Beth Brant


Beth E. Brant, Degonwadonti, or Kaieneke'hak was a Mohawk writer, essayist, and poet of the Bay of Quinte Mohawk from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Reserve in Ontario, Canada. She is also a lecturer, editor, and speaker. She wrote based on her deep connection to her indigenous people and touched on the infliction of racism and colonization. She brought her writing to life from her personal experiences of being a lesbian, having an abusive spouse, and her mixed blood heritage from having a Mohawk father and a Scottish-Irish mother. She has three books of essays and short stories and three edited anthologies published.

Life

She was born in Detroit, Michigan on May 6, 1941. Brant grew up off the reservation; however, she maintained a deep link to her Tyendinaga Mohawk heritage with her paternal grandparents where she learned the culture, language, and traditional stories. She was descended from a family of tribal leaders Molly Brant and Chief Joseph Brant from the Tyendinaga Mohawk tribe. Her paternal grandparents moved to the Detroit area with the hope their nine children would have more opportunities away from the reservation. Her parents, Joseph and Hazel Brant, and her brother and sister, grew up in her paternal grandparent's Detroit home. Her father worked in an automobile factory, and later as a teacher.
She married her husband and became pregnant at the age of 17. She went on to have three children named Kim, Jill, and Jennifer. After leaving her fourteen-year abusive marriage in 1973, Brant became active in the feminist community and announced her sexual orientation as a lesbian. She met her partner, Denise Dorsz, in 1976. They equally divided their time between living in Michigan and Ontario.
In the initial years following her divorce, Brant worked any unskilled job she could to support her three children, including working as a salesclerk, waitress, and cleaner. Her writing came later in her life at the age of forty when she had a monumental experience on a trip through the Mohawk reservation with Dorsz. An eagle flew in front of their car window while she was driving. The eagle landed on a nearby tree and Brant stopped the car to bear witness at the creature. They looked at one another and the nonverbal communication spoke to Brant. The eagle told her to start writing and thus her writing career began. She displayed writing ranges of humorous to aggressive and intense to spiritual writing.
Her later years were spent as a grandmother and great-grandmother to three grandsons Nathaneal, Benjamin, and Zachary, a granddaughter, Olivia, as well as two great-grandchildren, Hazel and Luke. She died on August 6, 2015.

Career

Beth Brant was born to write and was almost immediately recognized for her talents. She was published the first year she began officially writing. She was recognized by 1983 editors Adrienne Rich and Michelle Cliff from the lesbian periodical Sinister Wisdom who asked Brant to edit a collection of Native American woman's writing. This developed into A Gathering of Spirit where it, at first, was published in 1984 in Sinister Wisdom and then was reissued as a book many times. It was the first anthology of Native American's women writing edited by another Native American woman.
Her success continued with publication of Mohawk Trail in 1985. This is a collection of short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction. Then, she continued the momentum in 1991 with Food and Spirits. Her fiction embraces the themes of racism, colonialism, abuse, love, community, and what it means to be Native. Writing as Witness: Essays and Talk, Brant's volume of essays, was published in 1994. The essays covered a range of subjects regarding the writer's craft and its meaning. In 2003, Brant continued with her second collection of essays called Testimony from the Faithful.
Brant embraced her connection with her Native Mohawk people while working on Testimony from the Faithful, and pursued her oral history as well. She edited a series of autobiographical stories told by the Elders of the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. This was called I'll Sing 'Till the Day I Die: Conversations with Tyendinaga Elders and was published in 1995. The project preserved the knowledge and wisdom through their stories. This made a scholarly contribution to the continued growing of Aboriginal oral history. A year after, Brant and Sandra Laronde published a co-edited issue of the annual journal Native Women in the Arts, called Sweetgrass Grows All Around Her. Brant's writing continued to be published in anthologies and periodicals, particularly focused on Native, feminist, and lesbian perspectives.

Activism & Mentorship

Brant played a pivotal role as one of the first lesbian-identifying Native American writers in North America. Her work represents both her Native and lesbian sides. She also put value in being a mother and grandmother. She had few role models when she began her writing career and encouraged Native American women writers who succeeded her. Teaching and mentoring was significant role in Brant's life. Her work took her to university classes to provide conversation on topics such as colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the survival of Aboriginal peoples. She lectured at the University of British Columbia in 1989 and 1990 and guest lectured for classes in women's studies and Native American studies at the New College of the University of Toronto. Also, Brant lectured and read at universities and culture centres across North America.
Brant contributed to a number of creative writing workshops, including the Women of Colour Writing Workshop held in Vancouver in 1991, the 1991 Michigan Festival of Writers in East Lansing, the International Feminist Book Fair held in Amsterdam in 1992, and the Flight of the Mind Writing Workshop in Eugene, Oregon in 1992. In addition, she formed creative writing workshops and groups for Native American women, women in prison, and high school students. She has always looked for ways to help others express themselves. Brant participated in a project called Returning the Gift, which was designed to create new opportunities for Native writers to share their work. It included a 1992 meeting of 250 writers in Norman, Oklahoma, including various outreach programs and the formation of an organization called the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
Brant continued her efforts on other projects as well. In 1982, she confounded Turtle Grandmother, a clearinghouse for manuscripts by Native American women and a source of information about Native women. It lasted until 1987. She was also an AIDS activist, working with People with AIDS and giving AIDS education workshops throughout Native communities.

Awards

Books