Atik^u

Nitinikiau innusi : I keep the land alive

A collection of Innu environmental activist Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue’s diary entries. (Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue, Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press, 2019, 244 p.)

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.

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.

Series of photographs: Health care of the Innu communities of the Lower North Shore (BAnQ)

Corpus of photographs taken from the Pauline Laurin (1923-1994) archival fonds. She was the first nurse of the Montagnais communities (Innu) of the Lower North Shore. Between 1949 and 1960, she photographed the daily life of the Innu communities of Mingan, Natashquan and La Romaine. These photographs also reflect the health intervention work and care provided by the Department of Health and Welfare Canada to these communities.

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.