Grey Owl
Grey Owl, born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney in 1888 in Hastings, England, was a notable writer and conservationist who gained prominence through his writings about the Native American experience in the Canadian wilderness. After emigrating to Canada in 1906, he adopted the persona of Grey Owl, claiming mixed Native American heritage, and became known for his public lectures, often accompanied by his companion, Anahareo, and live beavers. Throughout his life, Grey Owl worked various jobs, including as a trapper and a wilderness guide, before turning to writing in 1929. His notable works include "Pilgrims of the Wild" and "The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People," both of which advocate for the conservation of nature and highlight the struggles faced by Indigenous peoples and woodsmen. Despite his contributions to environmental awareness, Grey Owl's legacy became complicated after his death in 1938, when it was revealed that he had fabricated his identity, leading to a reassessment of his life and work. Nonetheless, many of his writings continue to resonate as passionate calls for environmental conservation.
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Grey Owl
Writer
- Born: September 18, 1888
- Birthplace: Hastings, Kent, England
- Died: April 13, 1938
- Place of death: Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
Biography
Grey Owl, born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney in Hastings, England, in 1888, wrote about the Native American way of life in the vanishing Canadian wilderness. Grey Owl’s fame as a writer, however, was bolstered by his exploitation of the fictitious persona of himself as a métis, or a person of both Native American and European heritage, which he perpetuated in a series of public lectures in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. He was often accompanied by his companion, the Iroquois woman Anahareo, and a series of live beavers.
Belaney was born to the thirteen-year-old Katherine (Cox) Belaney and George Belaney, who separated after four years. He emigrated to Canada in 1906, where he worked in a variety of jobs as a clerk, oarsman, mail carrier (using a dog sled), and wilderness guide. While living at Lake Temiskaming, he was adopted into the Ojibwa tribe and given the name Wa-sha-quon-asin, although he preferred the pseudonym Grey Owl. In 1910 he married Angele Eguana, a native woman with whom he had two children, Agnes and Robert Bernard. He abandoned his legal wife and children, later marrying Constance Holmes in England (probably bigamously), and at various times living with two other women, Marie Girard (by whom he had another son), and Gertrude Bernard, a full-blooded Iroquois woman known as Anahareo, with whom he performed in a series of public lectures and had a daughter.
Grey Owl did not begin his career as a writer until 1929, after he had worked sporadically in Canada as a trapper and guide and had served in World War I in the Fortieth Canadian Infantry Battalion. After the publication of his first article, he consciously began to cultivate the hoax of being the son of a Native American mother in order to bolster his status among English readers. Much of his work consists of collected essays that recount the hard lives of woodsmen, trappers, and Native Americans coping with human threats to the wilderness. Grey Owl is probably best known, however, for his autobiographical second book, Pilgrims of the Wild (1934), and his children’s book, The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People (1935), both of which champion conservation of the beaver.
Grey Owl worked for the Canadian Parks Service in Saskatchewan, though he was eventually fired. He toured Great Britain in 1937 and performed before the king and queen and the two princesses. After returning to his home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he died of pneumonia in 1938. Upon his death, his false identity was revealed, in part as a result of a claim on his estate by his abandoned legal wife Angele Eguana. Belaney’s reputation, much of it built upon the fantasy of his life as a Native American, suffered after the revelation, though much of his work is still valued as a call for attention to the dangers of human encroachment on wilderness.