Ashini

Ashini is a novel of the writer Québécois Yves Thériault, published in 1960.

Summarized book

Ashini is one of the “Indian” novels of Yves Thériault and one of its preferred not only for the history but also for its writing spontaneous and inspired. The style, according to Thériault, approaches there the rate/rhythm of the Amerindian language in its most solemn version, the language of the harangues at the Cries and Montagnais. It is its first novel written with the first nobody, as if the author were identified with the old Indian, Ashini, to assert the rights of the autochtones to have a territory who is clean for them, to live according to their traditions, and especially with living in harmony with nature. Nature and Ashini are really the two principal characters of this novel. The author also described there the mythical combat of two wolves. This novel highlights the drama of the assimilation of the Indians and the violation of their territories, their habits and their values by the age of the White.

Ashini is one montagnais which always lives like wants it the tradition and which refuses to live a reserve like its compatriots. More than that, he is revolted by the fate which one imposes on his, the indicator as a depreciation of the race which will lead to its extinction. He will try to change the course of the events and to contact the leaders in order to sensitize them in their condition…

Yves Thériault is of ascent montagnaise, one can thus suppose that by this work, it tried to sensitize and to express its convictions. He thus delivers to us a message touching and filled of good sense, as this extract testifies some. " Leaving this bridge to enter on the conceded territories, there is in edge of the road a post where was nailed an odious poster. One reads there: Reserve Indian Betsiamites. I often contemplated this limit-border with horror. Because it was there in all its power, this symbol of segregation. Intangible barbed wire, forced, obstacle."

What I particularly retain of this novel, it is that it enabled me to see the situation in a different angle, other that which the media often give us of these people. He enables us to see from where origin the current location, to put certain events in context and to give them a different lighting. In short it is a work which invites us to more tolerance and of comprehension, without to be moralisatrice. However, being sometimes metaphysical it is not necessarily easy to assimilate and include/understand, but the game is worth the candle.

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