How do I gain permission to generate ssh keys on my Mac?

I tried to generate ssh keys for GitHub (access through SSH in terminal), but I do not have access to the .ssh directory. I tried to ls -l ~/.ssh, but I got this error ls: .ssh: Permission denied

I tried to read on the internet tuns of tutorials and tips for fix it, but unfortunately nothing works me.

What am I doing incorrectly and how can I fix it? I am running on Mac os X 10.6

sounds like you don't have eXecute permission on your .ssh folder: try running ls -ld ~/.ssh and verify that the permissions are drwx------, and that the directory is owned by you. If the permissions differ, run chmod -R u+rwX,go-rwx ~/.ssh; if you're not the owner, run chown -R <your account name> ~/.ssh (find out your account name by running whoami).

If either the chmod or chown commands fail due to permission errors, run them again but prefic them with sudo.

chown -R YOUR_USER: ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/*