Maria Campbell OC SOM (born April 26, 1940 near Park Valley, Saskatchewan) is a Métis author, playwright, broadcaster, filmmaker, and Elder.
[2] At the age of fifteen, Campbell married a man named Darrel, with the hope that it would allow her to remain with her siblings and be able to provide for them.
[1] According to Campbell, survival sex work was her most viable option at this point in her life, a difficulty also forced upon many other Indigenous women.
Being heavily involved in political activism provided Campbell with a connection to her community, which she felt that she had been previously disconnected with.
[2] Campbell has struggled with a variety of experiences faced by many other Métis women today, including drug and alcohol addictions, resorting to sex work, depression and attempted suicide.
[2] Campbell's first book was the memoir Halfbreed (1973), which deals with her experience as a Métis woman in Canada, and the sense of identity that is generated by being neither wholly Indigenous nor Anglo.
It discusses her later life and the challenges she faced associated with being a single mother, as well as her role in the Indigenous rights movement which occurred in Calgary.
[4] In Campbell's Halfbreed, the first chapters focus on the early stages of her life, where her sense of identity was created from her community near Spring River, Saskatchewan.
[4] the text highlights the issues of systemic racism and colonial violence, as well as the effects that sex work has on the women involved in it.
[3] Halfbreed continues to be taught in schools across Canada, and inspires generations of Indigenous women and men.
[4] In May 2018, researchers from Simon Fraser University (BC, Canada) published an article detailing the discovery of two missing pages from the original Halfbreed manuscript.
[7][8] A new, fully restored edition of Halfbreed was published by McClelland and Stewart in November 2019 with the two missing pages included.
[11] Her short-story, "Blankets of Shame" is included in the anthology of Native American Women's writing and art, #NotYourPrincess (Annick Press, 2017).
[3] Weaving modern dance, storytelling and drama together with traditional Aboriginal art practises, this early work set a stylistic tone that her most recent productions continue to explore.
It won the Dora Mavor Moore Award at Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille in 1986 (where it debuted) and the Best Canadian Production at the Quinzanne International Festival in Quebec City.
She has worked as a researcher, meeting with elders to gather and record oral historical evidence of many aspects of aboriginal traditional knowledge, including medical and dietary as well as spiritual, social, and general cultural practices.
[1] Due to her moving to the city of Vancouver, and the issues she faced there, Campbell felt as though she became disconnected from her community in Saskatchewan.