Lee Maracle

Bobbi Lee Maracle OC (July 2, 1950 – November 11, 2021) was a Sto:lo writer and academic. Born in Vancouver, she left formal education to travel North America, attending Simon Fraser University on her return to Canada. Her first book, an autobiography called Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, was published in 1975. She wrote fiction, non-fiction, and criticism and held various academic positions. Maracle's work focussed on the lives of Indigenous people, particularly women, in contemporary North America.

The granddaughter of Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George, Bobbi Lee Maracle was born on July 2, 1950, in Vancouver, British Columbia. She grew up in the neighbouring city of North Vancouver.

Maracle dropped out of school after grade 8 and went from California, where she did various jobs that included producing films and doing stand-up comedy, to Toronto. After returning to Canada, she attended Simon Fraser University. In the 1970s, she became involved with the Red Power movement in Vancouver.

Maracle's writing explores the experience of Indigenous women, critiquing patriarchy and white supremacy. Her first book was an autobiography: Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, published in 1975. The book began as an assignment in a course about writing life histories. Critic Harmut Lutz describes Indian Rebel as "a celebration of Native survival", comparing it to the works of Maria Campbell and Howard Adams. Indian Rebel was "one of the first Indigenous works published in Canada".

I Am Woman (1988) applies feminist theory to the situation of Indigenous women, describing women's sexual victimization at the hands of Indigenous and white men alike. Sojourner's Truth (1990), a collection of short stories, describes the everyday lives of Indigenous people dealing with a "Eurocentric culture". Her poetry book, Hope Matters, was written in conjunction with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter, and was published in 2019.

Maracle was one of the founders of the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia. She was the cultural director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, Ontario from 1998 to 2000.

Maracle taught at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and Southern Oregon University, and was a professor of Canadian culture at Western Washington University. She lived in Toronto, teaching at the University of Toronto First Nations House. She was the writer-in-residence at the University of Guelph.

Maracle belonged to the Sto꞉lo nation and had Salish and Cree ancestry. She has been described as Métis. She and her husband Dennis had two daughters.

She died on November 11, 2021, at Surrey Memorial Hospital in Surrey, British Columbia.

Maracle was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 2018. In 2017, Maracle was presented the Bonham Centre Award from the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for her contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification. She delivered the 2021 Margaret Laurence Lecture on "A Writing Life".

Fiction

• Sojourner's Truth and Other Stories (1990)
• Sundogs – 1992
• Ravensong – (Press Gang Publishers, 1993)
• Daughters Are Forever (2002)
• Will's Garden (2002)
• First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style (Theytus Books Publishing, 2010)
• Celia's Song. Cormorant Books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-77086-416-0.

Non-fiction

• Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel (1975, reissued 1990)
• I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism (1988; Press Gang Publishers, 1996)
• Oratory: Coming to Theory (1990)
• My Conversations with Canadians (2017)

Poetry

• Bent Box (2000)
• Hope Matters. Book*hug. 2019. ISBN 9781771664974. (with Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter)

Collaborations

• My Home As I Remember (2000)
• We Get Our Living Like Milk from the Land (1993)
• Telling It: Women and Language Across Cultures (with Betsy Warland, Sky Lee and Daphne Marlatt) (Press Gang Publishers, 1990)

• Coleman, Daniel (2012). "Epistemological Crosstalk: Between Melancholia and Spiritual Cosmology in David Chariandy's Soucouyant and Lee Maracle's Daughters Are Forever".In Brydon, Diana; Dvorak, Marta (eds.). Crosstalk: Canadian and Global Imaginaries in Dialogue. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 53–72. ISBN 978-1-55458-309-6. OCLC 759669241.