Rinku Bhagat
Times Change; but people don’t, history is made today by the same events as it was years earlier, and we as speculators come, Witness and leave;
Only a few who suffer the pinch; rest down to per over what should have been but wasn’t.
Talking of one such Indo-Canadian writer and an aboriginal herself, is Maria Campbell. Born in Northern Saskatchewan is a mixed racial family of Scottish , French, English, & Irish descent. Facing a youth full of hardship and discrimination from white and their full blooded, Indian Kins, the aborigines kept on moving continuously in search of – their “ home-Land” thereby belonging to “ No Land..” Thus, begins the search for their home- land “ and the suffered like Maria Campbell, Lee Manacle, Jeanette Armstrong etc and many more structure, the entire period as a continue un-ending struggle of ones “self” the “I” or “Identity”.
Maria’s rebellious feeling find and outlet through her words and writing against the system. Her entire journey in the heartening Auto-biographical novel Halfbreed pens down the plight, the sorrow and miseries of all the marginalized through her. As she quotes “ I write this for all of you, to tell you about the joy and sorrow, the oppressing poverty, the frustration and the dreams ….. 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” The text offers an aspect of natives people lives in Northern Saskatchewan through a half-breed’s Doman experiences.
Discussing the meaning of Metis, they are Canadian people of mixed blood, Indian and white. Three centuries ago their mothers being Indian; father were explorers and fur traders who came from Britain and France. The Plains Indian considered them as white brothers and thus ended up settling with them. The race or clan that emerged after such an inter-mingling came to be called as the Metis People” or the aboriginals such people happen to have a hyphenated existence i.e cut or divided between two groups of culture and communities, but discriminated as an impure race so as to maintain their identity” for their prosperity they have back on the “ Indigenous Knowledge” or the “ une petite Michin”
As Maria Quotes “My people have walked behind other cultures picking up things their parents discarded for generations: moral to the white of Canada’; Metis mean a light colored Indians; In Canadian history, half-bred referred specially to the group of people who are part India and part white. These half-bred people did not have a choice regarding whether they would be Indians or whites or in-betweens; society defined them as member of a native society and it still does today. Today white half-bred becomes a vulgar expression for mixed blood which seems to be a more polite term……..However, Half-bred to me was a powerful word (2002 imp) traditions, sacred things, songs, prayers, everything…… way of tying a scarf, a jig step. When you look at what we have as mixed-blood people you see all these things woven into something that become a new nation. ( Maria Compbell, the Book of Jessica)
Maria Campbell’s other works are achimona, people of the buffalo: how the plains Indians Lived, the Book of Jessica (A theatrical Transformation), Riel’s People and “ the little Badger and the fire spirit”.
All her works speak about the repressive view of the subjugated communities. Her work tell us about Metis folk lore, eccentric characters, legends, fairy tales, the supernatural and superstitions, magic & music, fantasy and realism, adventure and allegory.
Since the Metis are commonly dismissed as in-authentic half-breeds’ neither settlers nor aboriginal . Maria Compbell universalizes or evokes the literary genre as the location for authentic psychological reclamation. She salvages and re- inscribes the derogatory and racist appellation “half-bred” as a position of pride and site of resistance against European colonial epistemological. So far Maria and many more of her kind learning the old ways and stories associated with them is an observable act of decolonization.
Culturally, Maria is marginalized in her epic “ Half-bred” where she escapes into the rich words through addiction , drugs, prostitution and infidelity . however, only to loose all the little that she possessed. Her sufferings day by day make her weak. But strong at the same time like the Do-Do bind toresurge from her own ashes and take a rebirth she turns out to be an inspiration for many of her kind and finds a new way to struggle for the causes of her kind.
She becomes a social activist, a feminist, a reformer, a playwright a novelist, an educationalist all rolled into one. She voices the demands and requirements of her people thereby giving them confidence and aspirations today for a bright and better tomorrow.
As she writes “It is time for our people to live again” In Half bred Compbell finally talks back to the white man, on behalf of herself and other metis people, enabling them all to walk with heads held up.
(The author is Junior Research Scholar Jammu University)
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