Nuit de la littérature at the Institut Suédois
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine

The Canadian Cultural Centre is participating at the 11th Nuit de la littérature with Innu-born Indigenous author Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. She will be presenting her new novel Nauetakuan, to be published in France by Dépaysage.

Organised by the le Forum des instituts culturels étrangers à Paris (FICEP) at the Institut Suédois, in the Marais district, the Nuit de la littérature offers the opportunity to discover some twenty foreign authors through conversations and readings.

A novel as a journey. Where we leave the festive Montreal of the students to reach the forests, lakes and rivers of Nitassinan, passing through Vancouver, Mexico and Pessamit. Where art reveals, at every step, the millennial beauty of Indigenous cultures and their sovereign indocility. A novel like an initiation. Where dreams are a dimension of reality, and the territory a matrix. Where, with the help of the spirits, one traces one’s path. A novel like a reparation. Where one confronts a past that does not pass. Where the daughter can be her mother’s mother, and also a young woman who is at peace and in love and powerful.

Excerpt:
“I’d like to tell her that I’m getting there as well as I can, that I’m looking for the foundations, the landmarks, the doors. I would like to be able to touch the beaver’s skin once more, to feel the breeze rising while receiving the smell of fire and grilling meat. If I close my eyes, my dream will disappear.”

Born in 1991, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is a poet-performer, writer, actor, visual artist and activist for Indigenous and environmental rights. From the Innu community of Pessamit on the North Shore of Quebec, she lives in Montreal. Natasha Kanapé Fontaine first became known for her poetry.

She writes in magazines and contributes to various collectives, including Amun (Dépaysage, 2019). With Deni Ellis Béchard, she wrote the epistolary book Kuei, je te salue : conversation sur le racisme (Écosociété, 2016). Nauetakuan, un silence pour un bruit (Éditions XYZ) is her first novel.

Inhabited by the spirit of the “Idle No More” movement, she travels throughout Quebec, Canada and the world with a message of justice, reconciliation, healing and exchange between peoples.

Complete program for the Nuit de la littérature: www.ficep.info