Top Quotes: “I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism” — Lee Maracle

“Sexism, racism, and the total dismissal of Native women’s experiences has little to do with who does dishes and who minds babies. These oppressions result from the accumulation of hurt sustained by our people over a long period of time. Our communities are reduced to a substandard definition of normal, which leads to a sensibility of defeat, which in turn calls the victim to the table of lateral violence and ultimately changes the beliefs and corrodes the system from within. On this table of lateral violence sit the violence of men and women against children and the violence of men toward women. The ‘healing movement’ or the 80s and 90s, spearheaded by women, is the struggle to clear the table of violence.

What we haven’t been able to do is remove the table of hurtful oppression and besiegement which spawned the lateral violence. Generation to generation the hurt of defeat accumulates in the consciousness of the colonized, until defeat itself becomes the norm. Exhaustion overtakes the oppressed, resistance seems useless; finally implosion occurs, and the systems which existed for thousands of years break down. This breakdown occurred during my lifetime and continues to this day. There are a number of amazing women struggling to recreate and rebuild the family systems of our past. There are also a number of men struggling to rebuild the political institutions and governing systems of the past. We do so in a terrible vacuum, a vacuum created by the absence of context, the lack of knowledge and the death of those who might have been able to teach us. We do so in a state of uncertainty created by the beliefs about ourselves which we inherited and internalized, a state of being which causes us to doubt our own feelings, our spirit, our thinking. We didn’t create this history, we had no say in any of the conditions into which we were born (nor did our ancestors), yet we are saddled with the responsibility for altering these conditions and rebuilding our nations.

We have so few tools available for the reconstruction of our houses, so few insights into who we all are, collectively and individually, yet rebuild we must. I’m determined to remove three mountains from the path to liberation: the mountain of racism, the mountain of sexism, and the mountain of nationalist oppression.

I tire easily these days. Sometimes I feel the exhaustion is rooted in the sense of defeat that the 1950s represent for our people. Sometimes I feel the tiredness is old, as old as the colonial process itself. On those days I’m energized by the fact that it’s not my fatigue but the fatigue of the oppressor’s system which haunts me. On other days the tiredness is deeply personal. It’s the fatigue of a 3-year-old hauling buckets of crabs, racing against the tide when she should’ve been sitting in the sun on the beach playing with a bucket of sand. On those days, nothing can inspire me to move away from my bed.”

“Whereas Native men have been victims of the age-old racist remark ‘lazy drunken Indian’ about Native women white folks ask, ‘Do they have feelings?’ How may times do you hear from our own brothers, ‘Indian women don’t whine and cry around, nag, or complain.’ At least not ‘real’ or ‘true’ Indian women. Embodied in that kind of language is the negation of our femininity — the denial of our womanhood. And, let us admit it, beneath such a remark isn’t there just a little coercion to behave and take without complaint whatever our brothers think ‘we have comin’?

I used to believe such attempts at enforcing docility in women. Worse, I was convinced that love, passion/compassion were inventions of white folks. I believed that we never loved, wept, laughed, or fought with each other. Divorce was unheard of. Did we then merely accept our wifely obligations to men the way a horse accepts yoke and bridel? I think not.

The denial of Native womanhood is the reduction of the whole people to a subhuman level. Animals beget animals. The dictates of patriarchy demand that beneath the Native male comes the Native female. The dictates of racism are that Native men are beneath white women and Native females aren’t fit to be referred to as women.

No one makes the mistake of referring to us as ordinary women. White women invite us to speak if the issue is racism or Native people. We are there to teach, to sensitize them or to serve them in some way. We are expected to retain our position well below them. We are not, as a matter of course, invited as an integral part of ‘their movement’ — the women’s movement.

I’m not now, nor am I likely to be, considered an authority on women in general by the white women’s movement in this country. If I’m asked to write, my topic is Native whatever, and like as not, the request comes replete with an outline and the do’s and don’ts of what I may or may not say. Should I venture out on my own and deal with women as a whole and not in segregated Native fashion, the invitations stop coming.”

