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LIT LLIB

By “MAURICE RUSH

Ce

“Young Canada with mighty force sweeps on,
To gain in power and strength before the dawn...
Then meet we as one common brotherhood
In peace and love with purpose understood.

The Legend Of
Pauline

a

JX 4 quiet secluded corner of
: Vancouver’s Stanley Park, not
ar from her beloved Siwash
Rock, lie the ashes of Canada’s
Steat poet, Emily Pauline John-
Son. Only a simple rustic monu-
rent made of stone marks her
ast resting place, a fountain
1 €re in summer the children she
ved come up from the beach to
drink.
si

hot dimmed the memory of her,
hor lessened the importance of
* contribution to Canadian life.
The best works of Pauline John-
Son are not widely known to the
People of Canada. Attempts have
ae Made to present Pauline
Ohnson as an Indian poet who
Wrote beautiful poems about
hature. Indeed she did that.
°ems such as Song My Paddle
Sings have a lyrical beauty which
Unsurpassed.

But more than a writer of na-
ure poetry, Pauline Johnson was
4 tribune of her people, the Na-
tive Indians. She knew the suffer-
gs of her people, the injustices
and abuse to which they were
Subjected, and her own pen trans-
Muted the innermost feelings of
er heart.

Her most powerful poems,
Which cry out against injustice,
are not to be found in school
Oks or Canadian poetry anthol-
°8ies. That side of her life and

aa “respectable” bourgeois so-'
Ci

ety prefers to forget.

Pauline Johnson had a’ keen
aWareness of her. role in Cana-
dian life. Condemning those who
Would have her forget her Indian
°rigin she once wrote:

“Tam an Indian, my pen and
My life I devote to the memory
of my Own people. Forget I was
Pauline Johnson; but remember

always that I was Tekahionwake,
the Mohawk that humbly aspired
be the saga singer of her peo-

Ple, the bard of the noblest folk

”

"€ world has even seen. . .

Pauline Johnson did not mix
ater with her ink when she
Ote about the struggles of her
~ People, about their sufferings and
heir rights as Canadians. Prob-
Y her most outstanding poem
Protest was The Cattle Thief.
In this poem she relates the
chase of an Indian chief by a. band
Men. After catching and kil-
§ him they are confronted by
Indian woman who says:

of

lin
an

You have cursed, and called him
& Cattle Thief, though you rob-
R ed him first of bread—
Obbed him and robbed my peo-
_ Ple—took there, at that shrunk-
5 €n face, ;
tarved with a hollow hunger, we
Whe to you and your race.
hat have you brought but evil,
TA curses since you came?
°w have you paid us for our
Same? how paid us for our
land? ae ;

Y a Book, to save our souls from

n@ sins you brought in your
ther hand. _
7° back with your new religion,
etre lt find you can—

_On March 7, it will be 41 years.
ance the passing of this great
anadian. All those years have ~

The honest man you have ever
made from out a starving man.

You say your cattle are nof ours,

your meat is not our meat;

When you pay for the land you
live in, we'll pay for the meat
we eat.

Give back our land and our coun-
try, give back our herds of
ame; :

Give back the furs and the for-
ests that were ours before you
came; ;

Give back. the peace and the
plenty. Then come with your
new belief, :

And blame, if you dare, the hun-
ger that drove him to be a

thief.

With her poetry Pauline ions
son challenged those in high
places whose policy it was (and

“still is) to destroy the Native In-

dian people. Through her = a
powerful voice was found ici
i out against the wrongs e-
rain eaten ‘It is for this
reason that the ruling circles in
Canada have endeavored through
the years to destroy the best
tradition of Pauline Johnson. it
is for this reason that progressive
Canadians have a responsibility
to bring before the Canadian peo-
ple the true social character of
her poetry and legends.
” However, while assessing the

progressive social character of

her works, it would be wrong to
close our eyes to the shortcom-

ings. Those who read her poetry
and biographies will be immedi- _

us

- PAULINE JOHNSON

ately impresssed with this con-
tradiction: on the one hand, she
spoke out strongly for her peo-
ple, on the other, her ideas were

strongly influenced by the think-
ing of the ruling circles of her
day.

Thus she wrote poems such as
Riders of the Plains which glorify
the RCMP, the very force first
brought into being to suppress
her people. Her failure to
see clearly the forces oppressing
her people and the fact that she
was herself influenced by them,
lessened the impact of her strug-
gle for the rights of the Native
Indian people.

*

Pauline Johnson’s early life on
the Indian reservation near Brant-
ford, Ontario, where she was born
March 10, 1862, to Mohawk Indian
Chief Johnson and his English-
born wife, Emily S. Howells, pre-
pared her for the role she was
later to play as tribune of her
people, and outstanding Canadian
poet and patriot.

