Adrienne Clarkson: ‘I always felt I belonged’

More snippets from Adrienne Clarkson interviews on her book, Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship:

We are often very centred on the Western ideal of citizenship. I wanted to be sure that we looked at the world, not just at the Western Greek ideal, but also that we deal with our own aboriginal gifts in this country, that we deal with an African concept … and that we deal with an Asian Buddhist concept about how you create something that you all belong to. These concepts are valuable to open people’s minds to the idea that in all of the world, people are thinking about these things and they come at it in their different ways.

Ubuntu says you exist because the other exists. You are part of other people. I exist because you exist. I think that’s a wonderful feeling to have because it means we are part of each other and we are part of a kind of understanding of each other, which we don’t feel rationally, but we feel it because we are all human beings. I am human because you are human.

Adrienne Clarkson: ‘I always felt I belonged’.