ENG 222 & 322: Canadian Literature: A Guide to Indigenous Canadian Literature

Readable poems about the Mohawk Indians. Includes a biographical sketch.

E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) was a Native advocate of part-Mohawk ancestry, an independent woman during the period of first-wave feminism, a Canadian nationalist who also advocated strengthening the link to imperial England, a popular and versatile prose writer, and one of modern Canada's best-selling poets. Johnson longed to see the publication of a complete collection of her verse, but that wish remained unfulfilled during her life. Nine decades after her death, the first complete collection of all of Pauline Johnson's known poems, many painstakingly culled from newspapers, magazines, and archives, is now available.

E. Pauline Johnson, also known as Tekahionwake, is remarkable as one of a very few early North American Indigenous poets and fiction writers. Most Indigenous writers of her time were men educated for the ministry who published religious, anthropological, autobiographical, political, and historical works, rather than poetry and fiction. More extraordinary still, she became both a canonical poet and a literary celebrity, performing on stage for fifteen years. Johnson is now seen as a central figure in the intellectual history of Canada and the United States, and as an important historical example of Indigenous feminism.

In Seeing Red, Cari M. Carpenter examines anger in the poetry and prose of three early American Indian writers: S. Alice Callahan, Pauline Johnson, and Sarah Winnemucca. In articulating a legitimate anger in the late nineteenth century, the first published indigenous women writers were met not only with stereotypes of "savage" rage but with social proscriptions against female anger. While the loss of land, life, and cultural traditions is central to the Native American literature of the period, this dispossession is only one side of the story. Its counterpart, indigenous claims to that which is threatened, is just as essential to these narratives.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press A fascinating study of 12 mixed-blood women who overcame prejudice and stereotypes to find their own true paths.

E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was not only an accomplished thinker and writer but a contentious and passionate personality who 'talked back' to Euro-Canadian culture. "Paddling Her Own Canoe" is the only major scholarly study that examines Johnson's diverse roles as a First Nations champion, New Woman, serious writer and performer, and Canadian nationalist. A Native advocate of part-Mohawk ancestry, Johnson was also an independent, self-supporting, unmarried woman during the period of first-wave feminism. Her versatile writings range from extraordinarily erotic poetry to polemical statements about the rights of First Nations.

Contents Include: Marie-Anne Lagimodière : The Indians Called Her Ningah -- Jane Carruthers Trimble : A Thousand Miles by Covered Wagon -- Henrietta Muir Edwards -- The Lady and the Law -- Kate Simpson Hayes : Alias Mary Markwell -- Elizabeth Boyd McDougall : First in the Southwest -- Mary Drever Macleod : Brought a Kindly Dignity -- Jessie Turnbull McEwen : The Lady of Tullichewen -- Pauline Johnson : Princess -- Lucy Margaret Baker : With the Brave Heart of a Bullfighter

Her mother was English, her father a Mohawk chief. Billed as "The Mohawk Princess," Pauline Johnson took to the stage and recited her poetry in towns across Canada and the U.S.A. during the 1890s. On her two trips to England, she was the toast of London.