Mixed Blessings

Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada

Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton, eds.

Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Mixed Blessings

Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada

Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton, eds.

Mixed Blessings transforms our understanding of the relationship between Indigenous people and Christianity in Canada from the early 1600s to the present day. While acknowledging the harm of colonialism, including the trauma inflicted by church-run residential schools, this interdisciplinary collection challenges the portrayal of Indigenous people as passive victims of malevolent missionaries who experienced a uniformly dark history. Instead, this book illuminates the diverse and multifaceted ways that Indigenous communities and individuals – including prominent leaders such as Louis Riel and Edward Ahenakew – have interacted, and continue to interact, meaningfully with Christianity.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Mixed Blessings of Encounter / Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton

Part 1: Communities in Encounter

1 Reading Rituals: Performance and Religious Encounter in Early Colonial Northeastern North America / Timothy Pearson

2 Managing Alliance, Negotiating Christianity: Haudenosaunee Uses of Anglicanism in Northeastern North America, 1760s-1830s / Elizabeth Elbourne

3 A Subversive Sincerity: The I:yem Memorial, Catholicism, and Political Opportunity in S’olh Téméxw / Amanda Fehr

Part 2: Individuals in Encounter

4 “The Joy My Heart Has Experienced”: Eliza Field Jones and the Transatlantic Missionary World, 1830s-40s / Cecilia Morgan

5 Between García Moreno and Chan Santa Cruz: Riel and the Métis Rebellions / Jean-François Bélisle and Nicole St-Onge

6 Rethinking Edward Ahenakew’s Intellectual Legacy: Expressions of nêhiyawi-mâmitonêyihcikan (Cree Consciousness or Thinking) / Tasha Beeds

Part 3: Contemporary Encounters

7 Aporia, Atrocity, and Religion in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada / Siphiwe Dube

8 Decolonizing Religious Encounter? Teaching “Indigenous Traditions, Women, and Colonialism” / Denise Nadeau

9 Autoethnography That Breaks Your Heart: Or What Does an Interdisciplinarian Do When What She Was Hoping for Simply Isn’t There? / Carmen Lansdowne

Conclusion: Reflections on Encounter / Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton

Index

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