Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation

Kuei, My Friend is an engaging book of letters: a literary and political encounter between Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Québécois-American novelist Deni Ellis Béchard. Choosing the epistolary form, they decided to engage together in a frank conversation about racism and reconciliation.

Intentionally positioned within the contexts of the Idle No More movement, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the National Inquiry into Missing or Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls, the letters in Kuei, My Friend pose questions in a reciprocal manner: how can we coexist if our common history involves collective and personal episodes of shame, injury, and anger? how can we counteract misunderstandings of the Other, which so often lead to contempt and rejection? how can we educate non-Indigenous communities about the impact of cultural genocide on the First Peoples and the invisible privileges resulting from historical modes of domination?

In an attempt to open a sincere and productive dialogue, Kanapé Fontaine and Ellis Béchard use their personal stories to understand words and behaviours that are racist or that result from racism. With the affection and intimacy of a friend writing to a friend, Natasha recounts to her addressee her discovery of the residential schools, her obsession with the Oka Crisis of 1990, and her life on the Pessamit reserve. Reciprocating, Deni talks about his father’s racism, the segregation of African-Americans and civil rights, and his identity as a Québécois living in the English-speaking world.
By sharing honestly even their most painful memories, these two writers offer an accessible, humanist book on the social bridge-building and respect for difference. Kuei, My Friend is accompanied by a chronology of events, a glossary of relevant terms in the Innu language, and, most importantly, a detailed teacher’s guide that includes topics of discussion, questions, and suggested reflections for examination in a classroom setting.

Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Of Bonobos and Men (Grand Prize winner of the Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism); Cures for Hunger, a memoir about his bank robber father (selected as one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for literary fiction, selected by CBC Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of the year to be read by Canada’s political leaders); Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, an epistolary book of young-adult non-fiction co-authored with Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine; White, a novel exploring the legacy of colonialism and the impact of neocolonialism in the Congo and in Canada; A Song from Faraway (2020), a novel that tells the story of a family's legacy in wars over two centuries and on three continents; and We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine (2025), a speculative novel exploring artificial intelligence and the meaning of human existence.

He has reported from India, Cuba, Rwanda, Colombia, Iraq, the Congo, and Afghanistan. He has been a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays 2017, and his photojournalism has been exhibited in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Born in 1991, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is Innu, originally from Pessamit on Quebec’s North Shore.

Poet-performer, actor, visual artist, and activist for Indigenous and environmental rights, she lives in Montreal. Her first collection of poems, Do Not Enter My Soul in Your Shoes (translated by Howard Scott; Mawenzi House, 2015), recounts her initial identity questioning and was hailed by critics, earning her the 2013 Prix littéraire des Écrivains francophones d’Amérique. A finalist at the 2015 Prix Émile-Nelligan, her second collection Assi Manifesto (Mawenzi House, 2016) offers a song to our planet Earth, suffocating as a result of the exploitation of natural resources, of tar sands in particular. Her third collection of poetry, Blueberries and Apricots (Mawenzi House, 2018) carries “the speech of the Indigenous woman, coming back to life to reverse history.” Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Race and Reconciliation (Talonbooks, 2018) is an epistolary exchange with celebrated Québécois-American author Deni Ellis Béchard. Translated into English by Howard Scott, Kanapé Fontaine’s books are now crossing borders and delighting audiences in Canada and around the world.

Kanapé Fontaine’s artistic and literary approach tends to bring together divergent peoples through dialogue, exchange, the sharing of values, and through the “tanning of skins” – a metaphorical way of scratching off the imperfections of thoughts and consciences. With poetry, she cradles environment and initiates a healing process. Kanapé Fontaine fights against racism, discrimination, and colonial mentalities through public speaking and poetry. She is often a guest poet, notably in Haiti, Belgium, France, Germany, Colombia, Scotland, and New Zealand (Aotearoa).