Letter to Joey Smallwood

BY Shannon Webb-Campbell

May 2017

Dear Joey: I’m still here and mixed

Mi’kmaq after all these years

You’re long dead, yet

Confederation couldn’t stop

Newfoundland’s ongoing

colonial violence.

You continued so unapologetically,

telling Ottawa there are no red Indians–

Nancy April, we killed them all.

And you know, Joey

after all your declarations

bowing to the settlers

We’re still here, we remain

Mi’kmaq despite stolen status

cards stating otherwise

Some of us landless,

all of us Caribou.

 

We’re still here

after Qalipu and

you’re-not-Indian-enough-

too-white-to-be-real.

You can read Shannon Webb-Campbell’s essay about home in Newfoundland and Labrador and her essay about Mi’kmaq status rules.

 

The Healers

BY Shannon Webb-Campbell

While I was home in Newfoundland this past summer, I was given a copy of a series of graphic novels by David Alexander Robinson dubbed Tales from Shadow River, illustrated stories about Indigenous people (Highwater Press). The Healer: Mary Webb, retells the life of my paternal great-great-grandmother, Mary Webb, a Mi’kmaq healer and midwife to 700 babies around Bay St Georges on NL’s west coast.