Cherie Dimaline Quotes

Canada would be a much better place for all of us if Canadians read more Indigenous lit. People often ask how they can be good allies, how they can work with our communities, and often feel left outside of the circle. Welcoming you into our stories is the best way we have to welcome you in, and to ensure that when you get there, you have a better understanding of who we are and what your role can be.

There must always be connection to nation when we tell stories. Taking a pan-Indigenous approach doesn’t work. Taking a colonial viewpoint doesn’t work. This changes the narrative of specific nations and is highly problematic. It leads to misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and stereotypes.

I write what I understand and what fascinates and comforts me from within a place of knowing.

I learned very young that language and story are carriers of a much deeper reality, and that we have to fight for them the same way we fight to preserve culture and art.

(about writing short stories) It leaves so much room for the reader to come in and take an active role. A great collection of short stories is like walking through a brilliant exhibit. It changes you, but you have to be open to the change.

A writer creates, an editor crafts. And in the world of great literature, one cannot exist without the other.

"Sometimes you risk everything for a life worth living, even if you're not the one that'll be alive to see it." (p152)

I realized in writing over the years that some of the first readers I’ve ever had, and people who still pick up my books, are a lot of Native youth. It’s such a privilege to have them read my work. And I get it. I remember growing up, there wasn’t Native literature around. It wasn’t common; you didn’t see yourself reflected—certainly not in a good way—in any of the media you had access to, books or movies or TV shows. You didn’t see yourself in a good way in the classroom because the version of history you were being taught was that we were saved, and we were savages, and all of these horrible narratives that really don’t feel good when you’re growing up and this is your community.

"...When we heal our land, we are healed also." (p193)

She’d collected the dreams like bright beads on a string of nights that wound around her each day, every day until this one. (p173)

For a long time there was this idea I was hearing from teachers and industry people: “How do you explain residential schools to Canadian kids? It’s too difficult.” But our kids don’t have that choice, because they don’t speak their language, their grandparents went to those schools, the last one closed in 1996. This is an ongoing reality. If our kids can get it and be good people and thrive in this society, than your kids can get it. And how about they can get it together by sitting in a circle and saying let’s talk about this – we can do this. So I’m really happy that so many stories have come forward, especially aimed at young readers because that’s where change starts.

I would say that globally, readers and the industry that has been built around them are becoming privy to our stories and the skill in which they’re told and preserved. We’re going through a pretty brutal learning curve right now because Indigenous literature is unlike any other, and the rules are different. It’s why we’re having to call out writers and stories that are harmful or that misrepresent. The resulting skirmishes over “free speech” and “appropriation” were bound to happen since this is new territory to the publishing world and there’s no precedent. Many of our stories are ceremony, history, teachings, and cannot be mishandled. We are a generous people and [we] share, but [our stories are] not out there to be “cherry picked” and morphed.

We need better educated and positioned allies, and literature is one way to make this happen.

We go to the schools and they leach the dreams from where our ancestors hid them, in the honeycombs of slushy marrow buried in our bones. And us? Well, we join our ancestors, hoping we left enough dreams behind for the next generation to stumble across. (p90)