Emily Pauline Johnson (10 March 1861 – 7 March 1913), also known by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake (pronounced dageh-eeon-wageh, ), was a Canadian poet, author, and performer who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her father was a hereditary Mohawk chief, and her mother was an English immigrant.

Johnson's poetry was published in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. She was among a generation of widely-read writers who began to define Canadian literature. She was a key figure in the construction of the field as an institution and has made an indelible mark on Indigenous women's literature and theater.

Johnson was notable for her poems, short stories, and performances that celebrated her mixed-race heritage, drawing from both Indigenous and English influences. She is most known for her books of poetry The White Wampum (1895), Canadian Born (1903), and Flint and Feather (1912); and her collections of stories Legends of Vancouver (1911), The Shagganappi (1913), and The Moccasin Maker (1913). While her literary reputation declined after her death, since the late 20th century there has been a renewed interest in her life and works. In 2002, a complete collection of her known poetry was published, entitled E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: Collected Poems and Selected Prose.

Personal life

Early life

Emily Pauline Johnson was born on 10 March 1861 at Chiefswood, her family home on the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ontario. She was the youngest of four children of Emily Susanna Howells Johnson, an English immigrant, and George Henry Martin Johnson, a Mohawk hereditary clan chief.

Her father worked as an interpreter, acting as a link between Mohawk communities, British officials, and representatives of the Canadian government. Because of this, the Johnson family held a prominent social position. Their home at Chiefswood received notable visitors, including the Governor General of Canada and inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Johnson grew up in a household shaped by both Mohawk and Victorian English traditions. Her mother emphasized discipline, manners, and social presentation, while her father encouraged his children to understand and navigate both their Mohawk and English heritage.

Early education

thumb|A young E. Pauline Johnson|alt=Sepia-toned studio portrait of a young girl identified as E. Pauline Johnson, standing beside a chair and wearing a dark dress with puffed sleeves and a cross necklace, her hair parted and pulled back as she faces the camera with a serious expression.

A sickly child, Johnson did not attend Brantford's Mohawk Institute, a residential school established in 1834. Her education was mostly at home and informal, derived from her mother, a series of non-Native governesses, a few years at the small school on the reserve, and self-guided reading in her family's expansive library. She read deeply in the works of Byron, Tennyson, Keats, Browning and Milton, and enjoyed reading tales about Indigenous people such as Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha and John Richardson's Wacousta. These informed her own literary and theatrical work.

Her paternal grandfather John Smoke Johnson was a respected authority figure for Johnson and her siblings. He educated them by traditional Indigenous oral storytelling before his death in 1886. Johnson taught his life lessons and stories in Mohawk; the children understood it but were not fluent in speaking it. Smoke Johnson's dramatic talents as a storyteller were absorbed by Pauline, who became known for her talent for elocution and her stage performances. Later in her life, Johnson expressed regret for not learning more of her grandfather's Mohawk heritage and language.

At the age of 14, Johnson went to Brantford Central Collegiate with her brother Allen. She graduated in 1877.

Romantic life

thumb|E. Pauline Johnson and friends|alt=Black-and-white photograph of a group gathered at the base of a massive hollow tree in a forest. Three women and two young children stand in front of the trunk, with Pauline Johnson on the far right wearing a long skirt and wide-brimmed hat; a man sits on a large root above them.

Johnson attracted many potential suitors, and her sister recalled more than half a dozen marriage proposals from Euro-Canadians in her lifetime. Though the number of official romantic interests remains unknown, two later romances were identified as Charles R. L. Drayton in 1890 and Charles Wuerz in 1900. But, Johnson never married nor remained in relationships for very long. She was said to have flirted with boys in Grand River. Later she wrote what was described as "intensely erotic poetry." Due to her career, she was unwilling to set aside her racial heritage and adapt to placate partners or in-laws.

The Young Men's Liberal Association invited Johnson to a Canadian authors evening in 1892 at the Toronto Art School Gallery. The only woman at the event, she read to an overflow crowd, along with poets including William Douw Lighthall, William Wilfred Campbell, and Duncan Campbell Scott. "The poise and grace of this beautiful young woman standing before them captivated the audience even before she began to recite—not read, as the others had done"—her "Cry from an Indian Wife". She was the only author to be called back for an encore. "She had scored a personal triumph and saved the evening from turning into a disaster." The success of this performance began the poet's 15-year stage career.

