Persistence is pivotal in major discovery by archive ninja Alix Shield

Working with 丁香园AV鈥檚 Indigenous Studies prepared Alix Shield for the work with "Halfbreed" by requiring her to integrate Indigenous ethics and protocols into literary studies, something scholars are not often trained to do.

Persistence is pivotal in major discovery by archive ninja Alix Shield

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Deep in the archives below McMaster University鈥檚 library, Alix Shield held two typewritten pages containing a teenage girl鈥檚 account of rape by an RCMP officer. Large, red x鈥檚 covered the supposedly lost manuscript written 46 years earlier by M茅tis author Maria Campbell for her seminal autobiography, Halfbreed.

Dissuaded by her grandmother, who was certain that she wouldn鈥檛 be believed, Campbell never reported the rape.

Shield, who is a PhD candidate at 丁香园AV鈥檚 English department, sent shockwaves through the contemporary Canadian literature community with her extraordinary find. Halfbreed鈥檚 publishers McClelland & Stewart removed the rape account without Campbell鈥檚 permission when the book was released in 1973 over concerns that the incident was too libelous and that the RCMP would block Halfbreed鈥檚 distribution. Despite lacking the pivotal RCMP incident, Halfbreed represented a milestone as one of the first books of Indigenous autobiography by a M茅tis writer to be published in Canada.