What inspires us | Joséphine Bacon: “I have trouble with despair”

All summer long, our columnists go to meet personalities who inspire them. To discuss what, in life, motivates us, gives us wings, pushes us to create or act. Alexandre Sirois walked in La Fontaine Park with wisdom incarnate, the Innu poet Joséphine Bacon.

This interview with Joséphine Bacon almost didn’t happen.

Let me tell you: two hours before our meeting, her agent called me. The Innu poet woke up with a loss of voice.

After suggesting that the meeting be postponed, I finally learned that she had agreed to go as planned to La Fontaine Park, where I was going to meet her.

Joséphine Bacon arrives limping, with the cane that she never leaves, even though her worn knees were replaced a few years ago.

I quickly realize that his usually hoarse voice is even more so on this hot July morning.

But her face is still as bright, her blue eyes are still as sparkling and, as our conversation progresses, as in her collections of poetry, the magic happens.

How can you not be charmed by this inspiring woman? This tiny poetess who, even before she has uttered a single word, exudes wisdom tinged with optimism. Unless it’s the other way around.

I had been warned that I would be bewitched.

The day before, I had asked the young Innu poet Marie-Andrée Gill by email to tell me what Joséphine Bacon represented for her.

She “embodies natural charisma: you love her instantly,” she replied.

“Despite attempts at assimilation and acculturation, the strength of the Innu language and culture found a precious passage in her,” she added, specifying that Joséphine Bacon embodies hope.

What does the main person concerned think about it?

“I have a hard time being desperate because I always end up finding a little path that will take me… that will end up making me smile,” says the 77-year-old poet.

I’m a journalist, so you’ll forgive me for being a bit persistent.

I tell her about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Then I talk about climate change. I ask her if she has anything to say to those who, in this context, find it hard to keep hope.

“I tell myself that everything ends eventually. The war will end. We can’t be at war forever,” she says.

It also addresses the question of the fate of the planet.

“I know the elements are angry. There are floods: water. There are forest fires: fire. Air is tornadoes and hurricanes. I think the Earth gives us warnings, we have to know how to listen to it. And we have to know, above all, how to hear it.

– And act accordingly?

– Hearing is already a lot. But you have to know how to hear and also know how to see. Because if you only look, you won’t see anything.

I continue on this path. I ask her if she has a message to deliver to today’s young people.

And there, she gently rebels.

“I don’t know why you always have to leave a message! I don’t feel like a messenger. I tell myself that when young people ask me what they want to know, it’s in my answers that I have messages.”

And if she could use a time machine to talk to her former teenage self (who lived in one of the infamous residential schools), what would she say?

“I would tell him: you did well!

– Well done for… what?

– Good for keeping laughing and smiling. In a way, it was my way of surviving.

For Joséphine Bacon, existence rhymes with resilience.

“I could have been a sad teenager, but I knew that laughing and smiling would always keep me hoping for something better.

– A better ?

– In a better, period. It is vast, the best. In all this best, there is something. I have found my happiness.

– So, when you were young, you already knew that laughing and smiling were fundamental?

– Of course, what would we do without smiling!

The poet pauses briefly. And of course, at that precise moment, a broad smile lights up her face. It expresses both happiness and serenity.

Suddenly, we hear the cry of a duck near us.

“He agrees with me!” she says, her eyes laughing.

At the same time, I ask her if she has a recipe for growing old happily.

“I don’t have a recipe, but I accept myself and I accept what is offered to me. Sometimes very beautiful, sometimes less beautiful, sometimes sad. But at the end of each day, I know that there is beauty.

– You really do feel like you’re growing old happily, am I right?

– I don’t care about getting old!

I admit that his answer surprises me. And that not everyone can say the same!

She bursts into a frank and contagious laugh.

Then, Joséphine Bacon tells me about the Innu elders she has spoken to over the past few decades. Before her encounter with poetry (her first collection, Message sticks/Tshissinuashitakanawas published in 2009), she transcribed and translated their words, teaming up with a handful of renowned academics.

It has also been said that the anthropologist Serge Bouchard nicknamed her “the translator of the Innu soul.”

“Everything comes from them. Without them, I might not be here today telling you who I am,” she says of her elders.

“My heart, my soul would always be full of hope, but I would not have all this wisdom…”

She pauses, visibly troubled because she said the word wisdom.

“Oh, I’m exaggerating!” she says.

I haven’t told you yet, but Joséphine Bacon is very humble and authentic.

She pulls herself together and speaks instead of a “philosophy of life.”

“I learned everything from them. Even I just have to think about them and I’m with them.”

It makes no difference that she is in Montreal, where she has lived for a long time.

She also says she is able to regain, by the power of thought alone, the territory where these elders live. The “Nutshimit”.

Joséphine Bacon’s agent had suggested that we hold our interview in a park, and it wasn’t out of vanity.

“I really like trees. My adoptive father always told me, when we were in Nutshimit, that if you know how to hear, the trees speak to you. When I want to hear the silence, I go to a park, I close my eyes and I really return to the territory,” explains the poet.

The Innu language is another fundamental component of its identity.

She explains it with words that Gilles Vigneault would surely not disown if asked about the French language.

“It is as much the language of my heart as that of my soul.”

I later told Joséphine Bacon that I would like to know what, according to her, a poet is.

She closes her eyes to concentrate better.

My question, obviously, gives him a hard time.

“I don’t know what a poet is. I don’t know. I have no definition to explain who a poet is.”

I ask a slightly different question: “How do you describe yourself as a poet?”

I ask him if “it helps.”

She laughs.

“No, no more!”

Then she changes her mind.

“You know, poetry… I know there are people who stop me to tell me that I’ve done them good. Being a poet is maybe doing good, after all!”

I then explain to him that I discovered her a few years ago while watching the documentary filmed about her and entitled My name is human. That I felt like his smile was like a poem. Just like his presence on screen.

She laughs again.

And I swear to you, in any case I don’t think I’m wrong, it’s a living poem that I have before my eyes.

“People call me a poet, but that’s what other people say,” she said. “I teach the Innu language. I know that’s what I am. I know that I’m a translator. I know that. But a poet… I think it’s someone who is in love with simple words, but who touches the soul or the heart of the people who read them.”

So here it is, his definition! It is spontaneous and it seems very accurate to me.

A few minutes later, after the interview is over, the poet poses in front of a tree during the photo shoot. A man on a bicycle recognizes her. He stops and calls out to her.

“We love you so much! I’m so happy to see you!” he cries.

Standing back, I observe the scene. I think back to what Marie-Andrée Gill said when she spoke of the charisma of the 77-year-old poet.

I also tell myself that I am witnessing a live demonstration of the power of Josephine Bacon’s words. Clearly, they have touched the soul or the heart of this man. And perhaps even both.

What inspires him

Preserving Innu-aimun has always been fundamental to Joséphine Bacon. The survival of all Indigenous languages, in fact. She explains it easily. “It’s like for Quebecers who want to preserve their French language. It’s the same story. It’s your identity,” she says. “If you speak your language, you’re sure of who you are.”