Johnson's complexity makes her a mystery today

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Happily, we seem to be in the midst of a time of renewed interest in the life, performance art and literary work of Canada's own Pauline Johnston. With three new books available, Paddling Her Own Canoe and E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake, Collected Poems and Selected Prose by Carole Gerson and Veronica Strong-Boag and Charlotte Gray's biography Flint and Feather, there is enough reading material to keep us busy for hours on end.

But why this sudden outpouring of new literary criticism, research and biography, and why, 90 years after her death, should the life and work of this 19th century daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English lady continue to hold us in thrall?

"It is the very complexity of Pauline Johnson that has a very modern appeal because there are so many Canadians today who are balancing two heritages. She was not just a Mohawk, a poet or a white woman-this complexity is very appealing in our post modernist Canada," said biographer Charlotte Gray.

"The new books by Gerson and Strong-Boag are written by two academics who really know the theoretical background on post-colonial literature and have a strong view of who Pauline Johnson represents within the framework of the British Empire at that period, sifted through a feminist filter, using a strongly analytical approach that doesn't start with the birth and end with the death," said Gray.

"I write for a popular audience who like my books because they read like novels. They are non-fiction, but you really do see the world through Pauline's eyes. Each generation reinvents their heroes and heroines and writing in 2002 is very different from the 1980s, 50s or 30s," said Gray.

Gray, the prize-winning author of national bestseller Sisters in the Wilderness, and former Ottawa editor of Saturday Night Magazine, left a career in political journalism and broadcasting to write what she calls, "creative non-fiction."

With a double-edged interest in the social history of Canada, filtered through the experience of women, Gray is in the business of making famous Canadian women more famous through an intimate re-telling of the stories of their lives.

"I always write life and times, putting readers in the context of that period. Not only did Pauline live in exciting times, but she traveled across it, took full advantage of this new-fangled invention, the trans-continental train, crossing Canada 17 times, breaking down barriers and creating new paths."

"She was a coast-to-coast celebrity in her own day, a marvelous performer who had audiences eating out of her hand; hard-rock silver miners from the Kootenays, the Governor General in Ottawa, Saskatchewan homesteaders, people went for miles to see her when she was in town. That kind of brilliance, that kind of performance art evaporates with the performer when the performer is gone and Pauline died just before she could be captured on film," said Gray.

Gray spent three years researching and writing Flint and Feather, immersing herself in Pauline Johnson's life, letters, poetry and prose, getting help from First Nations friends to navigate the treacherous rapids of thorny linguistic issues posed by 19th and 20th century English.

"As a writer, this means I can describe the barriers and landscape through which she is tracking her paths. I write in the genre of creative non-fiction taking the techniques of fiction writing, dialogue, character, narrative, line and set pieces to create a non-fiction story. I do not invent anything or make up things for her to say."

"I spent a lot of time on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario at Chiefswood and drew heavily from her work published in The Mother's Magazine to describe her idyllic childhood and mother's early life. I take all these pieces of a jigsaw and put them together to make a picture," said Gray.

With beauty, talent, intelligence and affluent family connections, Johnson could have easily melted into the glittering social tapestry of Upper Canada with a 'good' marriae (she had at least 10 offers) but she had other ambitions. She inherited a powerful sense of self from her prominent Mohawk grandfather, Chief John "Smoke" Johnson, and formidable grandmother, Iroquois Confederacy matriarch Helen Martin.

"So many people in the late 19th century with Native blood chose to ignore that part of their heritage. She was determined to celebrate it even though she could see the deterioration of the Aboriginal way of life, and how many people chose to be absorbed into the European mainstream. She had the guts and courage to stand up against prejudice and stick to her guns," said Gray.

Gray received support from Chief Roberta Jameson of the Six Nation Reserve in Ontario and Curator Paula Whitlow of Chiefswood Historic Site during the research, writing and literary launch of Flint and Feather.

"My most frustrating moment was hearing that on Six Nations there was an old wax cylinder (early recording technology-1890s) of Pauline reciting some of her verses, and I never found it. My greatest joy would be if somebody reads this and gets in touch and says, 'Would you like to hear a recording?'" said Gray.

"My biggest concern as a biographer was what would keep her story going after that. She kept moving west, on the frontier, where society was open and not hung up on class and race as they were in Toronto. What brought her story to a climax was the marvelous epiphany at the end of her life in Vancouver where she becomes close to Chief Joe Capilano and the Salish people, re-igniting a sense of her own Indian spirituality. Her love of Indian lore, written for Legends of Vancouver was very satisfying and reconnected Pauline to her own Native blood. She personally came home," Gray said.