A valuable and unflinching recounting of a Métis life. Effective in its communication of just how hard it is to be “alright” in poverty, let alone also navigating outright racism. Canada similarly shares the delusion of success by picking yourself up by your bootstraps, completely ignoring systemic issues. To say Campbell pushed through adverse circumstances would be a gross minimization of the obstacles.

Even more infuriating is that things haven’t changed all that much. Especially when she talks about Lethbridge, a town that benefits from indigenous money, yet condemns the population. Absolutely still the case. The country and certainly Alberta has not done better, nor even educated people on these matters such that people understand any of the issues central to indigenous people, but probably even more so with the Métis.

The only reason this wasn’t five stars from me was because the authors delivery of her book was actually not great on audio, and only accented the repetitive sentence construction and robbed the recounting of emotion, ironically; a sadly very common thing that occurs when authors narrate their own work. On the one hand, I am obviously glad they’ve been paid (they better have been) to perform the narration. On the other, oratory is a skill most people do not have.