Promotional Information

This collection illuminates how Christianity has proved to be a flexible and charged site of colonial encounter and exchange for Indigenous people in what is now Canada.

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

About the Author

Tolly Bradford is an assistant professor of history at Concordia University of Edmonton, where he teaches Canadian and world history. Chelsea Horton is a research consultant working with Indigenous communities in Canada. She completed her PhD in history at the University of British Columbia.

Contributors: Tasha Beeds, Jean-François Bélisle, Siphiwe Dube, Elizabeth Elbourne, Amanda Fehr, Carmen Lansdowne, Cecilia Morgan, Denise Nadeau, Timothy Pearson, and Nicole St-Onge

Reviews

[Mixed Blessings] is, of course, especially timely given the 2015 release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report… Taken together, the diverse and engaging essays in the collection suggest that the role of Christianity in Indigenous life is both intricate and extremely variable.
*Canadian Literature, 236*

Indigenous studies needs more strong volumes like this one to further conversations about evolving societies and goals. Too many new works rely on old questions: did Indigenous peoples truly become Christians? Was Christianity better or worse for Indigenous societies? Volumes like this one remind us that by letting the subjects guide our questions instead of imposing our questions on our subject, better answers emerge.
*Canadian Journal of Native Studies*

Mixed Blessing is a highly readable update on what is happening in the field of missionary interactions. It exposes the silences – the factual voids in our understanding of the complex Indigenous encounters with Christianity in Canada – and for that reason, I recommend the book to those interested in achieving reconciliation.
*BC Studies*

Bradford and Horton present an interdisciplinary study that spans multiple centuries, allowing space for both historical and theological considerations of First Nations interactions with Christianity… Divided into three sections that focus on “community, individual, and contemporary sites of encounter” respectively (6), Mixed Blessings progresses from detached to increasingly personal analyses and also moves forward in chronology from investigations of the 18th century all the way through the present day.
*Transmotion*

This book offers something truly unique that Canadian historiography very much needs at the moment: a nuanced approach to Indigenous history which returns agency to First Nations sources and actors … I would very much like to see a second volume.
*American Review of Canadian Studies*