Montagnais
women help Oblate priest translate sacred works
Psalms and New Testament
in Innu language off the press
Oblate
Father Joseph Pirson was translating the texts of the different Masses in his
little mission parish in the Diocese of Baie-Comeau in Northern Quebec when an
idea dawned on him: “I realized that it would be good to have all the psalms
translated in Innu language.”
His work, started 20 years ago, has since been expanded to
include the New Testament. The work of two decades has recently been published
in two volumes: Aiamieu-Nikamun Mashinaikan, a translation of the Book of
Psalms, and Sheshust-Kanisht: Inniun Uttaimun, a translation of the New
Testament.
Fr. Pirson envisioned the book to be read at home by the
native people.
“The Montagnais Indians do not have a lot of materials
published in their language.”
Two Montagnais women, Mrs. Celine Bellefleur and Mrs.
Philomena Gregoire from Sept-Îles, Quebec, did most of the work, says Fr. Pirson.
“They were perfect translators. They know their own language very well as well
as French.”
The first book on
the New Testament is the most important, says Fr. Pirson, and required more
collaboration from the Innu community.
Fr. Pirson was born on April 20, 1924, in the town of
Corbion sur Semois in Belgium. He took his first vows as an Oblate Missionary of
Mary Immaculate on September 8, 1943, and served as a priest with the Diocese of
Namur, also in Belgium.
He came to Canada in early 1949, and was assigned to
Richmond Gulf, a mission on the East Coast of Hudson Bay for two years. Then his
bishop, Bishop Lionel Scheffer of Labrador City-Schefferville in Newfoundland
and Labrador, sent him to Davis Inlet on the Labrador coast to learn a native
language—Montagnais—with another Oblate, Father Joseph Cyr.
“The next year,” he says, “the bishop sent me to Northwest
River also on Labrador coast, to establish a mission among the native people
there, and where I stayed 20 years.”
In 1972, he went back to Davis Inlet for two years.
In 1974, he left the
Labrador coast to minister in the North Shore of St. Lawrence River, in a
community called Sept-Îles, or Seven Islands. After a year, he went to
Betsiamites, a Montagnais community in Northern Quebec. He served for 30 years
in these two missions, and went for brief stints to La Romaine (another native
village), St. Augustine, and Mont Joli.
Working in Bestsiamites , a community of 3,000 people, had
been “a very pleasant experience,” he recollects. “Sometimes it was hard, but
most of the time it was a happy time.”
In all, Fr. Pirson has served the missions for 55 years.
He says he would recommend others to do the same ministry. “More than ever, the
people need to receive the good news of Jesus Christ. I was happy to be close to
the people and to their life, and to fulfil my missionary vocation.” Since his
retirement in 2002, Fr. Pirson has been living in Betsiamites, Northern Quebec.
Copyrights 2005, First published in Catholic Missions IN
Canada Magazine, Summer 2005, pages 20-21.