page_title: E. Pauline Johnson
section_title: Canadian government
hierarchical_section_title: E. Pauline Johnson / Legacy / Canadian government
caption_attribution_description: English: E. Pauline Johnson, 5 Cent Canadian Commemerative Stamp, Release Date 1961-03-10
context_page_description: Emily Pauline Johnson, also known by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake, 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 of mixed ancestry and her mother was an English immigrant.
  Johnson's poetry was published in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Johnson was one of a generation of widely read writers who began to define Canadian literature. While her literary reputation declined after her death, in the late 20th century there has been a renewed interest in her life and works. In 2002, E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: Collected Poems and Selected Prose, a complete collection of her known poetry was published.
  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, Canadian Born, Flint and Feather and her collections of stories Legends of Vancouver, The Shagganappi and The Moccasin Maker.
context_section_description: In the 19th and early 20th centuries government policies towards Indigenous Canadians were increasingly cruel. Across the continent, Indigenous children were forcibly removed to residential schools; on the Prairies, communities like the Dogrib, Cree and Blackfoot were confined to artificial reserves; settler attitudes towards the Dominion's original inhabitants curdled and hardened. Johnson's hybridity resulted in her critiques of some Canadian policies resulting in legalized and justified mistreatment of Indigenous people. For example, the final verse of her poem "A Cry From an Indian Wife" which reads:
  Go forth, nor bend to greed of white men's hands,
  
  By right, by birth we Indians own these lands,
  
  Though starved, crushed, plundered, lies our nation low ...
  
  Perhaps the white man's God has willed it so.
  Furthermore, because of the Indian Act and faulty scientific blood quantum racial determinism, Johnson was often belittled with the term "halfbreed".
caption: E. Pauline Johnson 1961 stamp
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