Tenille Campbell is many things: Artist. Public speaker. Mother. Academic. Daughter. Poet. Writer. Sister. Photographer. Friend.

Through it all, she is a storyteller.

“Storytelling is truth-telling for me, foundational for all that I do,” said Campbell. “In my photography, academic work, blogging, mothering . . . it’s very important to me that my work reflects the complexity of Indigenous identity because there needs to be a space for people, like my daughter, to recognize themselves in it.”

Campbell is a Dene Métis author, photographer and scholar from English River First Nation in northern Saskatchewan. She runs sweetmoon photography and is co-creator of tea&bannock, a collective blog by Indigenous photographers and a celebration of Indigenous womanhood.

Campbell describes her success with sweetmoon as unexpected.

“I was always meant to be a writer, but never thought about photography because no one I knew was a photographer or had nice cameras,” she said. “It was the most unexpected twist of my life, but now that I see it a decade after I picked up my camera for the first time, I realize it’s just storytelling, too: personal stories about birth and marriage, sacred stories like children’s first walks in this world.”

The experience has grounded her as a person and as an artist, and put Campbell in a position of trust in her community, which she deeply respects and values.

A PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), Campbell also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of British Columbia, where she studied with Richard Van Camp, and a Bachelor of Arts (honours) degree in English, with a minor in Indigenous studies, from USask. Her doctoral research focuses on Indigenous women’s erotica in Canadian literature and includes authors such as Katherena Vermette, Leeanne Simpson, Maria Campbell, Marie Annharte Baker and more.

“What I’m trying to showcase is that Indigenous women’s erotica is a form of rematriation,” Campbell said. “(It’s) about taking back the stories about our bodies, our pleasure, our joy – reclaiming that space, reclaiming those stories . . . That discourse was interrupted by colonialism. Writing about sex is an act of resistance and, even more so, it is about love, for ourselves.”

Campbell recalls some of the the experiences she has had in relation to her own book, #IndianLovePoems, an award-winning collection of poetry that focuses on Indigenous erotica.

“Some of the pushback I’ve gotten has been related to the expectations of others,” she said. “This is a book about Indigenous relationships, sexuality and even politics. I am a brown plus-size woman sharing the nuance of loving brown in a white world, with love and laughter. This is a new thing for many audiences.”

Hailed by jurors as “a ground-breaking and important resurgence of Indigenous female voice,” #IndianLovePoems won the Indigenous Peoples’ Writing Award and the First Book Award at the 2018 Saskatchewan Book Awards. The collection has also been shortlisted for numerous other awards and received acclaim across the country.

“You know, I wasn’t surprised by the Indigenous acceptance of this book because, first and foremost, it’s gossip and tea and stories that are going to make you laugh and connect,” Campbell said. “It’s something you’re not supposed to talk about, so of course we’re going to talk about it.”

Campbell was, however, surprised at the response from outside of her community. “I think I just assumed it would be ignored, but the Canadian literature world really saw it and recognized its value – not only for the love and laughter, but also for the politics and criticism of social structures contained within it.”

Campbell feels grateful for the stories she has been able to share, but she is also looking forward to sharing more of her own stories. Her Instagram @sweetmoonphoto boasts nearly 14,000 followers and is a true hub of storytelling and community, with daily posts sharing the artist’s prose and photography. There, and through her blogs and Facebook page, Campbell continually builds community through storytelling, and encourages others to do the same.

“Everyone carries stories,” she said. “They just might not recognize them as such.”

-Jacqueline Woods