Sundogs

Sundogs. Lee Maracle, Penticton, B.C.: Thytus Books Ltd., 1992. pp. 218 $12.95 pb.

Introducing a selection at a reading at the University of Calgary in October 1993, Lee Maracle smiled to the largely European Canadian audience in the library tower: "You don't really know us." Her charm was ingenuous, and the barb stuck. The concept is not so comfortably presented by a native character in Maracle's novel, Sundogs. On a peace run across Canada, carrying eagle feather, pipe, and drum, a group of young natives has encountered both rock throwers and applauders among the white communities through which they pass. Discussing the former, one runner calls racists "ignorant." The response comes, "No, not just ignorant. No racist is racist for reasons of ignorance. The people who pass us by honk and wave or greet us in the towns are just as ignorant as the stone throwers. No one in this country knows much about us..."

The thought is concluded with the acknowledgement that the rock throwers "...have translated their own violence in their lives into hatred for us," but the challenge remains: active or passive, racism is implicit in the dominant group's ignorance of the marginalized.

Sundogs is about challenge, and the gauntlets are not always thrown at the feet of the dominant. Narrator Marianne, a...