Joséphine Bacon


Joséphine Bacon, is an Innu poet from Pessamit in Quebec. She publishes in French and Innu-aimun. She has also worked as a translator, community researcher, documentary filmmaker, curator and as a songwriter for Chloé Sainte-Marie and :fr:Alexandre_Belliard|Alexandre Belliard. She has also curated an exhibit at the Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal, Quebec and teaches at Kiuna Institution in Odanak.

Early Life

Bacon was born in the Innu community of Pessamit in 1947 and spent the first five years of her life out on the land with her family before entering boarding school in Maliotenam. In the 1960s she moved to Quebec City where she worked as a secretary, later attending secretarial school in Ottawa run by the Office of Aboriginal Affairs. She moved to Montreal in 1968 and later became a translator and transcriber for anthropologists interviewing important Innu elders and knowledge keepers in Labrador and Quebec.

Works

Bacon has directed one documentary, and has worked as a translator and narrator in documentaries by film maker Arthur Lamothe and Gilles Carle, including:
Her first documentary film, about a meeting between Innu elders and clan mothers from Kahnawake, has been lost.

Awards and Distinctions