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informative
reflective
slow-paced
This piece of Canadian literature should be taught in schools all-across the country. Although this book was only published within the past 5 years, it should be regarded as a Canadian classic.
Grand-mère. The word my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren use for me. This is what I have become, when what I dreamt of becoming was a kukum.
Kukum means grandmother in Innu. And so begins this beautifully written and evocative historical fiction based on the life of the author's great-grandmother Almanda Siméon. In the 1890's, Almanda was an orphaned (white) girl who was raised by her aunt and uncle and who, at 15 years old, fell in love with an 18-year old Innu man, by the name of Thomas Siméon.
He spoke almost no French and I no Innu-aimun. But that night, on the beach, enveloped in the aroma of grilled meat, at the seasoned age of fifteen, for the first time in my life I felt I had found my place.
Told in first person from Almanda's POV, Almanda tells the story of how despite their cultural differences and language barrier, she leaves her town to join the Innu on their journey north, marries the love of her life, and learns the Innu language, customs, and way of life. She learns to appreciate and value the Innu's respect for nature and life, and to enjoy their nomadic lifestyle.
I had come from a world in which it was thought that man, created in the image of God, reigned from the top of the pyramid of life. Nature, offered up as a gift, was meant to be tamed. here I found myself confronted with a new order in which all living beings were equal with man superior to none.
Despite her blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin, the Innu saw the love between Almanda and Thomas and accepted her with open arms. They taught her their ways with extreme patience and much love.
Learning perseverance is a lengthy process. They must have loved me very much - me, almost an adult! - to take the time to educate me. Because that is what they did. It didn't matter that I knew how to read, write, and calculate better than they did; I was still unschooled there.
It didn't take long for them to consider her as an Innu as she learned their language, learned to hunt and tan hide the way they do, and completely embraced their nomadic way of life.
Innu-aimun is not an easy language to learn. It has only eight consonants, seven vowels, and fifteen distinct sounds, so the inflexion given to a term can change the meaning in a subtle or profound way. there is no written form, no linguist to analyze meaning. No feminine or masculine. There is only animate and inanimate. At first, I stumbled constantly and made no headway no matter how hard I tried. Eventually, I understood that it is not just a different language from French but a different way of communicating. It's a language whose form is adapted to a world in which the hunt and the seasons dictate the pace of life. The order of the words is not as important as it is in French. And the order varies depending on the circumstances.
Kun, snow, becomes ushashush when it is "light snow," nekauakun for "grainy snow," or kassuauan when speaking of "wet snow."
The language is under threat today because, for Innu-aimun to be spoken properly, it needs to be learned on the land. Today, young people prefer the French they're taught in school. Those youngsters grow up blind to their past, orphans of their origins. But who is interested in all that nowadays? Other than old holdouts like me who see the past as the only treasure?
Spanning across a century, the story depicts simpler and happier times when the Innu were able to travel freely by canoe to hunt and set up camp wherever they want (as dictated by the changing seasons and migration patterns). Although life out in the wild was demanding, it was rewarding and filled with beauty, kindness, patience, happiness, and love. The story later dives into the changes that were thrust upon their people - when settlers kept arriving in greater and greater numbers, when the river and access to lands to the north were blocked off, the continued deforestation of the lands in which the Innu depended on for their survival, the establishment of rail lines that bisected their reserves, and the harms of residential schools.
It's not easy to describe the territory as it was before. The woods before the clearcut. Rivière Péribonka before the dams.
You have to imagine a forest spilling from one mountain to another and on beyond the horizon, and visualize that same sea of vegetation tousled by the wind, warmed by the sun. A world where life and death battled for supremacy, and at its centre, between sandy banks or austere cliffs, a river as great as those that flow into the ocean.
It's hard to describe because it no longer exists. Paper mills have devoured the forest. Rivière Péribonka has been sullied and subjugated. First by the log drive, then by the dams that swallowed up its unbridled falls and created reservoirs whose water now feeds power plants.
Passes-Dangereuses, where my children were born, where I raised my family and where Thomas and I so often made love, have disappeared, engulfed by tons of water. A sort of Innu Atlantis, a place that exists only in the memories of old people like me and will disappear with us for good. Soon. Life the portage trails patiently blazed by generations of nomads. all that knowledge will vanish from the memories in which it lives on still.
This book poignantly tells the story of change and how the freedom to live a nomadic life has been stripped from the Innu and the impacts of having to learn to live differently.
Cut off from our territory, we had to learn to live differently. To switch from a life on the move to a sedentary existence. We didn't know how to go about it and still don't today. Boredom set in an distilled its bitterness through our souls.
There was little to do in Pointe-Bleue. Our knowledge was worth nothering there. Men like Thomas felt empty, and the light in their eyes was gradually extinguished. There was no need to kill us. All they had to do was starve us and watch us slowly die.
Although I read this book in English, I am very tempted to read the original French version. I also wish this book came out when I was still in school and studying French (I think I would've preferred reading this book than La Route de Chlifa or L'Étranger!)