Written by Alexandra Touchard

 

In 2008, an astonishing poetic work titled We Are All Savages was published by Mémoire d’encrier. This four-handed collection is the fruit of a collaboration between José Acquelin, a Québécois poet and writer, and Joséphine Bacon, an Innu artist, filmmaker, and author.

Joséphine Bacon and the Indigenous Voice

 

Born in 1947 in the community of Pessamit (one of the branches of the large Innu Indigenous family), located in what is now called Quebec, Joséphine Bacon wears many hats. At once a poet, lyricist, storyteller, speaker, screenwriter, translator-interpreter, and filmmaker, she also serves as a bridge between Innu and Québécois cultures. She is the author, among other works, of the bilingual collection Uiesh / Somewhere, which garnered several prestigious awards, including the 2019 Prix des libraires and the Indigenous Voices Award. As such, she is recognized as an ambassador of « First Nations » culture. This term refers to the Indigenous peoples of Canada, particularly the Métis and the Inuit, and arose from a movement to reclaim identity beyond the colonial term “Indian.”

A Song of Hope

 

In Canada, 64% of Indigenous people are descended from one of the First Nations, spread across 50 linguistic groups and 630 communities. Of these, 54% now live in urban areas rather than on reserves. For many, the language they were born into—deeply linked to customs, family stories, and community life—is slowly fading beneath the pressures of city life and the dominance of globalized languages. As the language disappears, so do the beliefs, values, and the eyes that once saw and honored nature for what it truly was, lost in the shadow of so-called progress. It is in this space that Joséphine Bacon’s singular voice emerges—as a song of hope.

Reclaiming the Word “Savage” and Singing Freedom

 

We Are All Savages is a collection that carries within it, from the very title, the affirmation that we are all born of the same womb: that of nature. It immediately invites us to reevaluate the term “savage” to no longer treat it as a slur, but to reclaim it as a proud emblem of a community rooted in Mother Earth. In the same way that marginalized communities have reclaimed the word “queer”, the term “savage” is now rising as the banner of another way of life—one neglected for centuries.

The unique union between José and Joséphine creates a voice that is singular yet balanced, one of contrasts that complete each other—like the moon and the sun, yin and yang, man and woman, progress and the natural state. While grounded in this duality, the collection ultimately seeks unity, not opposition between civilization and the nomadic way of life. We are but one. All is one.

For José, the word speaks of regret—a regret for a world losing its essence. His is a voice of resistance, of protest, of mourning for a society built on profit, consumption, and forgetting. Joséphine’s poems, on the other hand, are songs of hope, melodies that celebrate nature and awaken the ancestral spirits still hidden within it. She often contrasts the beat of the traditional drum with the imposed silence on Indigenous peoples. Her prose exudes something raw and essential—a simple, pure, and transcendent feeling: love, the kind we feel for all things that compose the great whole of the universe.

The author does not claim to speak for an entire people, but rather acts as a bearer of souls, a storyteller of a forgotten folklore. Through her poetic chant, she rekindles a breath of life in every identity, long dormant.

A Collection That Calls for Silence

 

If one had to retain a central idea from this dual-voiced melody, it would be silence. The work invites contemplation, stillness, and observation. In a world of overproduction, it is essential to pause—to feel again, bathed in the vastness of silence that speaks so deeply of the world’s magic.