Emily Pauline Johnson . Aboriginal Women: A war against Racism and Women Inferiority

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Emily Pauline Johnson Aboriginal Women: A war against Racism and Women Inferiority ii Outline: Thesis statement: Emily Pauline Johnson was very concerned about two topics: Canadian Aboriginals and feminism. Paragraph 1: Introduction to the topic. Paragraph 2: Emily Pauline Johnson. Paragraph 3: Canadian Aboriginals. Paragraph 4: Feminism. Paragraph 5: Canadian Aboriginal women. Paragraph 6: Conclusion. 1 Aboriginal Women: A War against Racism and Women Inferiority. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Aboriginal Canadian women struggled to maintain their cultural identities amidst other demands and responsabilities. It was a time when racial appropriation of Aboriginal identity and culture was considered acceptable and, after the “Indian Act of 1876” (1), Aboriginal women racial status depended on patriarchal notions of marriage and descendence. Their struggles to maintain their cultural identity can be seen in Emily Pauline Johnson´s works. “Emily Pauline Johnson was one of Canada´s most popular and succesful entertainers at the turn of the [twentieth] century. The daughter of a Mohawk Native-Canadian father and an English mother, Pauline Johnson used the Mohawk name `Tekahionwake´” (which means the “double wampum”) (2). “Pauline´s education in school lore was meagre... but her education in the School of Nature was extensive, and that with her voracious reading... and retentive memory, richly stored her naturally keen mind” (13). Her mixed origins (Mohawk and European) made her respect and gain knowledge of both the Mohawk and the English aspects of her heritage. She used these two

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