“I’ve been to hundreds of meetings where the male members denied written submissions from female members while giving themselves the benefit of collective discussion and team development prior to any attempt to write it up, thus helping male speakers to sharpen their ideas. Worse, I’ve watched the chairperson sit and listen to an endless exchange between 2 male colleagues while a patient woman holds her hand in the air, waiting to be recognized.

It doesn’t stop there. The anti-woman attitude by Native males seems to be reserved for Native women. The really big crime is that our men-folk rise when a white woman walks into the room. Native men go to great lengths to recognize her and, of course, where there is controversy, her word is very often the respected one.”

“When men talk about love between people of the same sex as abnormal, they’re not referring to love at all, but to sex. Since we’re speaking about love, we will have to ignore the male viewpoint. When women refer to women who love women as unnatural, what they really mean — and this is pathetic — is that it’s almost unheard of, and, they agree, isn’t allowed. Men loving women is almost unheard of: does its scarceness make it abnormal, unnatural? Any love women can garner for themselves will appear unnatural if women are generally unloved.

Nowhere in the white, male conception of history has love been a motive for getting things done. That is unnatural. They can’t see love as the force which could be used to move mountains, change history, or judge the actions of people. Love/spirit is seen as a womanly thing and thus is scorned. Women love their sons but men influence, direct, and control them. Women love their husbands; men provide for women in exchange for a stable home and conjugal rights and that ever-nurturing womanly love. Men scorn love. We’re expected not only to accept this scorn in place of love, but to bear untold suffering at the hands of men. That there’s violence in North American homes is taken for granted: ‘Everyone knocks the wife around every once in a while.’ And does anyone want to admit that very often after a beating on a drunken Friday, a woman is expected to open up to further scorn by moaning and groaning happy sounds while the mean who beat her helps himself to her body?

Have you ever heard a man honestly admit that a woman’s fear, her surrendering as a result of having been intimidated, excites and arouses him? Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is commonplace in the home. In the home, it’s not a crime. What is worse, in our desperate fear of being unloved, a good many women plead for mercy and accept responsibility for the beating and beg forgiveness for imaginary transgressions. Could this be where men get the idea that women ‘like it, ask for it’ when the subject of rape is discussed?

To be quite frank, if this is how we feel about ourselves, then it’s quite likely that we’re going to be vitriolic about women who aren’t victimized in the same way. A woman who has found love apart from men is seen as a traitor just as woman who has found the love of a gentle man is seen as undeserving. He, of course, must be a wimp — pussy-whipped. In our society it’s loving women that’s prohibited.”

“Homophobes are quick to vilify love between women because the idea of women loving each other is diametrically opposed to volunteering yourself up for rape. The danger of women who love women, in the decrepit minds of patriarchal males, is that men may be challenged to love women too. No more ‘getting your rocks off.’ No more venting your frustrations on your wife. If you’ve got a problem, you’ll have to solve it.

What else is there? Some men will have to answer that question. I’m not about to help you be more human; I have enough trouble doing that for myself. It’s hard enough to reach inside myself and find my own humanity without carrying your load too.”

“It’s not necessary to be in love to enjoy sex. When I first said that in public, an indignant, uncoupled woman said, ‘Well, sex and love have to go together.’ I responded brutally: ‘Yes, I’m going to fuck my mother, my father, my sister, my daughters, and all my friends.’ She didn’t mean that.

What she thought is that women cannot have sex without love. Nonsense. I once went to a bar, looked around the room, saw a nice smile with a reasonable male body attached to it, walked over to the table, and sat down. After a beer I grabbed hold of the gentleman’s arm and let him know that any more that stuff might impair his performance. To which he responded, ‘Are you interested in my performance?’ I had hold of his hand already so I just nodded. ‘Why are we still here then?’

We left. The sex was not bad. There was no love, no illusions whatsoever, just the two of us rutting and being gratified.

