Top 15 Lee Maracle Quotes

[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 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.

I think of everybody as my audience. I write to be read in the year 2525, you know. I write forever. When I lay a word down on that page, some tree had to perish, and that tree is my relative, and I believe that. (interviewer: "So you better make the word good.") LM: Words are sacred, just like that tree. I took a life so that this book could exist. So everybody is my audience and all of their ancestors...I have a huge caring for the direction that humanity's currently travelling in, I care about that direction. And my writing serves that. Serves to alter that direction. All we've got to do is make an about-face and turn this wheel the other way. It's not just us that's heading for destruction, you know? The world is a terrible place right now, but it's also a wonderful place (knock on wood) because there's so many people coming forward trying to alter the direction and the course we're currently on, and it's only terrible for human beings. The Earth will survive; she knows how to take care of herself. But we may not.

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?

There has to be humour to open up the person to the subject of change, the possibility of change. You have to be open. Humour opens people up.

the government had a very deliberate plan to eliminate Indians, and it still pretty much carries out that plan- eliminate us culturally and intellectually in every way possible. Even in the recent Native studies programs that they have in university, we study what they did to us, we don't study us...The plan is for us to know them, not to know ourselves. That's always been the plan, and it still is. We're to integrate, yeah? And now there's very few of us left, I think, that have any kind of a foundation in the culture, in the knowledge. Most of our knowledge was expropriated and distorted, bowdlerized, and then sold back to us in transformed form. That's anthropology, and we had to purchase it.

our body has a memory of all time

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.

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

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.

(You write about how reconciliation is a misnomer, that Indigenous people are still dying — what should we be talking about instead?) LM: The first part — truth. No truth, no reconciliation.

I think welcoming newcomers now is more important than ever because we brought all these white men in and gave them land and now they say no to people of colour — it doesn’t work that way. Not for me, anyway.

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.

All these things occurred in each village but a village doesn’t make a nation and that’s what I got from him (Khahtsahlano) – yea, we were a nation once and we can be again.

humour is like a push. When you want to sit down, humour stands you up and pushes you forward...You need that motivating force, which is a little bit a push every now and then. And that's [the role] humour serves in all of our stories.