E. Pauline Johnson, Duncan Campbell Scott, Vanishing Race Theory. E. Pauline Johnson and Duncan Campbell Scott were both Confederation era poets in Canada. They wrote about the beauty of Canada, and of the Indigenous people who populated the land. Through their poems “The Corn Husker” and “Onondaga Madonna,” written by Johnson and Scott respectively, it is clear that they both recognized what the Canadian government’s ultimate goal was with the Indian Act. Scott, being the deputy minister of Indian Affairs, played a major and important role in the implementation of the Indian Act and Residential Schools in Canada (University of Regina, p.35). Whereas Johnson was half Indigenous and half white, having grown up with, what was at the time, opposing …show more content…
Johnson saw this in “The Corn Husker” and Scott was encouraging it in “Onondaga Madonna”. Both poets saw what the Canadian government was doing with the Indian Act and wrote poems expressing their feelings towards the erasure of Indigenous people in Canada. Both agree that it was ending Indigenous culture and life as it was before colonialism in Canada, but one showing it through an ageing woman who is heartbroken, and the other showing it through a woman in her prime, who does not care that she is contributing to the end of her people. Women were the key, and Johnson and Scott both knew that. Finding ways for Indigenous women to lose their power, autonomy, and their status as Indigenous by making it hinge on their relationships with men, while also pushing through European ideals of gender roles, made it so that the Indian Act could help the Canadian government in erasing Indigenous people both physically and legally. Works Cited “Duncan Campbell Scott: A More Compulsory Approach to Attendance at School.” Shattering the Silence, …show more content…
The Campbells. “The Onondaga Madonna by Duncan Campbell Scott.” By Duncan Campbell Scott - Famous Poems, Famous Poets. All Poetry, www.allpoetry.com/The-Onondaga-Madonna. Robinson, Amanda, and Andrew McIntosh. “Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake).” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 14 Apr. 2008, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pauline-johnson. Lewandowski, S. (1987). The Species of the World. Diohe'ko, the Three Sisters in Seneca life: Implications for native agriculture in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Agriculture and Human Values, 4, 76–93 (1987), “The Three Sisters of Indigenous American Agriculture,” National Agricultural Library, www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters.