Repairing Oblivion Through Empathy
While Indigenous studies are characterized by the growing visibility of some First Nations poetsand writers in Canada, it is possible to identify aesthetic innovations that, beyond poetry and the novel, integrate more strongly the point of view of the recipients. This is the case of the dialogue initiated by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Deni Ellis Béchard dealing with racism and ignorance of the history of the First Nations, including that of the Innu nation. By connecting to a classic epistolary tradition, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Deni Ellis Béchard invite Quebec people to reconsider the history of their country by taking into account the legacy of the First Nations. This exchange of letters takes the form of a lively conversation and is used as a form of didactization of the debates of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on the systematic abuses committed in residential schools. This Commission issued its report in 2015 shortly before the publication of Kuei, My Friend by pointing out the roots of institutionalized racism. While indigenous literature undoubtedly asserts itself as an act of cultural survival, it seems that this dialogue is more inhabited by the creation of empathy. Using the methods ofnonviolent communication, the article analyzes the way in which this work strengthens zntercommunity relations in Québec from the perspective of intercultural pedagogy. The article focuses on the editorial peritext, the musicality of the dialogue made up of chorus, refrains and comments with the discovery of the last letters. What is the contract offered to the reader by both protagonists in the twenty-six letters? Then, the attention on learning the keywords of the Innu language to correspond and finally on the metaphors used by both authors to build the path of recognition. The hypothesis is the one of a remembrance which is not an accusatory memory, but a memory reincorporating the forgetting of these communities. This empathy embodies in fact the question of reconciliation of memories.