In March of last year I posted a few words about Maria Campbell's autobiography Halfbreed, one of the many books that inspired me when I was writing Seeking the Center.
Just a couple of weeks ago I read that a researcher has found two pages of Campbell's manuscript that were omitted when it was published in 1973. The pages describe Campbell's rape by a Canadian Mountie when she was fourteen years old (which would have been nearly twenty years earlier). It seems that her publisher decided not to include the passage for fear that the R.C.M.P. (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, aka "Mounties") would try to halt its publication.
At the time Jack McClelland, her publisher, reasoned that, if the incident were included in her story, the Mounties would challenge it, and the onus would be on Campbell to prove it. McClelland knew that the word of an Indigenous woman would mean nothing against the word of an R.C.M.P. officer. Campbell herself had wanted the passage included regardless, and didn't know that the publisher had nixed it until she received the printed copy in the mail.
Perhaps it is fitting that the pages, and the associated story, should come to light in the #MeToo era. For more information, you can read the CBC story here. Please note that it includes the missing pages that describe the rape.