Atik^u

A tea in the tundra: nipishapui nete mushuat

Joséphine Bacon

Finalist for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal 2014, this english translation of the poetry of Joséphine Bacon, Innu of Betsiamites, takes on the words that lead us to the heart of the tundra and closer to the people who live there.

Annie Muktuk and other stories

In this notorious novel, Norma Dunning portrays the unvarnished realities of northern life through gritty characters who find themselves in difficult situations. Her stories challenge southern perceptions of the north and Inuit life through evocative, nuanced voices accented with Inuktitut words and symbolism.

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.

Comment je perçois la vie, Grand-Mère : Eshi uapataman Nukum

This collection by Rita Mestokosho, Innu woman from the community of Ekuanitshit (Mingan), offers eight Innu-French bilingual texts, then twelve written directly in French.

Croc fendu

Novel mixing myth and reality, poetry and prose, telling the childhood in the 1970s of a pregnant girl in Nunavut. The beauty of the place rubs shoulders with the ravages caused by alcohol and violence. Spirits and animals are also present. The author, Tanya Tagaq Gillis, is an internationally renowned Inuit artist who incorporates, among other things, throat singing into her musical pieces.

Dictionary of Native American literature

Dictionary covering the historical emergence of Native American writers (up to 1800) and the Native American Renaissance (1967–). Features bio-critical essays and theme-based articles related to topics such as Native American songs and legends.

Do not enter my soul in your shoes : poems

This first collection of poems by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Innu native of Pessamit on the North Shore of Quebec, is a dive into the female body, accompanied by a poetic reflection on exile and the feeling of love. It has received critical acclaim and won the 2013 Société des Ecrivains Francophones d’Amérique Award of Excellence

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.

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.

Inuit Literatures

This site contains biographies of writers from Nunavik, Nunavut, Nunatsiavut and Greenland, a presentation of works written by the Inuit of these territories, documents to better understand the cultural Inuit history, and a cultural chronology taken from their own works. (Laboratoire international de recherche sur l’imaginaire du Nord, de l’hiver et de l’Arctique. Université du Québec à Montréal. «Littératures inuites». URL [https://inuit.uqam.ca/fr] )

Inuktitut (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami)

Inuktitut magazine is published by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit association in Canada. Each colourful issue has several feature articles, first person stories and book reviews. (Inuktitut, 1959 to the present)

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.

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.

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.

La saga des Béothuks

Historical, mythological, ethnographic, this novel is a masterful work by Bernard Assiniwi, of Cree origin, which won him the France-Quebec Jean-Hamelin Prize in 1997. It makes a fascinating contribution to the rediscovery of indigenous societies, at the same time. time it sheds light on a particularly dramatic episode in the white conquest of America.

Ma peau aime le Nord

First collection of poetry by the young Innu of Ekuanitshit (Mingan) Manon Nolin, Ma peau aime le Nord reveals the boundless attachment that the Innu poet has for her culture, for the traditions of her ancestors, for her territory. Her writing takes an intimate look at the fragility of a disappearing Innu culture, whose strength we can still feel in the thousand-year-old teachings of nature.

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.

Qu’as-tu fait de mon pays? Tanite nene etutamin nitassi?

This novel tells the story of the dispossession of indigenous peoples and the abuses of the colonial system in the form of a philosophical tale. In this work, An Antane Kapesh, the first Innu author, interprets the forest and those who endured colonial history in their flesh and their dignity and explains the world as it was before colonization.

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.

Sanaaq : an Inuit novel

This novel by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (transliterated and translated from Inuktitut to English) recounts the fortunes and misfortunes of Sanaaq before and after the arrival of the first whites in Inuit country. Mitiarjuk allows the reader to discover, as no Westerner anthropologist has yet been able to do it, the life and psychology of the Inuit confronted with extreme nature, the need for sharing and the invasion of their territory by white people and their civilization.