Cheechum was a Cree woman who married a Campbell from Edinborough, who came out to Canada to run a Hudson Bay Company store. He was terribly jealous of her, and flogged her because he believed he was not the father of her son. Cheechum left and became very self-sufficient, living on her own with her son. She was a niece of Gabriel Dumont, a general in the failed Métis rebellion of 1885, and never stopped hoping the Métis would rise up and demand respect and land for themselves.
Cheechum was a small, neat woman who taught Maria Cree ways with herbs and roots, basket making, dancing and the stories of her people. Though most Métis were Catholic, Cheechum refused to have anything to do with religion. She saw beauty in everything, felt time spent praying was wasted and found God in the world. She lived with Maria’s family, helping raise the kids though she was already in her 80’s.
Maria’s father taught her to set trap lines, ride spirited horses and do men’s work, while her convent-educated mother read to her Shakespeare, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. They lived in a two-room cabin which Maria thought beautiful. Her father had built it on crown-owned road allowance property. In the summers they joined other Métis families, camping and collecting roots and berries which they sold in town. There was drinking and dancing and fighting. While Indians were passive and quiet, Métis people were raucous and fun. Even so, Maria hated to see them hang their heads around white people.
Maria went to school in mended clothes with her brothers and sisters. Their lunch pails held gophers, and bannock smeared with lard. Maria longed for her brothers and sisters to have toothbrushes, apples and oranges in their lunches, and cookies and milk in the afternoon. But her father began drinking after a failed political campaign, and her mother died giving birth to her last child when Maria was 12. Cheechum continued to help. At 96, however, she left, too old to cope with the small ones.
Maria was determined to keep her brothers and sisters together, even taking the littlest ones to school and hiding them in the bushes when no one was at home to watch them. Their father would be out on his trap lines, but he wanted the kids in school, so he hired housekeepers. The family refused to accept charity and were ashamed when people tried to help them. Maria quit school and worked as a housekeeper to bring in money.
At 15, Maria began to go to dances and out with men. When she became afraid the social workers would take the children away, she married Darrel, a man she didn’t love. Briefly they all lived together and Maria had her first baby. But Darrel called the agency and Maria’s brothers and sisters were sent to foster homes. Darrel took Maria to Vancouver, but they lived in very poor circumstances and Darrel soon left. Destitute, Maria turned to sex work, sending her baby to a convent to be cared for.
Maria used drugs to numb herself and forget. She sank into worse situations. One of the men she worked for got her a job cooking on a ranch in Calgary when he went to jail. She was only 20, but proved herself. Though she wanted to stay out of trouble, she gambled and drank with the men. She tried going to hairdressing school, but the wages were insufficient, and by this time she had another baby. Some people helped her. She was lonely for her family and felt she couldn’t go back a failure.
Working as a waitress, Maria felt she had met her life partner in David. They had a baby together too, but Maria didn’t tell David about her former life. She grew so worried he would find out, she was suicidal. After a nervous breakdown, she landed in a psychiatric hospital.
A condition of getting out of the hospital was going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Maria had spurned these meetings, but once there, she realized for the first time that she could break the cycle of drink and depression. At 24, she began turning her life around with the help of her sponsors, who insisted she face reality. Also, at AA, Maria met the people would become part of the native movement in Alberta, both Indians and Métis.
Visiting her father, brothers and sisters in Saskatchewan, Maria felt conditions had deteriorated since she was a child. She also visited Cheechum, who was 104 and living quietly in her usual neat way. She was able to tell Cheechum everything. “You always had to do things the hard way,” Cheechum tells her. Maria had started a half-way house for young women in Alberta, where she offered a home and friendship, trusting the young women would then solve their own problems. Cheechum approved. “Each of us has to find herself in her own way.” Soon after this, Cheechum died.
David joined Maria and they had another child. Maria did street work and also interviewed people working in the sugar beet fields for a research project. Working with the Alberta Native Communications Society gave her new feelings of pride and hope. Written when she was 32, Halfbreed ends with her belief that people could set aside their differences and fight common enemies. The book propelled Maria into a life of activism and is taught in Canadian schools.
The native movements of the 1960’s were exciting, states Maria Campbell in an afterword, people inspiring each other. The elders demanded people reclaim their cultural history and become educated. Campbell has since been active in writing, teaching, theater and filmmaking. A video from 2020 shows the breadth of her activities and her warmth..
Told in an intimate first person, and read by the author as an audiobook, I found Maria Campbell’s book Halfbreed compelling in its honesty, particularly in telling us how low a proud young girl can sink and then pick herself up again. It is also revealing of the intensity with which our history is bound up with that of our family and people, whether we choose to recognize this or not. Throughout her book, Campbell writes of how Cheechum’s early teaching reverberated in her mind, helping her to find her own way.
