An Antane Kapesh (1926–2004), who also went by the French name Anne(-Marie) André, was an Innu writer and activist from

Schefferville Schefferville is a town in the Canadian province of Quebec. Schefferville is in the heart of the Naskapi and Innu territory in northern Quebec, less than 2 km (1¼ miles) from the border with Labrador on the north shore of Knob Lake. It i ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. She was a chief at Schefferville (Matimekosh) from 1965–1967. In 1976, she published the

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

book ''Je suis une maudite sauvagesse/Eukuan nin matshimanitu innu-iskueu'' ("I am a damned savage woman") in a bilingual French- Innu edition. This book, which deals with topics such as loss of hunting territory, the

residential school system In Canada, the Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school sys ...

and police brutality, may have been the first French-language book published by a

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

woman in

. The publication of books such as this, containing Innu text, has also been cited as an important factor in the cultural revival of the language; an Innu-language press (Éditions Innu) was soon founded and existed until 1993. Kapesh followed this book with another, ''Tante nana etutamin mitassi? / Qu'as-tu fait de mon pays?'' ("What have you done with my country?") in 1979, discusses colonization of Turtle Island from the perspective of a fictionalized child. In 1981 it was adapted for stage production by Kapesh and Jose Maillot (who also translated her first novel into French). Although her writings would be an inspiration to subsequent Innu writers, they were not well received at the time of publication. According to the publisher, Bernard Assiniwi, ''Je suis une maudite sauvagesse'' brought on a negative reaction from the reading public and subsequent planned volumes in the series were canceled.

References

External links

An Antane-Kapesh, écrivaine (1926-2004)
(link in French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Antane-Kapesh, An Innu people First Nations women writers 20th-century First Nations writers Canadian women non-fiction writers 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers Canadian autobiographers 20th-century Canadian women writers Women autobiographers First Nations activists

See also

References

External links