#funmaybefacts literature counterliterature

[dotld]

E Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake: Profile.

I am randomly inspired to write an educational post about my reading today. Why? I don't know! Do I need a reason? I thought this was 'Murica!

This is E Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake (1861-1913), who I just found out is on the Canadian $10.00 bill. She's a brilliant poet who also happens to be something of a Canadian Pocahontas. Why, you might not ask? Well sure thing, I will tell you because you also might ask. Tekahionwake is the daughter of a Mohawk chief who made a living performing her poetry for predominantly wealthy white draw-room audiences from Quebec to Vancouver. Her phenomenon reached all the way to London and the Queen herself, who were tickled by a 'rush of red.' Like Pocahontas, to the superficial eye she took on the mantle of 'token Indian royalty' and embraced British-Canadian culture to the point of dreaming of retirement in the British countryside. She is also a very complicated human whose life and legacy has been, in many respects, Disneyfied.

As when one starts to dig through Pocahantas' history, unexplored trials, triumphs and thorns are rife. Tekahionwake, along with writing ethereally sticky verse, was among the only poets of the time in North America- male or female- with the cajones to perform her own writing. Again, this is the 1800's, she's a woman, and she's part Mohawk. E.J.T. was raised in the shadow of a decidedly misogynistic Victorian-Canadian culture as well as a Mohawk culture which didn't encourage female expression and became a travelling poet. Regardless of subtext, that's pretty incredible.

Most travelling performers of the time stuck with the good ol' golds of Shakespeare and Ibson, which, while timeless, were heard a thousand times before by Victorian drawroom audiences (who, which face it, often didn't have much else to do). Tekahionwake performed her own work. She performed half in the regalia of her tribe and half as a member of the British landed gentry, a summation of the dual ideal personae suffusing her life of poetry and exile. She was immensely, explosively talented and, in my opinion, constricted by traditional English forms and the need to make a living performing. She might as well have been wearing a corset of verse.

But her life was no grand coterie- Tekahionwake's great love of travel and meager funds meant she often slept in trains on the way to gigs. She lived hand to mouth and the rigors of her life were often brought forth as explanations of her early death. Despite the claps and grand applause, Tekahionwake had reason to believe that, like less illustrious Mohawks, not only was her history being erased and exploited, she wasn't even making any money out of it!

In fact, much of the prose Tekahionwake wrote in her 'later' life, before she succumbed to breast cancer at age 53, dwelled on a white world which turned wholly (and disingenuously) accepting after displaying mostly spite and cruelty. On other fronts, what was put forth as kindness is revealed to be the ultimate assimilatory cruelty- raising someone as one of your own to the point at which they, at great personal cost, renounce their own heritage, homeland and past, only to be flicked away like last year's shank bone.

Tekahionwake's short story As It Was In The Beginning is a Disney movie which... takes a bit of a turn. Esther, a Mohawk girl taken from her father and mother to a missionary boarding school, is doted on and darling'd, only to be cast out for daring to fall in love with Lawrence, the son of the cassock-frocked man who silk-robed her away. Lawrence immediately (and somewhat simplistically/unrealistically- more indicative of Esther's impression than his actual reaction) renounces his love and agrees with his father- a true anti-Disney twist. The story abruptly ends with the Esther poisoning the boy who abandoned her with an arrowhead left by her mother and slinking off into the night, effectively becoming the "snake" Lawrence's father called her when forbidding their union.

If I read more I may be able to trace E. Pauline's (Intentional? Unintentional?) satirization of the British/Canadian assimilation narrative. This satirization could potentially come into fruition in The Shagganappi, a novella Tekahionwake worked on close to her death. I say "could" because it's not entirely clear this is a satire (although I think to say it isn't a satire might be insulting to T.'s intellect, it may also be consistent with the biopsychosocial profile I sense emanating from her- though this could be a lost path if it is simply, as I also suspect more than likely, a parable built, like a Noah's Ark, for a new generation).

In The Shagganappi, a boy recognized by the governor of the province at his small state school is given the courage to become the first Indian to join an elite boarding school. It is a parable in which many reject "Shag," but ultimately embrace him due to his undeniable merits and heroic acts. Once again the acceptance is hurried, unexplored, and has a wistful air to it.

The overlapping threads with other examples of 'cultural assimilation with the determination to excel and become the best possible example of the culture trying to exterminate or whitewash mine in order to negotiate a place for my own culture within it- or carve one'- are ones I hope to further explore. Ie. several African American stalwarts such as Booker T Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Richard Wright, among soooooo(o) many others. Obviously each example is singular and merits far more thought.

To add some more obviously American immigration examples of this phenomenon, the guy at the Halal cart and behind the Bodega counter. Also, Alexander Hamilton.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far- maybe I'll make a blog and expand!