I am a caretaker. Every single Indigenous person here is a caretaker. Caretaker. Take care. Take care of creation. Creation is not inactive. To take … - Lee Maracle

It is impossible to give a lecture or speak on any serious issue in the Indigenous world without placing it in the context of colonialism and our need for decolonization.

I have seen many of you at book launches, panels, conferences, gatherings of all sorts, including protests against some injustice or other of which there are so many. Not a single Canadian has ever approached me to say: ‘Why are there so many injustices committed against Indigenous people?’ or ‘Why is there not a strong movement of support for justice and sovereignty for Indigenous people’s sovereignty movement in Canada?’ Canadians love causes, but they love the causes that are far away — out of their backyard, so to speak.

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.