Le rêve des ours polaires
Bacon, Joséphine
text
We see the blurred lines between fiction and non-fiction here in Indigenous writing.
Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory
Story
Liberté
1991-01-01T00:00:00.000Z 1991
no. 4-5
vol. 33
pp. 186-192
continuing
French
Non-fiction Periodical Essais
Life Writing
tpatt:045c7560-d2ec-4aad-84a0-6a26ca99718d
2018-01-24T22:07:28.981Z
In this combination of an essay and a short story, the author describes the importance of the dream for Innu people. In her dream, while visiting friends and family in Mingan with her one-and-a-half year-old son Tshiuetin, she notices that her friend Germaine Mestenapeu is very depressed. They go for a walk through the reserve until the narrator sees her son rolling down a hill towards two polar bears, but she retrieves him from them without a worry. They continue their walk until an old man’s house and Tshiuetin runs into the courtyard. The bears are there again with their cubs, but Tshiuetin walks about them freely. As the narrator reaches for him, the old man stops her, saying he will be fine, and that he’s adopted the bears. She finds herself back in the first house, but with no one else than the old man and his wife. They have dinner and he tries to flirt with her; his wife notices but remains quiet. As he walks her out, he gives her a canine from a bear skull; it will give her strength, yet she says she is afraid. And wakes up.
