Forbidden Voice: Reflections of a Mohawk Indian

John Steckley teaches human studies at Hunter College in Toronto.

This story of a Mohawk woman from Six Nations who lived from 1896 to
1983 deals with a key transition period in Canada’s largest Native
community. During the writer’s early years, two members of her
community, Pauline Johnson and Oronhiatekha (president of the
Independent Order of Foresters), were making headlines. As she entered
her thirties, the federal government locked out and declared
“undemocratic” the Confederacy that had been in operation for around
500 years. The author provides a strong sense of the time, place, and
culture in which she lived.

Forbidden Voice was originally published in 1972. Unfortunately, it was
not edited prior to the current reissue. As a result, we read about the
author being “a princess of royal blood,” an old stereotype recently
reconstructed in the movie Pocahontas. We see misspellings of Mohawk
words (e.g., “Onhgivehonhweh” rather than “Onhgwehon-hweh”) and
are presented with often unrealistic claims about the curative powers of
traditional medicine (e.g., that the juice from wild grapes is
“excellent for baldness”). Finally, we are distracted by elements
that are far removed from the author’s life, such as the chapter on
Handsome Lake who died generations before she was born. It is the
author’s story we need to hear.