C'est un magnifique ouvrage que nous offre Jean: à la fois un hommage à son arrière-grand-mère et à son peuple innu. J'ai eu l'impression d'être dépaysée en voyageant sur les terres ancestrales des Innus, aussi bien au Pékauwaka qu'aux terres de chasse autour du Péribonka. Il nous communique l'amour d'Almanda pour sa famille, ses coutumes, sa langue et son mode de vie. Il nous fait aussi apprécier la rapidité avec laquelle la colonisation a coupé les Innus avec leurs valeurs en moins de deux générations. Certains passages sont très durs, mais le texte reste doux et il y subsiste une lueur d'espoir.
Un livre à découvrir! ( )

Michel Jean wrote Kukum about his great-grandmother, Almanda Siméon, a white girl in Quebec who completely assimilated into the Innu culture and way of life. Almanda was an Irish orphan raised by her aunt and uncle on a small farm in Quebec. When she was fifteen, Almanda began talking to a young Innu man who passed by the pasture where she cared for the farm's cows. After a short time, she fell in love, introduced Thomas to her aunt and uncle, married him, and went to live with his Pekuakami Innu family. The book is stunningly descriptive, and the reader can visualize the beautiful yet perilous wilderness where the Innu lived, fished, trapped, and hunted. Almanda adapted rapidly to nomadic life. She learned to hunt and trap and to tan hides with her sisters-in-law. As she learned the language, she gathered much wisdom from her husband's father. Later, she advocated for the Innu people as white settlers and commerce usurped the Innu's lands and way of life.
The book covers nearly a century and details the significant changes, then end, to the traditional way of life for the Innu. It is heartbreaking to read of Almanda and her family watching as their forests are chopped down, the Innu are confined to reserves, and their children are taken away to residential schools. How dispiriting it must have been for these nomadic people who loved and had a spiritual connection to their wilderness to have land and the ability to roam forcibly wrested from their lives! This is the plight of many native people as society progresses.
Michel Jean has not only documented the life of his great-grandmother and the offenses against her Innu people, but he has also written a book of astonishing beauty and impactful emotion. Everyone should read this story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Arachnide Editions for the ARC of this extraordinary book. ( )

Un roman touchant, déchirant, confrontant, qui devrait être lu par tout le monde. Le récit de la vie d'Almanda et de sa famille sensibilise aux terribles affronts qu'ont vécu les peuples amérindiens. Le sentiment de culpabilité et de honte est encore plus vif quand le théâtre de ces injustices prend place ici, dans notre belle région. À lire. ( )

L’auteur raconte l’histoire de son arrière-grand-mère blanche qui épouse un inut à 16 ans. Elle a eu 9 enfants dont 1 décédé bébé. Les progrès qu’il y a eu au Lac St-Jean au début du 20e siècle et sa maison à Pointe-bleu ( )