Condolences pour in at news that Stó:lō Nation writer, educator, and activist Lee Maracle has died
The prolific author was an expert on Indigenous culture and addressed themes of racism, post-colonialism, and female sexuality in her work
In addition to publishing numerous works, Lee Maracle cofounded the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton.
LEE MARACLE, a highly influential Stó:lō Nation writer, educator, activist, and expert on Indigenous culture and history, has died.
Born on July 2, 1950, Maracle grew up in present day North Vancouver, the daughter of a Metis mother and Salish father and a granddaughter of Chief Dan George. She passed away on November 11.
Among the nation’s most prolific Indigenous writers, Maracle combined poetry, Indigenous legends, personal details, fiction, and non-fiction in her works, which included novels, poems, short stories, and essays.
Lee Maracle focused on “decolonizing the feminine”.
She focused on “decolonizing in the feminine”, addressing Indigeneity, racism, the impacts of colonization, and female sexuality through her words.
After dropping out of school, she immersed herself in the local hippie culture and became a member of the Red Power movement. She spent time in California and Toronto before returning to the West Coast to study at SFU.
Maracle’s first book, Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel (1975), an autobiographical novel, told the story of an Indigenous woman growing up within an oppressed minority during the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1988, she published I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism. Also autobiographical, it explored her experiences and struggles with culture, tradition, womanhood, spirituality, and political power. In the preface, she noted that she aimed to “empower Native women to take to heart their own personal struggle for Native feminist being”.
She wrote Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures (1990) Sundogs: A Novel (1992), Daughters are Forever (2002), First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style (2010), My Conversations with Canadians (2017). Hope Matters (2019) was a book of poetry written in conjunction with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter. (Her son is actor Sid Bobb.)
Among her numerous other works are Ravensong: A Novel (1993), set on a West Coast reserve in the early 1950s; and Memory Serves and Other Essays, from 2015, a series of lectures she had delivered over the years that are “intrinsic to the Salish people in general and the Stó:lō in particular.”
She held numerous academic and leadership roles, including the Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at University of Waterloo, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University, Writer-in-Residence at University of Guelph, Writer-in-Residence at University of Toronto’s First Nations House, and Traditional Cultural Director for the Indigenous Theatre School in Toronto.
In her 2020 Margaret Laurence Lecture commissioned by the Writers' Trust of Canada, Maracle noted that Indigenous writers, especially women, continue to be overlooked.
"In general, Canada puts Indigenous writers, particularly, Indigenous women, last," Maracle said. "Conquest is understandable, but not acceptable. I get it because if you accept that we are here first, then you would lose your place here and all this conquest would be for naught.
“Although I am grateful for an opportunity to speak, I am still aware of how irrelevant you have made us in order to believe in your ‘pursuit of religious freedom' raison d'être that masks colonialism,” she said. “I am invited into your space in an honouring way, despite the continued murder of Indigenous women, some of whom are my relations.”
Maracle cofounded the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton.
Maracle was awarded the Order of Canada in 2018, recognized as “one of the most influential Indigenous voices in Canada’s literary landscape” and an author “that has been instrumental in promoting social justice in Canada,”
In 2019, she was awarded an honourary doctorate from the University of Waterloo in recognition of her work as “as an Indigenous voice for truth.”
Maracle was shortlisted for the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.
Tributes have been pouring in over social media.
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