Noted Native author delights and challenges Calgary audience

Page 18

In a presentation at a panel discussion on cultural diversity for the 1990s, noted Native author and feminist Lee Maracle challenged her audience with a rhetorical question.

"When will feminists realize Native women are not asexual?" Maracle went on to say society must change its view of Native women as docile and submissive.

Maracle, a north Vancouver resident, shared the stage recently in Calgary's W.R. Castell Theater with three prestigious Canadian writers: Katherine Govier, author of Between Men; Gail Scott, a bilingual Montreal writer and author of Spaces Like Stairs and Calgarian Elona Maltette, author of The Celts.

The audience of 330 people was stirred by Maracle's reading of a haunting poem from her book I am Woman. In it she recounts the life of her friend Rusty who suffered and died searching for love and spiritual meaning.

Throughout the evening, Maracle was animated, humorous, entertaining, provocative and insightful. She quickly won the hearts of her audience with her down-to-earth, straight from the heart talk about her work as a writer.

With roots in Lac la Biche, she was raised in Vancouver where her mother moved in the early 1940s.

As a journalist in the '70s Maracle contributed to Native newspapers such as Indian Voice before turning to writing fiction and poetry.

She said writing was like "taking a piece of string from real life and stretching it with the imagination. That is what life is all about and that is what culture is all about."

Her political views on the colonization of Indian people peppered her presentation. Her choice of words hinted at her political activism in the 70s and her conviction and sincerity won the audience over.

In addition to writing for small publications in Canada and the United States, she worked on audio-visual productions on Mozanbiquan liberation and the cultural revolution in China.

And she openly recalled her own struggles, such as when she was alone and confused and found solace in the story told to her by an old man of a logger who lost two fingers in an accident. In his anger and bitterness it was suggested to him he express his anger through painting. That led him to find happiness in a new occupation.

"I did not know what the story meant at the time but as writing became more involved in my life, the more understanding I had of the story," Maracle said.

Meanwhile, she didn't have kind words for W.P. Kinsella, author of last year's best-selling book, The Miss Hobbema Pageant. Maracle felt he made fun of "our rape and murder" and tried to entertain readers with a tragic topic.

As for celebrated Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, Maracle said the use of Metis women in her stories to symbolize uncleanliness hurt her but she could not advocate censorship. Maracle felt it was Atwood's way of coming to terms with Native women being human.

Asked to give her vision for the 90s. Maracle said, "Canada is our child, it needs nurturing, chiding and guidance, we are her mothers."

With the rapid rate of change at the beginning of the decade, she hopes Canadian society "learns from what Indian have practiced philosophically for years -- 'Don't take more than you need.'"