The Secret

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

René Fumoleau, veteran priest and missionary, has a poetic style that
is easy, relaxed, urbane, good-humored. At the same time, he is a master
of irony. His poems, all shrewdly titled, are in the form of short
conversation pieces—monologue or dialogue—to which the reader is
invited to tune in. His use of direct speech is particularly effective.

Yet gentle and mild-mannered as he may seem, his reproof to the more
dominant, noncomprehending white culture, with its own preferred value
system, is loud and clear. “Why did we allow such things to happen?”
he asks. Elsewhere, his questing eye rests on his own faith, as in
“Nice” and “Pagan Woman.”

There’s a valuable appendix in the form of a black-and-white scale
map of Denendeh, the land the Dene “love as their mother.”
Christiane Lemire is to be complimented on the book’s attractive cover
and interior design. The Secret should be high on any list of
recommended reading about Canada’s First Nations.