"Where do you begin telling someone their world is not the only one?"
Lee Maracle"Words are sacred, once spoken they cannot be retrieved. Sometimes they fall out of the mouth in moments of thoughtlessness when the speaker focuses on images which don’t include the one spoken to, and burn holes in the lives of the listener.”
from Ravensong by Lee Maracle
“Find freedom in the context you inherit”
Lee Maracle (Stó:lō)
“Find freedom in the context you inherit”
Lee Maracle (Stó:lō)
We are offered great gifts from writers and people who are speaking up from all cultures, beliefs, tribes, and world experiences that are different from ours. It is probably easier for us to imagine living on Mars than it is to understand their reality. This last quote reminds me of Victor Frankl's speaking about life in the Nazi concentration camps
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
And why do I choose these quotes week after week?? What is in me that I choose the books and the stories I do? I wonder this, why I am I sitting here feeling helpless to "do" anything, when I have so much freedom? Is this one of those tragic paradoxes... that those of us who have freedom and opportunity become possessive of that freedom ... feel we deserve it? I think somehow we are trapped in a conditioned box that does not allow us to see no one is truly free until everyone is free. And our real freedom only comes when the risks we take challenge us to grow out of our safety zones of that "freedom we deserve". That inherent belief inside us that we are "good" people and have no responsibility to look deeper into our complicity and responsibility for the oppression of others, for the destruction and imbalance of opportunity and freedom. We say we are in the helpless against government and corporate greed, corruption and wasteful mismanagement when, in fact, they represent us. The only way things will ever change is if we change ourselves and it takes one step at a time as our eyes open. It is easy to get bogged down in the enormity of change that is needed, but once one tiny changes start happening miracles can follow.
Lee Maracle
Lee Maracle, of Salish and Cree ancestry, a member of the Sto:loh Nation, was born in North Vancouver, B.C. She is the mother of four and grandmother of four.
Maracle was one of the first Aboriginal people to be published in the early 1970s, and she is now one of the most highly published First Nations writers in Canada. She is an award-winning poet, novelist, performance storyteller, scriptwriter, actor and keeper/mythmaker among the Sto:lo People.
Maracle was recently award the Order of Canada "For her contributions to Canada's literary landscape and for her influential voice in cultural relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada."
Lee Maracle, of Salish and Cree ancestry, a member of the Sto:loh Nation, was born in North Vancouver, B.C. She is the mother of four and grandmother of four.
Maracle was one of the first Aboriginal people to be published in the early 1970s, and she is now one of the most highly published First Nations writers in Canada. She is an award-winning poet, novelist, performance storyteller, scriptwriter, actor and keeper/mythmaker among the Sto:lo People.
Maracle was recently award the Order of Canada "For her contributions to Canada's literary landscape and for her influential voice in cultural relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada."
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