Sex is good but love is precious. It’s our passion and compassion. Love defines our humanity. Focused, love binds two people together in a relationship that can be lifelong. If we truly loved ourselves as women, the question of who we choose to engage with sexually would be irrelevant. Let us stop elevating rutting to the position of defining our humanity. Despite the pressure of sexually oriented ads, let’s stop placing fucking on a plane alongside moral principles which confine women to being sexual vehicles rather than sexual beings.

The result of telling young women that they cannot have sex until they’re married and in love is that the shame of desiring sexual gratification will misdefine their lives from pubescence onward. My daughters know, as all girls do, that if they want sex, no one can stop them from getting it. It’s one of the most available commodities on the market, if you don’t mind my cynicism. It’s misdefining their lives around sex that’s degrading, and it usually comes from mothers at the behest of fathers. Some mothers, in the interest of equality, try to convince their sons that they should also abstain from sex until marriage.

Pardon my heresy. I taught my children not to confuse love with sex, just as my mother taught me. I wanted them to learn about love from birth on. Surely we don’t expect our babies to begin enjoying sex at birth. Is it love then that we seek to deny them? I’m convinced that equating sex with love is what is behind all the perversity of child sexual abuse. Some people have taken the BS seriously.”

“All Europe thought we were integrated. We knew we were disintegrated.”

“Do they know the history of courageous women healers who organized and protested the production and importation of sugar to their country almost 500 years ago? Do they know that the fate of these women who actively campaigned against this ‘poison’ was to be burned at the stake for heresey? The church owned and controlled much of the sugar trade. It required the traffic of human slaves and a willing population. Women healers were persecuted for their objections. Did they teach you that in your history?”

“I know there are teachers who have been good for my children. I remember one such teacher’s words: ‘Don’t you think it would be better if everyone simply looked at one another as people?’ I’ll write my answer here.

You taught my child that, here, on the West Coast, we were cannibals. I had to tell my daughters that their great-great-granny, who was almost 100 when I was a child, had never eaten a single soul. When I asked her about cannibalism, she said, ‘My granny never ate anyone. If she had she would’ve taught me how human flesh is best prepared, for it was her obligation to teach me how best to cook all that our men-folk would eat.”

‘Why can’t we just be people?’ Do you hear what you say? When did we ever question your right to be considered people? Do you question mine? I know what you think you say. You want me to consider myself not Native, not Cree, not Salish, but a person, absent of nationality or racial heritage. All of us just people, without difference. You fail to see your own hypocrisy. In the same breath, you pick up a guitar and teach European modern folk songs to all the children, but nowhere do European children learn the folk music of my children or any other nationality. Such sameness amounts to everyone’s obliteration but your own.

I know we were supposed to have vanished by now. We don’t apologize for our inability to do that.”

“We have been forced to reach down inside ourselves to find the words that will teach our children not to approve of Europeans as they are, but to understand how they came to be and how hey will come to change. We have had to teach our young to fight for themselves.”

“In 1960, a growing division in the movement between RedPower activists and orthodox leaders was hastened by the government’s creation of ‘official’ orgs replete with employed bureaucrats and heavy injections of money. Most of the dollars have gone to consultants and lawyers who happen to be white. In the absence of clear aims and objectives for a viable alternative which could oppose these orgs, the youth power movement defended its legitimacy through its mass action. It was already moribund. More and more people began to see that the orgs could achieve social reform more effectively and much more rapidly through the ‘proper channels.’

Steadily, with cruel relentlessness, the youth movement dwindled and lost initiative. Many of the youth sought consolation in drugs and alcohol or hired themselves out to the big orgs. Confusion followed. For those who no longer wished to be identified with mass civil disobedience, cultural nationalism became the convenient flag to hide behind. On the ebb of the tide, dead wood washes out to sea.

It was time to study the reasons for the receding tide. What had been a great blossoming of youth turned into paralysis and demoralization. Desertion to the ranks of the orgs was widespread. In the midst of this, state-paid would-be healers, spiritual leaders, rose to show the way. In the absence of a real struggle, a caricature will do.

