Sḵwxwú7mesh woman, English name Mary Capilano, is remembered as always following the path of her ancestors.

Since 2017, The Centre for Canadian Studies has focused its research on First Nations literature to understand how these writers use colonial languages (French and English) to address a wider audience and raise awareness of First Nations cultures long scorned and silenced. This article examines the case of Natasha Kanapé Fontaine's Manifeste Assi, which opens up access to a non-Western ontology based on a harmonious, non-hierarchical relationship with the environment. At the same time, the article questions this idea of Westernness by revaluing critical metaphysical traditions that enable us to understand the ontological frameworks of Innu thought. The article does not claim to essentialize a way of being, but rather to show a diversity of ways of being-in-the-world. Innu thought can be studied from a phenomenological standpoint, revealing the contours of this consciousness.

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.
Foto: Bull-Doser, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In her poem Manifeste Assi, the Innu writer Natasha Kanapé Fontaine addresses a scream similar to that of negritude to evoke the way of being of the Innu and their relationship to the Earth. This article sees this collection as an exercise of decolonial ontology where it is possible to relearn how to be Innu by finding continuity with the elements and the Earth. By describing an animistic subject in solidarity with its environment and the ancestors, this thought explores the ways of repairing the link of human beings to the Earth. Decolonial ontology means here a relativization of Western rationality in favor of a thought that has long remained invisible.

The articles in volume 35 of the British Journal of Canadian Studies will be presented at an online conference on December 11.

For further information, please contact franorfon@su.se

The article is accessible on https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911503

Christophe Premat

Foto: I, Padraic Ryan, CC BY-SA 3.0 Monument to aboriginal war veterans in Confederation Park, Ottawa, Canada (with a Remembrance Day wreath).