When serendipity strikes

(dunno why, but in my head, Julie Andrews was singing the title to this blog post…)

So. I am a believer in serendipity. I am not always serene with serendipity, but I do believe that things happen when they supposed to. Though sometimes, the things we need most drop into our laps at the oddest times.

I’ve had such a happening. Yesterday, I went down at our local Métis office as I’m starting to research a new project and I’m having a hard time finding the right research material. So, I thought they might be able to help me out. I got to talking with the woman at the office about some stuff that’s going on right now, and she said to me: You haven’t read HALF-BREED, have you?

HALF-BREED is a book by Maria Campbell, a renowned Canadian scholar of Métis history and culture. I’ve known about HALF-BREED for years, as it’s one of the most widely taught books in Canadian literature, but for some reason, I hadn’t read it. Time to fix that. I sat down with it last night, and drank it in, laughing sometimes, and crying sometimes, and sometimes, both. Every reason I had for writing SHADOWS CAST BY STARS is in this book. Much of my own story is in this book. Much of Cass’s is, too.

After I finished reading HALF-BREED, I spent a bit of time reading about it. Here’s one of the things I came across, published by the First Nations Drum newspaper:

Campbell says that throughout this suffering she was sustained in spirit by her Cree great-grandmother Cheechum who gave her confidence in herself and in her people, confidence she needed to survive and to thrive. As a child she dealt with discrimination from both whites and full-blooded Indian neighbors because of her Metís, or “half-breed” heritage. Halfbreed recounts the first thirty-three years of her life and depicts the discrimination and racism she and her people endured. In the introduction to that book, Campbell says, “I write this for all of you, to tell you what it is like to be a Halfbreed woman in this country. I want to tell you about the joys and sorrows, the oppressing poverty, the frustrations and the dreams.”

And, from the very last page of HALF-BREED:

For these past couple of years, I’ve stopped being the idealistically shiny-eyed young woman I once was. I realize that an armed revolution of Native people will never come about; even if such a thing were possible what would we achieve? We would only end up oppressing someone else. I believe that one day, very soon, people will set aside their differences and come together as one. Maybe not because we love one another, but because we will need each other to survive. Change will come because this time we won’t give up. There is growing evidence of that today.”

I’ve been meaning to write about being Métis for a while now, and will, one of these days, when I feel I’ve got the right words to express what I really want to say (that old adage of two ears/one mouth has really struck home lately). Until then, if you’re interested about Métis culture, history, and what it means to be Métis (and what it means to be human!) in all its facets, then this book, in my opinion, is a very good place to start.

My heart feels very open this morning, even thought it’s raining there. This is what I know. Sometimes, this is all I know.

I wanted to include a photo with this post, and when I went looking through the ones I have, this is the one that seemed right, so here it is.

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