Aitnanu

Aitnanu, which in the Innu language means "this is how we live," could find no better expression than Serge Jauvin's photographic journal. The Innu are a people who, by tradition, hunt, fish and gather in northeastern Canada. In 1982, Jauvin, a professional photographer, spent an entire year with Helene and William-Mathieu Mark's family in La Romaine, an Innu community on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. This book presents over 120 of the photographs in which he captured the joys and sorrows of the Mark family. The photographs are accompanied by autobiographical accounts exploring Innu religious beliefs, courtship and marriage, birth and death, Innu medicine, the capture and preparation of game, canoe building, the division of labour between men and women, and relations among elders and other members of the community . The Mark family's story does more than describe Innu life, it represents the struggle shared by all the First Nations of Canada that are fighting to preserve their identity. This book was produced to accompany the Aitnanu exhibition that has been touring Canada and France since 1986. Its editor, Daniel Clement, is curator of eastern subarctic ethnology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Since 1980, his research has focused on the Innu people.