John Eliot, John Veniaminov, and engagement with the indigenous peoples of North America: A comparative missiology, part I

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-375
Author(s):  
Joseph William Black
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Bible ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
The Face ◽  
Christian Literature

John Eliot was the 17th-century settler and Puritan clergyman who sought to engage with his Wampanoag neighbors with the Christian gospel, eventually learning their language, winning converts, establishing schools, translating the Bible and other Christian literature, even establishing villages of converted native Americans, before everything was wiped out in the violence of the King Philip War. John Eliot is all but forgotten outside the narrow debates of early American colonial history, though he was one of the first Protestants to attempt to engage his indigenous neighbors with the gospel. John Veniaminov was a Russian Orthodox priest from Siberia who felt called to bring Christianity to the indigenous Aleut and Tinglit peoples of island and mainland Alaska. He learned their languages, established schools, gathered worshiping communities, and translated the liturgies and Christian literature into their languages. Even in the face of later American persecution and marginalization, Orthodoxy in the indigenous communities of Alaska remains a vital and under-acknowledged Christian presence. Later made a bishop (Innocent) and then elected the Metropolitan of Moscow, Fr. John (now St. Innocent) is lionized in the Russian Church but almost unknown outside its scope, even in Orthodox circles. This 2-part article examines the ministries of these men, separated by time and traditions, and yet working in similar conditions among the indigenous peoples of North America, to learn something of both their missionary motivation and their methodology.

John Eliot, John Veniaminov, and Christian engagement with the indigenous peoples of North America: A comparative missiology

2020 ◽  
pp. 009182961988717
Author(s):  
Joseph William Black
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Bible ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
The Face ◽  
Christian Literature

John Eliot was the 17th-century settler Puritan clergyman who sought to engage his Wampanoag neighbors with the Christian gospel, eventually learning their language, winning converts, establishing schools, translating the Bible and other Christian literature, even establishing villages of converted native Americans, before everything was wiped out in the violence of the King Philip War. John Eliot is all but forgotten outside the narrow debates of early American colonial history, though he was one of the first Protestants to attempt to engage his indigenous neighbors with the gospel. John Veniaminov was a Russian Orthodox priest from Siberia who felt called to bring Christianity to the indigenous Aleut and Tinglit peoples of island and mainland Alaska. He learned their languages, established schools, gathered worshiping communities, and translated the liturgies and Christian literature into their languages. Even in the face of later American persecution and marginalization, Orthodoxy in the indigenous communities of Alaska remains a vital and under-acknowledged Christian presence. Later made a bishop (Innocent) and then elected the Metropolitan of Moscow, Fr. John (now St. Innocent) is lionized in the Russian Church but almost unknown outside its scope, even in Orthodox circles. This article examines the ministries of these men, separated by time and traditions, and yet working in similar conditions among the indigenous peoples of North America, to learn something of both their missionary motivation and their methodology.

scholarly journals Walking on Our Lands Again: Turning to Culturally Important Plants and Indigenous Conceptualizations of Health in a Time of Cultural and Political Resurgence

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Plant Knowledge ◽  
Plant Cultivation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Indigenous Plant

We are in a time of Indigenous cultural-political resurgence in Canada (Coulthard, 2014; Manuel, 2017; Simpson, 2017; Talaga, 2018). Increasingly, Indigenous Peoples are finding renewed strength, pride, and grounding through cultural practice and the reestablishment of connection to the land. Included in this resurgence are the relationships between people and plants. When we practise our ancestral relationships with our plant relatives, we heal and strengthen ourselves. The depth of connection to place, to ancestors, and to our own mindful presence is amplified when we partake in millennia-old practices of plant cultivation, stewardship, and the integration of plant foods and medicines into our bodies. This time of resurgence emerges from generations of Indigenous Peoples suffering devastating violence, losses, and trauma as a result of colonization. In this paper I address the role that rebuilding Indigenous plant relationships plays in addressing colonial impacts on Indigenous health and in supporting Indigenous cultural and political resurgence. I also put forth Indigenized models for understanding colonial impacts on health and discuss culturally rooted conceptualizations of health that address these impacts from an Indigenous point of view. Finally, I propose a set of guidelines to consider for conducting respectful ethnobotanical research within Indigenous communities. This paper is borne out of a desire for deeper critical engagement with the intersections between colonial history, intergenerational trauma, and Indigenous plant knowledge. Furthermore, this paper acknowledges the strength and resilience of Indigenous Peoples in the face of historical injustice.

