Writing Back against Canada’s Fictive Ethnicity:

Bernice Winslow Loft (Dawendine) and Ethel Brant Monture

Abstract

The period after E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)’s literary career ended and before the emergence of contemporary Indigenous writing in Canada, roughly between 1910 and 1960, has been labelled as a “barren period” for Indigenous authorship. The relative failure by Indigenous Peoples in this period to garner publishers or attract wide readerships, however, had more to do with the political and social environment of Canada at the time, than either an ability (or inability) to write material of value. Bernice Winslow Loft (Dawendine) (1902-1997) and Ethel Brant Monture (1892-1977), in the face of considerable challenges to have their voices heard, demonstrate that the period after Johnson’s death was not entirely void of Indigenous authorship. Loft and Monture are among a small body of Indigenous authors during this period who, through persistence and performance, left their marks on the stages and pages of settler Canadian libraries and bookshelves.