There is another way to be, to think, to know, and when Canadians witness another way, perhaps the colonial domination can begin to end. I believe, t… - Lee Maracle

I love speaking. I love our orality, its rhythm, its ease, the way we can slip into poetry, story, even song and dance, break the tedium with a joke, particularly an anti-colonial joke. I love how the speaker gets to wander around and through a subject with the audience. On paper, though, the words can lose much of the personality of the speaker, jokes don't fit, and the sidebars, the off-the-cuff remarks, detract and can even trivialize the thoughts shared. When you speak you deliver a voice; everyone knows that what you think is also what you feel. In speaking, there is no problem delivering the integrity of your emotionality. But in writing you evoke, instead of expressing, your feelings. When the immediacy that links speaker and audience is absent on the page, you must find other ways of sharing the feelings that give rise to your thoughts.

I always say to people, you have a banquet — you come to the table with your own culture, a full banquet. If you don't share it, it's not writing!

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