences. Especially in the last few months, it became clear to me that the book came at a precise moment in our evolution, in our common history, and that I wanted to contribute to this reflection. On a personal level, how can I live my life knowing that I have these traumas? With what tools can I defuse them and how do I ensure that they do not prevent me from evolving? There are different manifestations of these consequences: addictions, patterns, cycles, such as getting attached to toxic people who are themselves injured.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
“I see the novel as a way to put even more words on the worlds that inhabit me,” says Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.
M. C .: The first thread of the novel, it was rather the quest for identity of the main character, Monica, inspired by you?
NKF: It’s certain. There is a lot of fiction, the experiences that I have had my own, but also what I have lived myself and how I lived it. It’s a mix of all kinds of experiences and encounters. I realized that I wasn’t the only one who felt a bit disconnected and wanted to find myself. These were the first guidelines. When I returned to the woods a few years ago, it was a lifesaver. I really understood where I was coming from and who I am canoeing on a river far in the woods. Knowing that my ancestors had walked and loved this territory, where they maintained a way of life for a long time. With my father, we went to a place where my grandfather hunted beaver and we found the remains of their camp from 40 years ago. I brought back items that I kept at home. From there came many reflections on intergenerational and genetic memories. To go back into the woods and understand that this is where we came from.
M. C .: Born in the woods …
NKF: However, I was born at the Baie-Comeau hospital! [Rires]
M. C .: The album is in a way the complement of the novel, with texts which are more demanding, in particular in the relation to the territory. Does your militant side express itself more in song?
NKF: Tanning blades, this is the first slam that I wrote, ten years ago, before I became an activist in the Idle No More movement. I wanted to save it. It’s an archive of what I wanted to express at the time.
M. C .: When you revisit the text, do you find that things have changed? Do you still carry this anger within you?
NKF: At first there was this anger of feeling constantly dispossessed. We are discussing subjects that are diverted, whereas we want to talk about claims. The land back is still relevant today. It surprised me to hear Minister Marc Miller say it was time to give back land. That it comes out of the mouth of a minister is not nothing. I have seen a lot of things change for the better. We are still in the process of getting to know and understand each other. There are a lot of conflicts of perceptions. There are subjects which for us mean this and for non-natives that. You have to constantly redefine things to make sure you understand each other. Otherwise, sometimes I worry that we get discouraged in the communities because we’ve been talking about things for years and nothing has changed.
M. C .: On the album, you talk about Oka. In the novel too. You were born the day after the crisis …
NKF: Nine months later! [Rires]
M. C .: There was inspiration there! Talk about how Oka was able to curb a momentum. How far was that another trauma? Are we making up for this lost time today?
NKF: I think that in aboriginal relations in Quebec, it was really a trauma. We don’t call it that. We don’t want to talk too much about it. At the time, there was a form of propaganda: the natives are like this and like that. Newspaper headlines scared people. They no longer wanted to see the natives in public spaces. For me, the most concrete proof of how the momentum was held back is Kashtin. Overnight, their music on the radio was boycotted. Thirty years later, we arrive with a Félix for Indigenous Artist of the Year and plenty of Indigenous artists taking the stages by storm. Innu music is more alive than ever.
M. C .: Like literature …
NKF: Yes, it’s true. In addition, Aboriginal literature allows us to better understand us. With my novel, that’s what I wanted to do. Provide tools, both to natives and non-natives, to live from the inside the experience of being native in Quebec, Canada and America. But I did it first for myself.
M. C .: The recent tragedies – the death of Joyce Echaquan, the discovery of the remains of the children from the residential schools – can they lead us to a better understanding or is there nothing good to be learned?
NKF: I didn’t say it explicitly, but the last song on the EP, I’m staying, this is for Joyce. After his death, I was not able to write at all. My tour would start again and I would cry in all the shows. It was hard. This poem I had written reminded me of Joyce. I wanted to rock her last moments by imagining what she might have experienced. I didn’t watch the video… I often speak live about the power of poetry. When I present this text, I say that my goal is to ward off fate. To change the course of things through poetry. It’s probably ambitious, but that’s what comes to me. It’s hard for me to say that there is good in this, even though we have never seen so many non-natives take to the streets for an aboriginal issue. People want to support us, but they don’t always know how to do it. We need occasions and places where we can come together and continue these reflections together.
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine will be at the Book Fair on Friday November 26, Saturday November 27 and Sunday November 28 for signing sessions in addition to participating in the discussion Writer’s Confidences moderated by Catherine Perrin, on November 28 at 8 p.m.
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Nauetakuan, a silence for a noise
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine
X Y Z
216 pages