Nitassinan

This ambitious project, initiated in 2022, aims to document and depict a contemporary vision of what it means to be Innu today. Over the course of three years, the artist traveled through seven of the eleven communities of the Innu Nation—from Mashteuiatsh to Unamen-Shipu—engaging with Elders, youth, and families, resulting in no fewer than a hundred portraits and landscapes. Originally from Saint-Étienne, France, and now based in Paris, Yann Datessen has spent more than a decade reflecting on principles such as self-management and micro-communities. He explores how they organize and sustain themselves in relation to so-called “normative” societies. Indigenous “reserves” are directly part of this reflection. It is worth noting that, within a European perspective, this concept remains largely unfamiliar to many—apart from cinematic clichés.