Excerpt from Nauetakuan, a silence for a noise by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, translated by Howard Scott

from Nauetakuan, a silence for a noise by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine; original text © 2021 by Les Éditions XZY inc.; English translation © 2024 by Howard Scott. Used with permission of Book*hug Press.

Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, trans. Howard Scott. *Nauetakuan: a silence for a noise.* Book*hug Press. $23.00, 236 pp., ISBN: 9781771668941

The applause rings out, creating a festive feeling through- out the main hall of the Musée d’art contemporain. Shouting above the din, the curator invites guests to help themselves to some hors d’oeuvres to conclude the opening of the exhibition. Monica heads toward the food table, just ahead of other hungry patrons who are heading in the same direction. After grabbing some grapes and cheese cubes, she slips behind the mob now swarming around the trays and walks over to grab a glass of wine before moving away. She weaves slowly through the crowd, taking her first sips, when she stops and looks up at a work of art at the far end of the room, a little above the throng of enthusiastic visitors standing in front of it. The photograph is of a woman lying on her side, her back to the lens. Her black hair is streaked with platinum, a white sheet covers her hips, and there is a huge scar across her back, stitched with a row of red glass beads. There are also a few white threads that look like stitches. The whole image is both troubling and captivating.

Monica goes closer, walking around the small group of guests. Seconds tick by and her eyes scrutinize the woman’s back. She’s lying on a surface that looks like an immaculate hospital bed, but without metal bars. Fringe.

That’s the title of the piece, a large photograph mounted in a light box. Monica feels something stir in her chest. It’s not the time for her. It’s too subtle to be analyzed. She tries to deny what she feels deep inside. Within her disordered thoughts, she tries to draw an uncertain parallel between those strings of red beads and her own life.

Strings like lines encircling the globe of the Earth. If only there were a direction to their trajectory, if only gravity were not the only force giving them movement.

Monica walks over to another piece by the Anishinaabe artist featured in the exhibition. All her work deals with the injustices experienced by First Peoples in Canada. Rebecca Belmore: that’s the name on the labels for each installation, painting, and photograph…

Monica is still finding all this out at the retrospective’s opening. Until now, she barely knew Belmore’s name. Earlier that week, her colleagues at the Université du Québec à Montréal student newspaper suggested she cover the opening of the exhibition, which the museum seemed so proud to promote. Monica said yes without giving it much thought, because she wanted to see the original works, she told herself, instead of just scrolling through photos and bland criticism on her computer screen without getting a real feel for the effect.

The installation in front of her is gripping, instantly. On the floor, what looks like a teenager wearing a hoodie seen from behind, their head covered. Black hair tumbles out from under fabric, fanning out in all directions, and as far as Monica’s feet. It hits her.

Monica moves on to another installation. This time, she stops in front of two big white facing walls on which two videos are simultaneously projected. A brown-skinned woman with dishevelled black hair, wearing only a red coat made of light fabric that’s too thin for the forest, the snow, and the cold, is running, out of breath, on a path that’s barely visible in the white winter. A man follows her, apparently as panicked and desperate as she is. Monica contemplates the work for a moment, identifying with the lost woman. Both projections depict the same scene, with one small difference: one seems to be an external point of view, showing the couple’s perspective, while the other sees the action through the eyes of their pursuers. Monica steps forward to read the label.

March 5, 1819 (2008). Demasduit, a Beothuk young woman, is captured by English settlers at Red Indian Lake. Her husband, Nonosabasut, dies trying to protect her.

A shiver raises the hair on Monica’s arms.

How can anyone understand, at the moment it occurs, the first feelings of injustice that dare crawl under your skin? How can you avert the effects of that injustice entering your consciousness, the emotions it precedes and the emotions it follows, and that sometimes even lead to the meandering paths of memory?

Even born warriors have no armour at birth. The armour must be fashioned in the course of encounters, discoveries. Ideally, there would be some decently resistant material to use for protection as soon as the first challenges arise, a custom-made helmet, impenetrable protection.

Monica continues to walk through the exhibition, deeply moved, spellbound, thoughtful, silent. And suddenly it hits her. It doesn’t change anything. But no one has spoken to her since she got there.

Who would anyway? Who knows her? I’m an ordinary girl. What would she have to say in the ambient noise, the fleeting conversations, the self-conscious laughter? I’m not like these people.

She forgets why she’s in the museum today, why she came to the event. She’s no longer there just for herself. It all speaks to her, it is all disturbing. An invisible shadow wraps around her, numbing her.

NATASHA KANAPÉ FONTAINE is an Innu writer, poet, and interdisciplinary artist from Pessamit, on the Nitassinan (North Shore, Quebec). She lives in Tio'tia:ke, known as Montreal. Her critically acclaimed poetry and essays are widely taught and have been translated into several languages. In 2017, she received the Rights and Freedoms Award for her poetry and contribution to bringing people closer through art, writing, performance, dialogue, respect, and cultural exchange. In 2021, she received the Chevalier de l'Ordre des arts et des lettres de la République française. She also works as a translator, screenwriter, sensitivity reader, and consultant on Indigenous literature.

HOWARD SCOTT is a literary translator living in Montreal who translates fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, often with Phyllis Aronoff. He received the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation for The Euguelion by Louky Bersianik and, with Phyllis Aronoff, won the Quebec Writers' Federation Translation Award for The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701 by Gilles Havard. The translating duo were also awarded a Governor General's Literary Award for their translation of Descent into Night by Edem Awumey. Scott is past president of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada.