Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture: Canada’s First Indigenous Registered Nursing Sister

By Wendi Winter

Photo courtesy of The Canadian Encyclopedia

    Born 10 April 1890, Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (known as Edith Monture) became Canada’s first Indigenous registered nursing sister in 1914, but the path to breaking barriers was not an easy one. Edith, a member of the Mohawk tribe, grew up at Oshweken Reserve, near Brantford, ON where she attended day school. Before she even began her nursing classes, she was already breaking barriers by completing her education at Brantford Collegiate Institute. It was a time when many women, let alone indigenous women, were not allowed to complete their education. 

Following her secondary education, Edith decided she wanted to pursue nursing. However, according to the stipulations outlined in the 1876 Indian Act she had to choose between retaining her Native status, and becoming a fully enfranchised Canadian. The Indian Act stated:  

Every Indian who is admitted to the degree of doctor of medicine, or to any other degree, by any University of learning… may, upon petition to the Superintendent General, ipso facto become and be enfranchised under this Act, and he shall then be entitled to all the rights and privileges to which any other member of the band to which he belongs would be entitled if he was enfranchised under the provisions of this Act…. (Indian Act, R.S.C. 1886, c. 43. s6)

    Edith found a loophole to this Act when she was accepted by an American nursing school. In 1914, Edith graduated from New Rochelle Nursing School in New York and became the first Native Canadian registered nurse. Rather than returning to Canada, she decided to stay and work in New York as an elementary school nurse. Once the Americans entered World War I in April 1917, Edith decided to join the US Army Nursing Corps where she spent three months training alongside thirteen other Canadian nurses. Stationed at Buffalo Base Hospital 23 in Vittel, France, Edith nursed soldiers who had been shot or exposed to gas. She worked fourteen-hour days and, from time to time, she traveled battlegrounds looking for injured soldiers. In 1917, with the introduction of the Military Voters Act, which gave all wartime nurses the right to vote in a Canadian federal election, Edith became the first Indigenous woman to gain the right to vote federally. Following the end of her service, Edith returned to the Six Nations Reserve where she continued to work as a nurse and midwife at the hospital on the reserve. In 1919, Edith married Clayburn Monture and they had five children, but their youngest died in infancy. In 1939, she was elected honorary president of the Oshweken Red Cross. Edith worked at the hospital on the reserve until 1955 when she retired. In 1996, one week before her 106th birthday, Edith died. 

Resources:

Alexander, Kerri Lee.  "Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture."  National Women's History Museum.  2019.  www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/charlotte-edith-anderson-monture.

Conn, Heather, "Edith Monture."  In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published October 24, 2017; Last Edited December 04, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/charlotte-edith-anderson-monture.

Indian Act, R.S.C. 1886, c. 43. 

McLeod, Susanna, “Canada’s First Indigenous Nurse on French Battlefields.” The Kingston Whig Standard, May 05, 2020. https://www.thewhig.com/opinion/columnists/canadas-first-indigenous-nurse-on-french-battlefields. 

Military Voters Act, S.C. 1917, c. 34.