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Another Native woman
writer-- pre-20th century--

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included in this anthology,
that I find myself connected to,

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is Emily Pauline Johnson.

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Johnson was born and
raised on the Grande River

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Reservation of the Six Nations,
near Brantford, Ontario,

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in 1861.

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She was the daughter of George
Henry Martin Johnson, a Mohawk

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chief who worked to mediate
between the Mohawks and whites

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and advocated to prevent
the illegal trade of alcohol

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in the reservation.

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Pauline's British mother,
Emily Susanna Howells,

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educated her in the
English Romantics, which

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served to influence her poetry.

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Pauline wrote in
multiple genres,

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including adult fiction
and children's stories.

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She also made a living
as a stage performer.

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While her stage performance
afforded her living,

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her writings earned her respect
as a mediator between Iroquois

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and white worlds.

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Many 20th century
critics, however,

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have commented on the Victorian
Romanticism of her work,

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using this claim
to denounce both

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her talent and her authenticity
as an "Indian Writer."

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This criticism was leveraged
against almost all published

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American Indian authors of the
19th and early 20th centuries

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and reflects not only a
racism, as it enforces

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a version of
authenticity developed

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by the non-native
world out of-- one

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could argue-- a pastoral
desire for an idealized other.

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Pauline was educated
under the tutelage

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of her British-born
mother, just as Jane

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was raised amidst
her white father's

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library of English literature.

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Yet, both were also
raised and educated

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by their traditional
tribal communities

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and maintained both
worlds in their work.

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We can find in Johnson's
poetry a great deal

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of influence from
Romantic versification,

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while at the same
time, a persistence

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of themes related to
her Indigenous identity

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and history.

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We can also find an
interesting twist

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on the pastoral tradition that
appears throughout her poetry.

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She too, is a writer
of the borderland,

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a mediator of the in-between.

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Her elegies for the loss
of Iroquois and Mohawk

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culture simultaneously
affirm the cultures'

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powerful continuation.

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Her poem "Marshlands"
is one of my favorites,

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for its contemplative tone.

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It is also, like Jane's poem,
attuned to the natural world

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as a place of solace, where
one is in the in-between,

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and in that in-between, one
can find themselves belonging.

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This poem, to me, speaks about
belonging-- the grounding

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that poetry and the natural
world can return us to.

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So this poem by Emily Pauline
Johnson is called "Marshlands."

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"A thin wet sky, that
yellows at the rim,

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and meets with sun-lost
lip the marsh's brim.

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The pools low lying,
dank with moss and mould,

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glint through their mildews,
like large cups of gold.

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Among the wild rice
and the still lagoon,

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in monotone the lizard
shrills his tune.

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The wild goose, homing, seeks a
sheltering, where rushes grow,

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and oozing lichens cling.

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Late cranes with heavy
wing, and lazy flight,

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sail up the silence
with the nearing night.

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And like a spirit,
swathed in some soft veil,

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steals twilight and its
shadows o'er the swale.

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Hushed lie the sedges,
and the vapors creep,

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thick, gray and humid,
while the marshes sleep."

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I love that part of the poem
about "The wild goose, homing,

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seeks a sheltering" and how
sheltered the poet feels

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in the writing of the poem
and the sleeping marshes.

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