The big orgs — conservative, steeped in bureaucracy and dependent on government funds as they were — didn’t do anything that wasn’t within the guidelines established by the funding sources. As the money poured in the guidelines became more stringent. The opposition from the leaders was polite — they were disempowered. The staff of the orgs was drawn from among the most astute and active youth who were thoroughly miseducated by the settler’s institutions of higher learning. The price of receiving a good job was undying loyalty to the leadership. The politics of self-government was restricted to regional and tribal autonomy and to joint corporate economic development.

The rebel youth were aware of the sell-out character of the officially recognized leadership. This awareness wasn’t based on a careful examination of the essential character of the orgs, their philosophy, ideology, or policies. it was an emotional response to the personal conduct of the individuals and leaders within the orgs. To gain the loyalty of hte youth they needed only to ‘clean up their act.’

In 1973, at the juncture of the lowest ebb in the movement, the Wounded Knee siege broke out. The American Indian Movement was propelled to the fore of the siege by a biased and sensationalist press. The most vocal and articulate males, those who conducted themselves the most like arrogant white men, were interviewed and reported on over and over again. Touted as leaders, these men overshadowed the issue. The real goals of the occupation were lost in the shuffle. The leadership clique entrenched itself. These leaders began to hire themselves out for speaking tours, initially to raise money for the Wounded Knee trials. Later they began to live off the movement rather than for it.

The American Indian Movement began as a street patrol, fashioned after the Black Panther Party; in much the same way that other Native militant groups were. Even concepts of local chapters, national chairmen and mass recruitment into the org were similar to the Black Panthers’ way of organizing. The politics were no different either. Culturally, the worst, most dominant white male traits were emphasized. Machismo and the boss mentality were the basis for choosing leaders. This idea of leadership was essentially a European one promulgated by power mongers.

Over time, the AIM leaders denied the validity of political struggle. Their method of leadership was to bandage the wounds of a few native people with a bigger share of the pie — in the name of independence. Self-imposed leaders, bolstered by white liberals and the white media, deserved the lion’s share of the pie.”

“Natives who had already adopted the Canadian forms of organization established Native para-civil service bureaucracies. They’d already decided that the basis for their conduct would be rooted in Canadian culture. We had no way to move beyond survival and retrieve our own way of conducting ourselves in modern orgs rooted in our past cultural context.

Likewise, the AIM leadership looked at the rewards of ‘serving the people’ with European eyes. Their interpretation of spirituality was rooted in European culture. Their inability to accept criticism from below and opposition from across the table, and to alter their conduct accordingly, rendered their leaders impotent.

For some of us, the arithmetic of salaried leadership was revolting. The salaries seemed enormous. Indians couldn’t pay for such leadership; thus, salaried leaders were not working for us, but for someone else. For many youth, being employed by ‘the enemy’ was deterrent enough.

For AIM, the orthodox leaders and the US government-paid tribal councils were sell-outs. (Because they accomplished too little too late.) Power politics does work. Concessions were fought for and won. Independence is paid for with people’s lives. Social movement alone can bring America to its senses. And there’s no doubt that America can be brought to its senses.”

“The logic of the colonizer for the last 5 centuries has been and continues to be ‘How can I turn this to my advantage?’ The logic of the colonized is ‘How can we turn this around so that we can regain our lost sense of humanity? There are those among us who have filled themselves with the settler’s logic. It allows certain Natives to live off the movement instead of living for it.

There’s no European substitute for our own philosophical premise for being: ‘spirit is life-force — essence.’ All things — stone, earth, flora, fauna (of which people are a small part) — are alive with their own spirit and reason for being. This premise puts us all on the same level. To articulate this premise without conducting oneself as though it were true is to be comfortable with one’s hypocrisy in the same way that middle-class Can-America is generally comfortable with its hypocrisy.

We all wanted independence, and none of us quite knew what that was. We traveled down one blind alley after another, while a busy, huge and moneyed corporate elite went into operation to smash us. They organized us into offices replete with all the machinery and power and respectability hitherto denied us.”

“The mass character and pure idealism of the movement were killed by the reality of the power of the State: murder for those who couldn’t be bought or beaten; jail for those too popular to kill and for whom the possibility of breaking the spirit existed; isolation for those who could be isolated. Apathy, and a great reluctance to be misled, yet again, led to mass integration, at least on the surface level.”

