[2] She brought her writing to life from her personal experiences of being a lesbian, having an abusive spouse, and her mixed blood heritage from having a Mohawk father and a Scottish-Irish mother.
[1][2] Brant grew up off the reservation; however, she maintained a deep link to her Tyendinaga Mohawk heritage with her paternal grandparents where she learned the culture, language, and traditional stories.
Her parents, Joseph and Hazel Brant, and her brother and sister, grew up in her paternal grandparent's Detroit home.
[1] After leaving her fourteen-year abusive marriage in 1973, Brant became active in the feminist community and announced her sexual orientation as a lesbian.
[1] Her writing came later in her life at the age of forty when she had a monumental experience on a trip through the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory with Dorsz.
Her later years were spent as a grandmother and great-grandmother to three grandsons Nathaneal, Benjamin, and Zachary, a granddaughter, Olivia, as well as two great-grandchildren, Hazel and Luke.
She was recognized by 1983 editors Adrienne Rich and Michelle Cliff from the lesbian periodical Sinister Wisdom who asked Brant to edit a collection of Native American woman's writing.
Brant embraced her connection with her Native Mohawk people while working on Testimony from the Faithful, and pursued her oral history as well.
A year after, Brant and Sandra Laronde published a co-edited issue of the annual journal Native Women in the Arts, called Sweetgrass Grows All Around Her.
Brant's writing continued to be published in anthologies and periodicals, particularly focused on Native, feminist, and lesbian perspectives.
Her work took her to university classes to provide conversation on topics such as colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the survival of Aboriginal peoples.
Brant participated in a project called Returning the Gift, which was designed to create new opportunities for Native writers to share their work.