Le bras coupé is Bernard Assiniwi’s first novel; it is also the first novel to be written by an Indigenous writer in Quebec. Set in the 1870s in a village north of La Gatineau, when the white loggers and traders are moving into the Algonquin’s traditional hunting grounds, it is the story of Minji-mendam whose hand is cut off during a fight with six drunk white men. Bitter and resentlful, he hides in the forest and plots his revenge. Having lost his wife and the support of his community in his quest for vengeance against the colonizers, Minji-mendam becomes a symbol for the fate of the Algonquin people.
