North Spirit Quotes

“The northern boreal world was unique and unlike any other on earth, still undisturbed, with deep linkages to other sub-artic cultures and its unbroken chain of story-lives going back into the pre-Columbian past. The forests are as yet uncut, the greed of great cities for water and power has, as yet, dammed up only a few of its rivers. It has not been trampled by gold-seekers and ideology-mad politicos and marked by the uncounted deaths that has made Siberia a land of tears and terror and pollution. It is still clean and mostly aboriginal and the call of the wild is a melody arriving from inside us, out of our own distant past. Somewhere in the world there are rock paintings created by the ancestors of each one of us, and there are songs behind the dancing figures, and thoughts behind the songs. It is a past to be reckoned with, replete with action, violence, wars, discord, resolution, and courage, star-legends with episodes following one on the heels of another.”
― Paulette Jiles, North Spirit: Sojourns Among the Cree and Ojibway

“Lascaux was in my time-stream, my ancestry, and Lascaux was the joy and the transport of stories. That's what lasts. It has lasted thirty thousand years.”
― Paulette Jiles, North Spirit: Sojourns Among the Cree and Ojibway

“Every normal person used to be able to produce at least some of their own entertainment...But we have changed from a people who could produce their own everyday amusements to consumers; passive consumers.”
― Paulette Jiles, North Spirit: Sojourns Among the Cree and Ojibway