What Jane Knew

Maureen Konkle

“The children of an influential Ojibwe Anglo family, Jane Johnson and her brother George were already accomplished writers when the Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft arrived in Saul’s st Marie in 1822. Charged by michigans territorial governor with collecting information on the anishinaabe people, he soon married Jane, “discovered” the family’s writings, and began sociliting them for traditional anishinaabe stories. But what began as literacy ply became the setting for political struggle. Jane and her family wrote with attention to the beauty of anishinaabe narratives and to their expression of an anishinaabe world that continued to coexist with the American republic. But Schoolcraft appropriated the stories and published them as his own writing, seeking to control their meaning and or destroy their impact in service to the “civilizing” interests of the United States.”

pp 429

6.1” x 9.25” x 1” Inches