As a child her home was sad-
dened on two different occasions

when her father, a leader on the

reservation, was. beaten near to
death by gangs.. Wealthy men
seeking control of the reserva-
tion’s timber organized, the gangs
to assault him, trying to silence
his opposition to their scheme to
disposess the Indians of their

already limited rights and prop-.

erties. ;
In her early years Pauline John-

son was profoundly influenced by
the Northwest Rebellion led by
Louis Riel in 1885. There was
no mistaking her support for the
heroic struggle of the Metis and
Indians for their rights. Although
only 23 years old.at the time, she
wrote one of her most powerful
poems, A Cry from an Indian
Wife.

They but forgot we Indians own-
ed the land Bae

From ocean unto ocean; that they
stand

Upon a soil that centuries agone

Was our sole kingdom and our
right alone, :

They never think how they would
feel today,

If some great nation came from
far away, 2

Wresting their country from their
hapless braves,

Giving what they gave us — but
wars and graves.

Then go and strike for. liberty
and life,

And bring back honor to your
Indian wife.

Go forth, and win the glories of
the war.

Go forth, nor bend to greed of

white men’s hands,
By right, by birth we Indians own
these lands,

Though starving, crushed, Plun- —

dered, lies our nation low. ...

*

Above all, Pauline Johnson was

_@ great Canadian. Although the

sharp edge of her writing was
directed at the abuses against her
people, she loved Canada dearly.
Here was a true patriotism which
sprang from love of her country

and its people,-from an abiding
confidence in its future. She saw
the Native Indian People as part

_ of a great Canadian brotherhood,

taking their place in the building
of a nation of many Peoples,

In a poem written for the un-
veiling of a monument for Joseph

Brant, great. Indian leader, she
wrote:

Young Canada with mighty force
sweeps on,

To gain in Power and strength
before the dawn. ...

Then meet we .as one common
brotherhood ae ;
In peace and love with Purpose

understood.

In these days when Canada’s
independence is being betrayed
to the United States by our ruling

circles, it would be well to recall

the reactions of Pauline Johnson
to Yankee expansionism.

In 1902 she travelled through
Saskatchewan, which at that time
had been widely settled by Ameri-
cans.

In a narrative of her trip she
relates how she dined at the home
of Americans, and during | the
course of the discussion, her host-
ess said: “When next you come

here you will see the Stars and

Stripes flying over this shack.”

Pauline Johnson reports that she

replied in jest, “If I do I will
empty a shotgun into it.”

From the succeeding remarks
in her narrative it is quite clear
that Pauline Johnson was not
jesting and that her reply really
expressed her true sentiments at
American occupation of our

’ Northwest.

- Later Pauline Johnson wrote:
“We left our Yankee hostess and
her strident sentiments far behind
us, our great Canadian prairie
was a sweeter thing to con-
template.”

Pauline Johnson’s love of Can-
ada did not blind her to injustice
elsewhere in the world. She con- :
sidered it part of her patriotism
to speak out against tyranny
wherever she saw it. ‘Thus it was
that she was deeply moved by the
Dreyfus case in France. She wrote

‘a poem entitled, Give Us Barab-

bas. .

Once more a man must bear a
nation’s stain,—

And that in France, the chival-
rous, whose lore

Made her the flower of knightly
age gone by.

Now she lies hideous with leprous
sore

No skill can cure — no pardon
purify. ...

Hide from Your God, O! ye that
did this act!

With lesser crimes the halls of
Hell are paved. ;

Your army’s honor may be still in-
tact,

Unstained, unsoiled, unspotted,—
but unsaved.”

While she lay in a Vancouver
hospital dying of cancer, she told
her friends: “I wish that there
were but one of my poems that
could set fire to the hearts of
men, and thrill them with the
glory of their nationhood.” Paul- ‘
ine Johnson’s patriotism was. of
the kind the dominant cireles of.
the Canadian ruling class today
are trying to destroy because it
stands in the way of their selling
‘our nationhood for Yankee dol-

lars. °
*

Pauline Johnson was no reeluse
who wrote her poetry in an ivory
tower. She was close to the peo-
ple, and in a very true sense was
.a people’s artist. For years she
travelled from one end of Canada
to the other, reciting her poems
in hundreds of cities and towns
to audiences which made up a
Seg idas of the Canadian peo-
ple.

She toured British Columbia
during the gold rush days in 1895
and after. There was hardly a
mining town in which she did not
hold her audiences spellbound
with her poems and _ artistry.
Friends who travelled with her
relate how she would sit and
listen to the stories of the miners.

The love she had for people
was reciprocated. After she mov-

-ed to Vancouver, which city she

loved and adopted as her home,
she ‘faced considerable financial
hardships, followed by ill-health.
But her many friends came to her
aid. :

The deep affection the people
had for her was shown at her
death. Hundreds of people filed
by her coffin and thousands took
part of the funeral procession.
Vancouver City Council closed its
offices that’day and all over the
city flags flew at half mast. Sel--
dom had such respect and love
for an artist been shown by peo-
ple anywhere. ¢

Pauline Johnson was a true
daughter of our Canadian soil.
Her life, her poems, her legends
are part of the Canadian saga.
They are part of our progressive
national traditions which Cana-
dians must claim as their own,
and in so doing restore them to
their proper place in our history
_and culture. .

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 5, 1954 — PAGE 9