The determination of Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture

From Six Nations to the Western Front and back

Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture of Six Nations, Ontario, photographed in her American Expeditionary Force nurse’s uniform in 1918. Though denied nurse training anywhere in Canada because of Canada’s discriminatory policies against First Nations women, Monture was not one to be easily deterred. She went to the United States and trained in Philadelphia. After graduating, she spent eighteen months in France in the Nurse Corps, serving at Buffalo Base Hospital 23, in Vittelles, France. Monture was also one of the first First Nations women to vote in a Canadian federal election, because of her status as a wartime nurse (Status Indian women couldn’t vote federally in Canada until 1960 without disenfranchising themselves). After the war, Monture returned to Six Nations, where she served the community as a nurse until her retirement in 1955. She passed away in 1996, at the age of 105, the last surviving Six Nations WWI veteran.

📷 Cozens