A Dialogue about Connections

Guest Writers: Thérèse Niquay & Michel Duval

Thérèse Niquay is the Director of Community Services and Projects, Atikamekw Community of Manawan.

 Michel Duval is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist, researcher in immunotherapy and partnerships with patients and families at CHU Sainte-Justine. Michel is a Co-Lead of the Knowledge Mobilization Group and a member of the Senior Leadership Committee at ACCESS.

 

Having a conversation with Thérèse is like walking in the deep woods and feeling the connection that unites the spruce to the murmur of the river, the murmur of the river to the mirror of the lake, the lake to the evident presence of the invisible beaver, the beaver‘s presence to Labrador tea, Labrador tea to human health, and human health to the moose’s call.

It is impossible to reproduce on paper the state of mindful and relaxed listening that her words, silences, and laughter generate. Copying and pasting her reflections to create a linear text intended for Western readers is like transforming the joyful flight of a butterfly in a summer sunbeam into the tedious and stubborn progression of a caterpillar on a milkweed leaf.

Only 10 percent of the initial effect remains. May this 10 percent give the reader the desire to seek out the remaining 90 percent as soon as they will have the opportunity. There are many people like Thérèse in Canada.

 

A Dialogue about Connections:

The following text represents a slightly modified transcript of an actual conversation (including the specific words/language used).

Michel: Thérèse, ACCESS, which funds our research, has asked us to write something for their Newsletter about what we have accomplished in this project. We continue to work on concrete outcomes, but for me, the success is having already learned a lot. Especially, I have learned how important relationships are to you. In the culture where I was raised, there is a strong emphasis on individuals: the person, human rights… I’m not saying it’s wrong, but we only look at individuals. You, you see the relationship between individuals. Now, when I see Attikamekw patients at the clinic here, thanks to knowing you, I no longer address the patient, the mother or the father, I address everyone together, you see?

Thérèse: Yes.

Michel: I was raised in a Western way with concepts and a word for each concept. I realize that not being too attached to words, to concepts, having a more global vision, seeing the relationships between things and people, between people themselves, between people and their territory, it gives a strength and freedom that I didn’t know. It’s strange to say it like that, but relationships liberate.

Thérèse: Relationships, yes, they create freedoms for us. We talk about relationships, but it’s also a connection.

Michel: Yes, a connection. Already, the success for me is that I have learned that. After that, I need to succeed in…

Thérèse: …transmitting it.

Michel: …to others. I will try to copy-paste this in the form of a dialogue, shortening it to be accessible to “white people” who don’t have much time. I will do that this week and show it to you.

Thérèse: We think very differently.

Michel: Yes, since I’ve been spending time with you, I feel like I’ve opened an eye. It’s as if I had been walking with one eye open until now, and suddenly I open another eye. I continue to see things through my old eye. I see the same things, but now they have depth because I am starting to be able to see the relationships between things and people without being stuck in what separates them*.

Thérèse: What I also love since we’ve been progressing, is the discovery, it’s how your team has made contact with the people in the community, discovered things, and then let themselves be guided by those things. What I loved about it is precisely establishing a real connection with people like this young person who faced illness, a cancer. You could have simply done follow-ups to ensure he was on the right track, but you sought to understand how he experienced it. What I appreciate a lot is that there is a quest for knowledge in this, which involves establishing meaningful connections between the patient, the caregiver, those affected, and their family. Our work together on the placenta and cord blood is a form of recognition that what has been traditionally used by Indigenous medicine has found other applications in Western medicine. It’s rich. It’s the meeting of different knowledge. The goal is to help – humanity benefits from the meeting of these knowledges.

Michel: Discovery, for you, is the same as meeting, and connecting.

Thérèse: Yes. And I love meeting people who come from elsewhere, but who also work in different fields. Sharing knowledge but being connected with people first. We return here to the sacred relationship between each person and with the Territory as well.

Michel: Relationships between people are sacred, right?

Thérèse: Yes.

Michel: And with the Territory as well. That’s powerful.

Thérèse: Yes, it’s powerful.

Michel: The sacred is the relationship between people and with the Territory. We, as we have cut all that in small pieces and put them in separate little boxes, we have lost the sense of the sacred. Here I go again with my concepts… I should better say for those who will read our conversation – we are all already in a relationship with Indigenous people, let’s maintain and nurture this connection. Let’s forget for a moment the difference between relationships, connection, curiosity, openness, research, discovery, and the sacred.

 

Encounter

Guest Writer: Michel Duval

I am walking in Nitaskinan, the Territory of the Atikamekw. A snowmobile arrives, the first one in over an hour. I step aside to let it pass. It stops. I don’t know him. We greet each other. He talks to me about my dog, my dog’s friend, and the dogs my dog’s friend usually hangs out with. Then we talk about those who take care of these dogs. Gradually, he inquires about who I know in the community. I realize that I know his mother, his father, one of his sisters. He informs me that the good thickness of snow facilitates the preparation of maple trees before they start to flow. I tell him “We are good here.” He replies “Yes, when we are in nature, we find our… our… our…”.  I say “Yes, I don’t know what the word for that is, but I think I understand what you mean.”

After he leaves, I wonder if he already knew who I was before we talked. I smile. That’s not the point. The point is that by revealing the relationships that unite us, he created a connection, which, in the context of the territory, allowed us to share our sensations without any needs for words. And we enjoyed it.

 

*(People who reviewed this text before publication mentioned that the two-eyes metaphor has been used for decades by Indigenous scholars. We are keeping it anyway, happy that it spontaneously came to a Western mind).