Atik^u

Bleuets et abricots

In Bleuets et apricots, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine’s poems bring to the fore the voices of indigenous women who stand up against the wounds of colonization. With the blueberry, native fruit of the Nordic territory, and the large apricots of Haiti, she invites dialogue, reconciliation and links that enrich peoples. This work earned her a nomination as a finalist for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal.

Carcajou à l’aurore du monde : fragments écrits d’une encyclopédie orale innue (BAnQ)

This book immerses us in the boreal universe of Carcajou, this strange and fabulous being who populates the legends of northern Quebec and Labrador. In the 1970s, Savard recorded narrative sequences of this character after interviewing storytellers from the Ungava Valley and Sheshatshiu in Labrador.

Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory (BAnQ)

Originally published in 1894 as a part of the eleventh annual report of the Smithsonian Institution, this reissue of Lucien M. Turner’s classic book chronicles his observations of Indigenous culture on his journey along the Quebec-Labrador coast and during his stay in Fort-Chimo towards the end of the 19th century.

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.

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.

Le bestiaire innu : les quadrupèdes (BAnQ)

This encyclopedic-type book brings together Innu knowledge concerning a selection of twenty quadrupeds, ranging from black bears and caribou to various species of mice, including beavers, wolves, hares, dogs and many others. It is based on ethnographic data, historians, missionaries, naturalists, biologists and even accounts from explorers who have traveled through northern Quebec.

Les récits de notre terre : Les Innus (BAnQ)

This book offers corpus of oral accounts collected from representatives of the Innu people and anthropologists. Some are unpublished. The stories are divided into ten sections: “The origins”, “Stories of the Receiver”, “Tshakapesh”, “Atshen”, “Other heroes”, “Unusual couples”, “The masters of animals”, “Animals”, “In contact with other nations” and “Various stories”.

Nipimanitu : l’esprit de l’eau

This philosophical poetry collection by sociologist Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, Innu of the Essipit community, proposes a change of course in our relationship with the environment and nature, a reorientation for the future, otherwise we would head straight into a reef. Rather, the author lets nature speak for itself and recalls the urgency to act and get back to basics.

Photographic serie: Montagnais and Naskapi communities of the Côte-Nord and Labrador (BAnQ)

This photographic series was taken by Paul Provencher and bears witness to his career as a forest engineer for the Quebec North Shore company between 1929 and 1963. During this period, he explored, surveyed and inventoried the boreal forest of the Côte-Nord and du Labrador. He meets and accompanies the Innu along the Manicouagan and Toulnustouc rivers and visits the communities of Betsiamites (Pessamit), Sept-Îles (Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam), La Romaine (Unamen Shipi), Moisie Fort Mackenzie (Kawawachikamach, Matimekosh). His photographs bear witness to the Innu-aitun culture and promote the recognition of ancestral aboriginal practices that have been tested and proven for centuries.

S’agripper aux fleurs : collectif de femmes innues

Three Innu women (Louise Canapé, Louve Mathieu and Shan dak/Jeanne’Arc Vollant), natives of the North Shore (Quebec), sign this collection imbued with a typically Aboriginal flavor. Their haikus reveal the naked truth of a people of the great outdoors confined to the “reserve”, a reserve which perhaps has the merit of protecting the identity, but which nevertheless cuts wings.

Uashtessiu : lumière d’automne

Jean Désy, Rita Mestokosho

In this book, two nomads, poets, healers, one Innu, the other from Quebec, share a love for the same territory: the North Shore and, beyond, the North. Rita Mestokosho is the first Innu poet to have published a collection in Quebec, while Jean Désy is a traveling poet who sails between the South and the North and the worlds of autochthony. Two sensibilities intersect in the space of this poetic exchange which will have lasted four seasons.

Uiesh : Quelque part

Joséphine Bacon

This bilingual French-Innu aimum collection of poetry chronicles the life of a city-dweller whose soul and heart have remained in a lost land. Being a tribute to the territory of her ancestors, this book won Joséphine Bacon the Prix des libraires 2019.