Maria Campbell
Maria Campbell was born in 1940 into a Métis family that had fled to Spring River, “fifty miles [80.4 kilometres] north-west of Prince Albert,” after the North-West Resistance of 1885. The community members had originally made their living as hunters and trappers. When the land was opened to homesteading in the 1920s, many of them attempted to farm in an effort to hold on to at least a little land. Lacking both experience and capital, most were not able to fulfill the requirements to break a specified number of acres within three years. Their land was taken over by new settlers, and they retreated to shacks on road allowances, the thirty-foot-wide (nine-metre) strips of government-owned land on either side of a road.17 Despite the ever-present poverty, Campbell’s was a literate household. Her mother read to the children from the works of “Shakespeare, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott,” and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.18 Her grandmother Dubuque had Treaty status and had been raised in a convent, and one of her great-grandmothers, Cheechum, was related to Métis military leader Gabriel Dumont.19 The family members were regular Catholic churchgoers. “The Mass was held in Latin and French, and sometimes in Cree. The colourful rituals were the only thing which made the church bearable for me. I was spellbound by the scarlets and purples and even the nuns, whom I disliked as persons, were mystical and haunting in their black robes with huge, swinging crosses.”20
Campbell’s life underwent a dramatic change when she was seven. One evening at dinner, Grannie Dubuque announced that she had arranged a special surprise for Maria: she had been accepted into the residential school at Beauval, Saskatchewan.
It sounded exciting, but looking at Dad’s shocked face, Mom’s happy one, and Cheechum’s stony expression—a sure sign of anger—I was confused. Dad went out after dinner and did not return until the next day. Meanwhile Momma and Grannie planned my wardrobe. I remember only the ugly black stockings, woolly and very itchy, and the little red tam I had to wear and how much I hated it.21Of her year at Beauval, she recalled little except loneliness and fear. The place smelled unpleasantly of soap and old women, and I could hear my footsteps echoing through the building. We prayed endlessly, but I cannot recall ever doing much reading or school-work as Momma had said I would—just the prayers and my job, which was cleaning the dorms and hallways. I do recall most vividly a punishment I once received. We weren’t allowed to speak Cree, only French and English, and for disobeying this, I was pushed into a small closet with no windows or light, and locked in for what seemed like hours. I was almost paralyzed with fright when they came to let me out. I remember the last day of school and the sense of freedom I felt when Dad came for me. He promised that I would never have to go back, as a school was being built at home.22
She quickly discovered that the public school was not a very welcoming place for Métis students. Campbell’s classroom was divided by race, with Euro-Canadians on one side and Métis on the other. Campbell recalled that “we had a lot of fights with the white kids, but finally, after beating them soundly, we were left alone.”23 Mealtimes underscored the differences between the two groups of students.
They had white or brown bread, boiled eggs, apples, cakes, cookies, and jars of milk. We were lucky to have these even at Christmas. We took bannock for lunch, spread with lard and filled with wild meat, and if there was no meat we had cold potatoes and salt and pepper, or else whole roasted gophers with sage dressing. No apples or fruit, but if we were lucky there was a jam sandwich for dessert.24
One of the teachers alternated between bursts of cruelty, often ridiculing Métis children for their errors, followed by guilty gestures of kindness.25
At one point, Campbell, overcome by shame about her ancestry, went home and called her parents “no-good Halfbreeds.” Her great-grandmother walked her away from the house. Then, after talking with her about her attitude, she beat Campbell and told her, “I will beat you each time I hear you talk as you did. If you don’t like what you have, then stop fighting your parents and do something about it yourself.” Then she walked her back home.26 ((From Canada’s Residential Schools: The Métis Experience. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 3, pp. 8-9))
Maria Campell, an alumnus of the Faculty of Education, University of Regina (1985) is an Author, playwright, filmmaker, English professor. She is known for her memoir Halfbreed. You can read more about her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Campbell