Lieu d’exposition
/ Exhibition place
Biography
Poet, filmmaker, documentarian, lyricist, translator, storyteller, and teacher of Innu-aimun. Joséphine Bacon is an Innu from Pessamit. Internationally renowned, she is a leading author in Quebec and a prominent ambassador of First Nations culture in Quebec and abroad.
Deeply committed to the indigenous literary and artistic scene, she inspires younger generations to take pride in their indigenous heritage and to advocate for their language and culture.
A translator-interpreter and teacher of Innu-aimun (the Innu language) for 40 years, Joséphine Bacon has dedicated her life to listening to and transmitting the knowledge of elders. She writes while traveling through the miles of her memory, where the stories of the ancestors for whom she served as an interpreter are stored.
By enriching literature with works written in Innu and translated into French, she turns a new page in Quebec poetry while contributing to the preservation of the Innu language.
Approach and works on display
Joséphine Bacon is made up of fragments from this world. With a voice that is both gentle and powerful, and a gaze that that is both wise and playful, she personifies Mother Earth through her laughter, her gestures and her words. She captivates with her simple presence. Her poetry bears witness to moments past and present, creating a pause in time. Delivered through powerful, apt images, she draws inspiration from stories shared by elders and from her own experience. It explores themes of nostalgia, identity, territory, and the healing of the spirits of the animals that live on the land. You can feel the love for a way of life where respect for the land is intrinsic. Joséphine Bacon preserves pieces of us, of our culture, through her poetry. The texts selected here are from two of her four collections of poetry published by Mémoire d’encrier. The first, Bâtons à message / Tshissinuatshitakana (Message sticks), was published in 2009, and the last, Kau minuat / Une fois de plus (One more time), in 2023. Joséphine Bacon’s poems are inspired by the stories of the Elders.