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Storyteller Lives Between Fiction and Myth
One of Canada's most prolific aboriginal authors is writer-in-residence this winter at U of G
BY RACHELLE COOPER
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| Lee Maracle. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
Lee Maracle, U of G's newest writer-in-residence, says that being one of the first aboriginal people to go to public school isolated her from her own culture and made her an outsider in Canadian culture.
I became foreign in my own context and even more foreign in the Canadian context, she says. It just seemed like I had no place to be. So I think writing helped me create a new place of belonging because I went back to original (aboriginal) stories and then re-created them in a modern context that was my personal context.
Maracle wrote her first poem the day she learned to read and knew by the time she was 10 that she wanted to re-create myths.
That makes me a myth maker in my own culture and a fiction writer in other cultures, she says. It's always been my goal not to translate but to get the same feeling from the sounds, rhythm and interplay of words and image in the English version as I do when I hear the original story.
When she began publishing her work in the early 1970s, Maracle became one of the first aboriginal people to be published and has since become one of the most prolific aboriginal authors in Canada and a recognized authority on aboriginal issues and literature.
She's the author of 10 books, including novels Will's Garden, Ravensong and Sundogs, and has contributed to more than 20 anthologies and collaborations. Maracle is the recipient of the J.T. Stewart Voices of Change Award and the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
A visiting professor at the University of Toronto on the days she isn't at U of G, Maracle teaches courses on indigenous thought and expression and creative writing.
She's no stranger to universities. She spent three years at Western Washington University as the Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture, was the 2001 Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at the University of Waterloo and held a prior visiting professorship with the women's studies program at Toronto, where she received a teaching award.
Maracle is also founder of the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, B.C., and cultural director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, where she teaches classes on story creation.
Among Aboriginal Peoples, Maracle says she's perhaps known more for her cultural work within the aboriginal community. She has served as a consultant on First Nations self-government, has conducted dozens of workshops on personal and cultural reclamation and has given hundreds of speeches on political, historical and feminist sociological topics related to native people.
Maracle is of Salish and Cree ancestry, grew up on a reserve in North Vancouver and is a member of the St:lo First Nation. She says that, although the aboriginal lifespan has gone from 39 to 66 years in her lifetime, it's still distressing that it's under the global average of 67.
We're doing better than the Third World, but not much, and that's a bit disheartening, she says. But our life is improving, and I think we're no longer oppressed because oppressed means you can't move up, and there is a movement up for us.
Maracle says she's happy that aboriginal studies is now offered at most universities. As a student at Simon Fraser University and Victoria University, she felt no connection to a lot of the course material. When one of her four children was studying world literature, I'd weep to think that I had to do John Donne and John Dryden and all these authors who didn't speak to me or address me in any shape or form and my daughter has the opportunity to study works in which you can see truth, passion and sensibility.
Working with students is rewarding for Maracle. I think I have a gift for seeing where the voice is taking the writer because I've struggled with it so much myself. I first learned to write English from a very English perspective, and it seemed to be disconnected from my own sensibility of what story is all about.
The difference in the use of voice in aboriginal writing is an obstacle Maracle says she's had to face a lot.
In not conforming to the standards acceptable to an English-speaking public, you sacrifice popularity, but I wouldn't do it any other way. I think the stories I write are actually Canadian stories.
In addition to helping aspiring writers with their work while on campus this semester, Maracle will be finishing up a collection of essays, a collection of short stories and a novel. Jumping from one genre to another isn't difficult for the seasoned writer.
I think the way I write essays is creative and imaginative and oral. I don't write anything that I can't orally present.
She is on campus Tuesdays and Wednesdays to consult with U of G students, staff and faculty, as well as members of the local community. To book an appointment, contact Michael Boterman at Ext. 53147 or mboterma@uoguelph.ca.