Synopsis
When elders leave us, a link to the past vanishes along with them. Innu writer Joséphine Bacon exemplifies a generation that is bearing witness to a time that will soon have passed away. With charm and diplomacy, she leads a charge against the loss of a language, a culture, and its traditions. On the trail of Papakassik, the master of the caribou, Call Me Human proposes a foray into a people’s multi-millennial history in company with a woman of great spirit who has devoted her life to passing on her knowledge and that of her ancestors.
A word from Tënk
This sensitive work from Kim O’Bomsawin reveals the grandeur and humility of a rare artist who has devoted her life to conveying the very ancestral knowledge that she had been unjustly denied access to. Filled with wisdom and generosity, her words and gestures flow from her respect for nature and for life and help us open our eyes and hearts to the importance of land, where Innu identity and culture literally take root. One of Call Me Human’s great strengths is also its ability to transpose the spark of Joséphine Bacon’s poetry over the beauty of Nutshimit: a majestic territory to be recounted of to future generations in the language of those who walk through it and have called it home for centuries, a territory to be preserved in its integrity.
Hubert Sabino-Brunette
Teacher and programmer
