WWAD: Maria Campbell

Maria Campbell
Halfbreed
(New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973; reprinted Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973)

Maria Campbell

Maria Campbell was born in April 1940 in Park Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was the eldest daughter of seven children born to parents of Scottish, Indian and French descent. As a child she dealt with discrimination from both whites and full-blooded Indian neighbors because of her Metís, or "half-breed" heritage. Campbell is best known for her autobiography, Halfbreed, in which she recounts the first thirty-three years of her life and depicts the discrimination and racism she and her people endured. What is unique about Halfbreed, however, is that Campbell is not only telling her own story but she is rather speaking for the Metis people as a whole. She writes of how the Metis have historically been subjected to discrimination and racism in Canadian society.

In the introduction to Halfbreed, Campbell says, "I write this for all of you, to tell you what it is like to be a Halfbreed woman in this country. I want to tell you about the joys and sorrows, the oppressing poverty, the frustrations and the dreams."¹ Campbell does just this and takes the reader on an autobiographical journey where she loses her mother at the age of twelve and is forced to quit school to take care of her younger siblings. As an attempt to keep her family together, Campbell marries an abusive white man who reports her to the welfare authorities and the children are placed in foster homes. After moving to Vancouver, she is deserted by her husband and enters a life of drugs and prostitution. Alone and desperate, she attempts suicide twice and suffers a nervous breakdown. It is in the hospital that she enters Alcoholics Anonymous and begins to find hope.

Halfbreed was Maria Campbell's way of telling everyone the story of a metís ("halfbreed") and the realities of poverty, pain and hopelessness. Her story is a moving one, which at times reduces the reader to tears, and at other times makes you want to laugh. The underlying current in Halfbreed is, however, a serious one. Campbell says, "I am not bitter. I have passed that stage. I only want to say: this is what it was like, this is what it is still like."² Her portrayal of how hard it was to grow up a Metis and how unfairly she was treated by both whites and Indians, strikes a chord and forces the reader to feel for her and her people.

Campbell's story also shows how far she has come. She is no longer a scared, little girl. She has transgressed into a strong, independent woman full of hope for her own future as well as her peoples. At the end of the book she says, "The years of searching , loneliness and pain are over for me."³ She had surpassed the obstacles of poverty, pain, dope addiction, prostitution and self-pity. Through writing about her personal account of discrimination and racism, Maria Campbell allows the reader to see things from a Metís perspective. As Agnes Grant observed, "Until she wrote the book, 'halfbreed' was nothing but a common derogatory term; now it means a person living between two cultures."⁴

Today Campbell continues to write and teaches at the University of Saskatchewan. She has received many awards for her writing, including Honorary Doctorate degrees from the University of Regina and York University. The Metis nation also honored her for her community work, especially with women and children, with the Gabriel Dumont Medal for Merit.⁵ Her role as a political activist for Native American rights is still something she takes seriously.

Notes:

¹ Maria Campbell, Halfbreed (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), p. 8.

² Ibid., p. 13

³ Ibid., p. 157

⁴ NativeAuthors.com, Maria Campbell (Metis), http://www.nativeauthors.com/search/bio/biocampbell.html (December 2000). [also mirrored locally]

⁵ Eva Ogilvie, U. of S. News: Campbell named Writer-in-Residence, http://www.usask.ca/events/news/articles/19980707-1.html. [also mirrored locally]