Another Native woman writer-- pre-20th century--
included in this anthology, that I find myself connected to,
is Emily Pauline Johnson.
Johnson was born and raised on the Grande River
Reservation of the Six Nations, near Brantford, Ontario,
in 1861.
She was the daughter of George Henry Martin Johnson, a Mohawk
chief who worked to mediate between the Mohawks and whites
and advocated to prevent the illegal trade of alcohol
in the reservation.
Pauline's British mother, Emily Susanna Howells,
educated her in the English Romantics, which
served to influence her poetry.
Pauline wrote in multiple genres,
including adult fiction and children's stories.
She also made a living as a stage performer.
While her stage performance afforded her living,
her writings earned her respect as a mediator between Iroquois
and white worlds.
Many 20th century critics, however,
have commented on the Victorian Romanticism of her work,
using this claim to denounce both
her talent and her authenticity as an "Indian Writer."
This criticism was leveraged against almost all published
American Indian authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries
and reflects not only a racism, as it enforces
a version of authenticity developed
by the non-native world out of-- one
could argue-- a pastoral desire for an idealized other.
Pauline was educated under the tutelage
of her British-born mother, just as Jane
was raised amidst her white father's
library of English literature.
Yet, both were also raised and educated
by their traditional tribal communities
and maintained both worlds in their work.
We can find in Johnson's poetry a great deal
of influence from Romantic versification,
while at the same time, a persistence
of themes related to her Indigenous identity
and history.
We can also find an interesting twist
on the pastoral tradition that appears throughout her poetry.
She too, is a writer of the borderland,
a mediator of the in-between.
Her elegies for the loss of Iroquois and Mohawk
culture simultaneously affirm the cultures'
powerful continuation.
Her poem "Marshlands" is one of my favorites,
for its contemplative tone.
It is also, like Jane's poem, attuned to the natural world
as a place of solace, where one is in the in-between,
and in that in-between, one can find themselves belonging.
This poem, to me, speaks about belonging-- the grounding
that poetry and the natural world can return us to.
So this poem by Emily Pauline Johnson is called "Marshlands."
"A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,
and meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim.
The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,
glint through their mildews, like large cups of gold.
Among the wild rice and the still lagoon,
in monotone the lizard shrills his tune.
The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering, where rushes grow,
and oozing lichens cling.
Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,
sail up the silence with the nearing night.
And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,
steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.
Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapors creep,
thick, gray and humid, while the marshes sleep."
I love that part of the poem about "The wild goose, homing,
seeks a sheltering" and how sheltered the poet feels
in the writing of the poem and the sleeping marshes.