Lee Maracle Quotes

people...keep talking about decolonization like it’s a head problem — they’re really talking about undoing racism. They don’t realize it’s a territorial issue.

Don't be a passive soldier for corporate or military murder. With peace and harmony in your heart go out and spend great effort, strenuous effort, to change the story of Canada. Be active, be resolute, be caring, and we shall eventually have peace.

I stand between my infinite grandchildren and my infinite grandmothers. The farther... backward in time I go, the more grandmothers I have. The farther forward, the more grandchildren. And I am obligated to that whole lineage: this lineage holds up the spirit of all things - trees, flora, fauna, human. That's what that word ["God"] means. And it's likewise the same in their language when they were translated.

We are called upon to continuously grow from the realizations that we come to when we speak.

Peaceful struggle is all about expending strenuous effort to live our lives free from strife, free from war, free from conditions that annoy the mind. It annoys my mind to think about clear-cutting; it annoys my mind to consider the invasion and death of the people of Oka. It annoys my mind to imagine golfers tromping on the graves of Mohawk grandmothers, children and loved ones. So I struggle to put a stop to it. I walk, I picket, and I block the road, and I speak because I cannot watch a people or any of the earth's relatives die an unjust death.

The only reason that I write is to bring about a change of heart. But I wanted to do that when I was five, when I first endured racial discrimination. I would like to change that person's mind and heart about the way they see me, about the way they feel about me. But I had no power then, and I have power now. It's called a pen. Or in this case a computer, yeah?

Academicians waste a great deal of effort deleting character, plot and story from theoretical arguments

This story deserves to be told; all stories do. Even the waves of the sea tell a story that deserves to be read. The stories that really need to be told are those that shake the very soul of you.

What is the point of presenting the human condition in a language separate from the human experience: passion, emotion and character...We all strive to be orators

I am not a passive woman. I was there, bearing down and shedding blood in the creation process of my children, and I will be there should anyone obstruct my right to nurture them. Does that make me violent? No. It makes me a profound lover of creation. I will be there should anyone decide to invade my tree relatives in the Stein, and I will be there for the Mohawks at Oka, should the police run amok again and organize themselves to attack them. I don't confuse peace with passivity. I don't confuse defense with aggression.

People demand honesty, which is in the moment, but the truth is, we need to be at peace. And we need to reconcile to ourselves. So sometimes, the lie is better. Makes us more peaceful.

peace is always what is necessary. That whatever you do, let it contribute to peace.

[about her and Jeannette Armstrong] we both believe that we must be able to deliver the culture in English as well as in our own language, that it will take time to recover our languages. And I'm not sure that we'll actually be successful at that, so my whole orientation is to take in a story that's a traditional story or a ceremony that's a traditional ceremony, like Family Reconciliation and Clearing the Path (that's a ceremony), taking that and creating story from it, like a mythmaker, create new myths out of the old myths, directly from the old myths.

I think I've done what I set out to do, which is give Canada a glimpse of who we are.

What I’m hoping is that people will get that they have to know their original language. And I think that’s why the Six Nations have a constitution that guarantees you your original language. And it’s a thousand years old. So for a thousand years we’ve known this. That the body speaks to itself. And it speaks the original language. It won’t give it up. And that makes me laugh because my old folks used to say, “You know, the body’s very conservative. It doesn’t want you to try things. But the spirit is a revolutionary. It wants to just go!” So if you’re not communicating with your body, you won’t take care of it. You have to appease the body by making a logical plan. And that’s feeling/thinking, or the heart and the mind. The heart and the mind consults with itself and figures out how to do this in the safest way possible. And otherwise you’re a child.