such an important development in the work of the Maestra Maria Campbell and her pivotal work, “Halfbreed”. Here we have a blatant example (a big RED X) of the editorial/publisher’s erasure of one woman’s voice on one hand, and of a peoples’ on the other.
The first erases Madame Campbell’s traumatic rape at the hand of an RCMP officer – the legacy of which, a crime perpetrated on such a young girl is unforgivable and one can only guess that justice at this late date is impossible (or is it?). The second is more subtle, it tells of WHY the RCMP were at the house – because Madame Campbell’s father was deemed a ‘poacher’. For over a century and a half the Métis peoples were denied their traditional hunting rights and were deemed to be hunting illegally, thus erasing an integral cultural and economic practice.
How timely is this finding of the truly bad editorial practice of the ‘bad old days’ at work in Madame Campbell’s opus, that it is rediscovered in our Truth and Reconciliation era?
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4687507/maria-campbell-s-account-of-being-raped-by-a-mountie-was-scrubbed-from-her-memoir-halfbreed-1.4687512