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… - Lee Maracle

[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.

(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 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.