Translated from the French into English by Phyllis Aronoff. This bilingual work (English and Innu-aimun) is an invitation to dialogue. Message sticks are the signs that allow the nomadic Innu to orient themselves inland and find their way. The poetry brings the language of the nutshimit (the back country) to life again, recalling the sound of the drum. Simple and beautiful, Jos?phine Bacon's poetry is an homage to the land, the ancestors, and the Innu-aimun language. Charting unwritten history, it provides a vision into the intensity of the elders? words. The language echoes Nutshimit, the language of the region, chanted by the drum. The history of the First Nations people resonates in their rightful anger and their struggles for dignity, the rights to their territory, and cohabitation. Simple and beautiful, Jos?phine Bacon's poetry is an homage to the land, the ancestors, and the Innu-aimon language. This poetic testimony recounts the unpublished areas of history. A cosmogenic vision that plunges us into the intensity of the elders? words: the voyage of the bearer of dreams and visions, the horizons of the guide women, the courage of the huntsmen, the children, guarantors of the endurance of the voyage and the trees, unfaltering witnesses of the journey.

Joséphine Bacon is an aboriginal person from Betsiamites. Director of film documentaries, she is equal parts poet and songwriter. Her songs, which include Mishapan Nitassinan, are performed by Chloé Sainte-Marie. She has recently published a series of poems in Aimititau! Parlons-nous! In 2014 she was a finalist for the Governor General's Award and in May 2010, she was awarded the Prix des lecteurs du Marché de la Poésie de Montréal for her poem "Dessine-moi l'arbre," from her book Message Sticks/ Tshissinuatshitakana. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of Montréal as well as a Companion of the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec. She was the subject of a 2020 documentary, Call Me Human (Je m'appelle humain). She lives in Montreal.