Atik^u

Eukuan nin matshi-manitu innushkueu : Je suis une maudite sauvagesse

In this novel, Antane Kapesh wrote to preserve and share her culture, experience, and knowledge, all of which, she felt, were disappearing at an alarming rate because many Elders – like herself – were aged or dying. She wanted to publicly denounce the conditions in which she and the Innu were made to live, and to address the changes she was witnessing due to land dispossession and loss of hunting territory, police brutality, and the effects of the residential school system.

Subjects: Indigenous authors, Indigenous communities, Indigenous literature, Innu-aimun, Innu-aitun

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Hunter with Harpoon (BAnQ)

Published fifty years ago under the title Harpoon of the Hunter, Markoosie Patsauq’s novel helped establish the genre of Indigenous fiction in Canada. This new English translation unfolds the story of Kamik, a young hero who comes to manhood while on a perilous hunt for a wounded polar bear. In this astonishing tale of a people struggling for survival in a brutal environment, Patsauq describes a life in the Canadian Arctic as one that is reliant on cooperation and vigilance.

Subjects: Canadian arctic, Indigenous authors, Indigenous literature, Inuit

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Jardin de givre collection

The literary works in this collection, published by the International Laboratory for Research on the Imaginary of the North, Winter and the Arctic, aim to document, study and interpret the northern Quebecois and circumpolar imagination from a multicultural perspective, comparative and multidisciplinary. They particularly value comparisons between the cultures of Quebec, Scandinavia, Finland and the Inuit world.

Subjects: Inuit

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Je te veux vivant

This collection of poetry by Virginia Pésémapéo-Bordeleau, a Cree Métis born in Rapides-des-Cèdres, inspires hope and life, despite the suffering of mourning and loneliness. The author takes us on two trajectories of pain which, upon leaving, defeat death.

Subjects: Indigenous authors, Indigenous literature, Poetry

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Kuessipan

This novel by Naomi Fontaine is presented as a series of prose poems which introduces the reader to the daily life on an Innu reserve and which tenderly displays, but without any concession, the character, customs, feelings, and passions of a young Innu who courageously negotiates the comings and goings between the reserve and the city, so common for the people of Uashat-Maliotenan.

Subjects: Indigenous authors, Indigenous literature, Innu, Innu-aitun

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Kukum

This novel by Innu author and journalist Michel Jean, from the Mashteuiatsh community, tells the story of the brutal sedentarization of the Innu through the unique story of his great-grandmother. This work, which won the France-Quebec Literary Prize, immerses the reader in the life of Almanda Siméon, a white woman who will choose a nomadic life by marrying an Innu from Mashteuiatsh.

Subjects: Indigenous literature, Innu, Innu territory, Sedentarization, Indigenous authors

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