Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada

Authors' Introduction, Page 12-13:

"This collection neither aims for nor claims comprehensiveness, and there are gaps in regional, thematic, and temporal coverage. For example, the volume does not consider Indigenous-Christian exchange in the North or the Maritimes, nor does it deal with relatively recent and widespread Indigenous interactions with Pentecostal, Evangelical, and charismatic forms of Christianity or with non-Christian faith such as the Baha’i religion. Rather than providing comprehensive coverage, this collection seeks to convey the energy and dynamism of a specific set of interdisciplinary conversations and case studies, and to spark, in the process, ongoing research and dialogue.

The distinct sites and common patterns of encounter illuminated throughout the pages that follow offer a fresh way forward. Together, the community individual, and contemporary sites of encounter considered in this collection confirm the exceedingly complex and charged nature of Indigenous-Christian interactions in Canada (interactions, these chapters simultaneously reveal, that were connected with events and processes outside Canada as well). From the moment European Christian missionaries arrived in the territories now known as Canada, encounters were informed by colonial power and Indigenous efforts to engage with new religious frameworks in a way that would allow them to retain, or even enhance, their own spiritual and political strength. These complex relations persist. The legacies of residential schools, in particular, reminds us that long with living histories of Indigenous agency, resistance, and resurgence are those of colonial violence and affiliated cultural loss and community instability. The challenge for scholars, and the one taken up by this book, is to acknowledge and contemplate connections between these complex pasts and presents and, in so doing, promote a more complete understanding of Indigenous encounters with Christianity in Canada." (12-13).