In Writing as Witness: Essay and Talk, Brant hopes to convey the message that words are sacred. Belonging to a people whose foremost way of communicating is through an oral tradition, she chooses her words carefully, aware of their significance, truth and beauty.

Beth Brant is a Bay of Quinte Mohawk from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario. She was born May 6, 1941. She is the editor of A Gathering of Spirit, the ground-breaking collection of writing and art by Native women. She is the author of Mohawk Trail, prose and poetry and Food Spirits, short fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous Native, feminist and lesbian anthologies and she has done readings, lectures and taught throughout North America. She has received an Ontario Arts Council Award, a Canada Council grant and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowhip. Beth Brant is currently working on two books, Testimony from the Faithful, essays about land and spirit, and I'll Sing Till The Day I Die, oral histories of Tyendinega Elders. She divides her time between living in Michigan and in Canada. She is a mother and grandmother and lives with her partner of eighteen yeras, Denise Dorsz. She has been writing since the age of forty and considers it a gift for her community.

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