Johnson was signed up by Frank Yeigh, who had organized the Liberal event. He gave her the headline for her first show on 19 February 1892, where she made her debut with a new poem written for the event, "The Song My Paddle Sings".

At 31 years old, Johnson was perceived as a young and exotic Native beauty. During this act she would recite dramatic "Indian" lyrics.

At intermission, she changed into fashionable English dress. In act two, she came out as a pro-North West Mounted Police (now known as the RCMP) Victorian English woman to recite her "English" verse. Upon her death she willed her "Indian" costume to the Museum of Vancouver.

There are many interpretations of Johnson's performances. The artist is quoted saying "I may act till the world grows wild and tense". Her shows were tremendously popular. She toured all across North America with her friend and fellow performer, and later business manager, Walter MacRaye. Her popularity was part of the immense interest by European Americans and Europeans in Indigenous peoples throughout the 19th century; the 1890s were also the period of popularity of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and ethnological aboriginal exhibits. She began to increase the pace of her writing and publishing afterwards.

In 1885, poet Charles G. D. Roberts published Johnson's "A Cry from an Indian Wife" in The Week, Goldwin Smith's Toronto magazine. She based it on events of the battle of Cut Knife Creek during the Riel Rebellion. Roberts and Johnson became lifelong friends. Johnson promoted her identity as a Mohawk, but as an adult spent little time with people of that culture. In another, Johnson told the history of Deadman's Island, a small islet off Stanley Park. In a poem in the collection, she named one of her favourite areas "Lost Lagoon", as the inlet seemed to disappear when the water emptied at low tide. The body of water has since been transformed into a permanent, fresh-water lake at Stanley Park, but it is still called Lost Lagoon.

Johnson drew on her mixed ethnic background and cultural heritages as a major theme in her work. The heroine of her short story "The De Lisle Affair" (1897), was disguised. Readers were discomforted due to the uncertainty of appearances, particularly amongst women. W. J. Keith wrote: "Pauline Johnson's life was more interesting than her writing ... with ambitions as a poet, she produced little or nothing of value in the eyes of critics who emphasize style rather than content."

Despite the acclaim she received from contemporaries, Johnson had a decline in reputation in the decades after her death.

As Atwood noted, since the late 20th century, Johnson's writings and performance career have been reevaluated by literary, feminist, and postcolonial critics. They have appreciated her importance as a New Woman and a figure of resistance to dominant ideas about race, gender, Native Rights, and Canada.

Legacy

Canadian literature

A 1997 survey by Hartmut Lutz of the state of Canadian Native Literature in the 1960s, pointed to the importance of this era as establishing the foundation for the new wave of Indigenous writing that surged in the 1980s and 1990s. Lutz identified "1967 as the beginning of contemporary writing by Native authors in Canada", marking the publication of George Clutesi's landmark work, Son of Raven, Son of Deer.

Broadcaster Rosanna Deerchild (Cree) remembers stumbling across "The Cattle Thief" in the public library: "I hand-copied that entire poem right then and there and carried it around with me, reading it over and over." Later she wrote a poem about Johnson entitled "she writes us alive." There are numerous other examples of contemporary Indigenous artists, women and men alike, who were inspired by Johnson, notably within Canadian literature.

Because of the Indian Act and faulty scientific blood quantum racial determinism, Johnson was often belittled by the term "halfbreed".

Awards and honours

thumb|Mathias Joe and Dominic Charlie at the Pauline Johnson Memorial

Monuments and memorial sites

  • After Pauline Johnson died in Vancouver, her ashes were buried in Stanley Park near Siwash Rock. A large public funeral procession accompanied the burial. She is one of the very few people whose remains were allowed to be buried in the park. (1913)
  • A monument to Johnson was later erected in Stanley Park near the place where she was buried. The memorial recognizes her strong connection to Vancouver during the last years of her life and remains one of the park's notable literary memorials. (1922)

Historic designations

  • The Government of Canada recognized Johnson's importance to Canadian history by designating her a Person of National Historic Significance. (1945)
  • Composer Jeff Enns created a choral setting of Johnson's poem At Sunset. The work was performed and recorded by the Canadian Chamber Choir under the direction of Julia Davids. (2010)
  • Canadian composer Timothy Corlis wrote Songs of the White Wampum, a musical work based on five of Johnson's poems. It was commissioned by the Electra Women's Choir through a Canada Council grant. (2015)