“The transient character of the urban community has changed and with it comes the incumbent cultural integration into the oppressor society. The internalization of Canadian culture came harmlessly enough. Party down! The infamous party culture began a short time after the government-funded Native political orgs came into being. Money — excess money — hotel rooms and boogie culture began at the top and filtered down to the masses. It wasn’t that we never partied before. It was the way we did it that changed.

In the communities, celebrations involved everyone — old and infant, youth and middle-aged. It was a great coming together of all the people. These celebrations were only mildly encumbered by over-indulgence in alcohol and occasionally they were marred by violence. At least we were together. In the urban center, families were separated by the new settler-style party. Kids were dumped at babysitters and elders were unwelcome and uninvited to the new soirees. Brothers didn’t party in the same spot as sisters.

In the city a good party was one in which no kids, old people or close family were present. That little step changed our social being. No occasion was necessary to give rise to a party. No special event was even desirable. The rest was history. This was the fertile soil in which AIM could plant its seed, flourish, and flower. The flower was neither lovely nor sturdy. In fact, it was barren, unable to produce new seeds.

Leaders weren’t selected on the basis used by our ancestors: selflessness, wisdom, courage, and responsiveness to the interests of the people. Instead, verbosity, arrogance, and arbitrariness became the standards for selection. The media and white liberals became the judges. People paid for the pearls cast them by the power-politics leaders. Soon, the contact files of movement Natives were top-heavy with white liberals and barren of Native people.”

“I find it hard to believe that our people prayed before the days of conquest. To pray means ‘to beg, plead, beseech.’ It’s my understanding that begging was against our ancient laws. Prayer isn’t synonymous with ceremony. Spiritual healing is referred to by many Native doctors as ‘putting our minds together to heal.’ That isn’t the equivalent of prayer. However, there’s no word for this process in English. We then must make one up or integrate our own word into the language.

English doesn’t express the process of ceremony. Yet, we’re forced to communicate within its limits. We must differentiate and define our sense of spirituality in English.

I’m going to defy orthodox science in the European sense, Marxism in every sense, and some of our own people whose spiritualism is limited to monotheistic prayer.”

“In North America Native peoples possess the luxury of not having to resist colonialism — we resist each other. We don’t possess the luxury of constituting the majority in our own land.”

“In the 1960s we wanted to dismember the empire. By the 80s the empire had dismembered the movement. What is at the heart of it all? There are solidarity movements for a growing number of struggles lead by expats living in Canada. There has been the occasional attempt by a few intellectuals to rationalize the solidarity movement and establish closer coordination of the work through coalitions. But the solidarity movement remains disjointed and ineffective, in much the same way that the peace movement and the ecology and Native movements are largely ununited.

The various groups, headed as they are by refugees and expats who dream of repatriation under a new social order, are unable to prioritize their actions in accordance with the strategic interest of the movement of people in Canada toward our emancipation. I would be disappointed if they did consider the interests of people here ahead of their own.

To promote self-interest among Canadians would have a lasting and damaging effect on Native people unless it were tied to a different consciousness, such as internationalism. Native participation should not, however, be governed by the interests of Canadians or the oppressed people we’re supporting. Whatever decisions we make must be made with the interest of our struggle at heart. This means that we participate and promote solidarity work, because until South Africa is liberated, we will always be the primitive younger brothers of every other race of people in the world. We are no longer the equal of any race of people but Blacks in America.

I’m invited to everyone’s soiree and demonstration because I can perform. It’s likewise with my Black American counterparts. Lord! The more things change, the more they remain the same. If South Africa isn’t free, I’m never going to get off my knees.

There are so few Native people involved in the solidarity movement that those of us who are ought to get together and plan our involvement in our own interest. For us solidarity work isn’t a fad. It’s a vital part of our survival. We had better hope that when South African Blacks raise a new flag of hope over South Africa, we are counted in the ranks of people who helped make it possible.”