Two of Johnson's poems were included in W. D. Lighthall's 1889 anthology "Songs of the Great Dominion". This resulted in her recognition as a poet helping create Canada's new literary identity and signalled her inclusion in a group of significant Canadian English-language writers. The anthology had a section entitled "The Indian"; however, Johnson's poems were not placed there. Her canoeing poem, "In the Shadows", appears in the section "Sports and Free Life," and her poem about the Grand River, "At the Ferry", is in the "Places" section. To the casual Canadian reader, Johnson probably blended into the Anglo-centric mainstream of English-language Canadian literature. Yet this was not quite where Johnson situated herself. Her original selection of her "best" verse, which was "most Canadian in tone and color", included "A Cry from an Indian Wife" and "The Indian Death Cry" (1888), poems that she felt would interest Lighthall on account of her "nationality". Using this word to signal "Indian" rather than "Canadian", in her correspondence with the editor of the most noteworthy post-Confederation literary anthology, marks her unique self-placement within the country's emergent national literature.