Tapue tshia
” Nasht ui tapueu ne Utshimau. “
He absolutely wants to be right. He absolutely means true. He absolutely wants to be the one who speaks, the one who speaks and the one who speaks the truth.
I can’t find a word for truth in Innu-aïmun. There is only the equivalent for “what is true”. Tapue, tapuemakan. Ka tapuenanut. Tapuetamun. Tell the truth. Give credit. It is only the state of affairs that the words seem to say plain and true. That the words of my language wish to name, in the absolute, to recognize the existence of the state of things. Of what surrounds us. If we do not know how to name them, we cannot survive. We cannot follow the march of others. We cannot continue on our way.
If I can’t name the temperature, I’ll get lost in the forest. If I don’t know the name of the plant, I run the risk of poisoning myself. If I can’t name the path, I will have nowhere to go.
If I can’t tell the truth, I’ll run out of air.
The boreal forest is a forest of secrets and surprises for those who do not know it, who deny its heart, who erase its body. For us, the boreal forest had no secrets for thousands of years. We knew her so much in the heart that we had her in the soul. You blink once and you already know where you are going. You see the whole road in your head and it’s like you’ve already arrived at your destination. And the truth is, among other things, because we could name each element, animate or inanimate, present around us. To name because it exists, to name because it is true.
We are force-fed by the inability of the Legault government to simply recognize that we are right to want to name the state of affairs. And there is so much more to do. The truth is, there is no justice. Keeping us waiting: a government art. He gets around this state of affairs. He hijacks the truth. He hijacks the meaning of words. The truth of meaning. The sense of truth.
If I can’t tell the truth, I’ll run out of air.
And if I run out of air, how could I hug each of the children found behind the country’s residential schools at night? Every child who has disappeared from the health system in Quebec during forgotten decades? How could I continue to cradle each of them if I can’t have peace of mind, if I can’t grieve?
As of this writing, a child in the street starts to cry. I have a weak heart.
Six thousand five hundred and nine children who have never been reunited with their families. It’s a city.
How many are there in Quebec that hospitals have never given back to their parents during these forgotten decades?
I leave the house and the sunset is orange. The children fly away. The leaves, gone from green to yellow, dot the streets. Lying on the ground, they stare at the clouds. Reaching out, I touch the sky. It is like honey, it drips slowly, and its light shines on me. I would have to be like the bear, gorging myself on the beauty of the moment. May my mourning not be what weighs me down, but what makes me a living force. My grief? Multiple. So I follow thousands of bison on the run.
My heart flutters and rises. My heart flutters and rises. My heart flutters and rises.
Every child is a piece of truth.
Tapue tshia.