scholarly journals Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, Christianity, and “Heathenism” in the Seventeenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Plank
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Message

Quakers began arriving in the Caribbean and North America when their religious society was still new and struggling to define its core beliefs and institutional structure. There were tensions within the Society of Friends stemming from the Quakers’ validation of individual inspiration and their communal commitment to the Christian message as contained in the Bible. A bitter debate over scriptural authority wracked Quaker meetings for the remainder of the seventeenth century, and the controversy included arguments over the Quakers’ relations with Native Americans, Africans, and others outside of Europe beyond the reach of formal Christian teaching. On both sides of the Atlantic opponents of Quaker discipline challenged long-standing assumptions about the source and content of the Christian message and the social hierarchies that resulted when some groups claimed privileged access to truth. The ensuing argument influenced the Quakers’ plans for their colonies in North America, and their debate over slavery.

The repatriation of human remains – problem or opportunity?

Antiquity ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 78 (300) ◽  
pp. 404-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurajane Smith
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Historical Continuity

The editor’s question “who do human skeletons belong to?” (Antiquity 78: 5) can be answered positively, but it must be answered in context. The question was prompted by reports from the Working Group on Human Remains established by the British government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in 2001 to review the current legal status of human remains held in all publicly funded museums and galleries, and to consider and review submissions on the issue of the return of non-UK human remains to their descendent communities (DCMS 2003: 1-8). In effect, the report was primarily concerned with human remains from Indigenous communities, using a definition which follows the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as “distinct cultural groups having a historical continuity with pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories” (DCMS 2003:7). Consequently, the report deals primarily with the Indigenous communities of Australia, New Zealand and North America.

Intolerance toward Native American Religions

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
John Corrigan ◽  
Lynn S. Neal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Native American Religions

Settler colonialism was imbued with intolerance towards Indigenous peoples. In colonial North America brutal military force was applied to the subjection and conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. In the United States, that offense continued, joined with condemnations of Indian religious practice as savagery, or as no religion at all. The violence was legitimated by appeals to Christian scripture in which genocide was commanded by God. Forced conversion to Christianity and the outlawing of Native religious practices were central aspects of white intolerance.

The Bible and Indigenous Language Translations in the Americas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Indigenous Language ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Translational Activity ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
Sample Range

Scholarship on Native Americans and the Bible has often focused on the 1663 Indian Bible produced under the direction of John Eliot, the English missionary. This chapter expands the purview of European translational activity in the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries by focusing on a fuller sample range of translations into indigenous languages. Doing so reveals the astonishing range of Bible related translations undertaken by Catholic missionaries in the Americas. Such a study demonstrates the ways in which alphabetic literacy was only one form of communicating biblical truths, while it also highlights the important roles indigenous people played in the translation process.

American Indians Encounter the Bible

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-157
Author(s):  
Christopher Vecsey
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
American Indians ◽  
New World ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
To Receive

Abstract This article explores how Native Americans have received the Bible. Over the centuries some Indians have been inspired by the Bible, and some have been repelled by its long-standing place in colonization. The Christian invaders in the New World carried the Bible in their minds. It served as their inspiration, their justification, and their frame of reference as they encountered Indigenous peoples. In effect, the Bible was the template for exploration, conquest, identification of selves and others. The Christian invaders brought along or produced physical Bibles, which served their catechetical purposes, and in time they began to translate the Bible—in whole and in part—into American Indian languages. Therefore this article illustrates that to the present day Native Americans continue to receive the Bible actively and variously, attempting to fit it to their unfolding cultural stories. Ultimately, it has not lost its potency, nor have they lost their power to consider it on their own terms.

scholarly journals Preferences for different representations of colonial history in a Canadian urban indigenous community

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1065-1088
Author(s):  
Scott D. Neufeld ◽  
Michael T. Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Intergenerational Trauma ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Group Interest ◽  
Social Identity Approach

When a social group’s history includes significant victimization by an outgroup, how might that group choose to represent its collective history, and for what reasons? Employing a social identity approach, we show how preferences for different representations of colonial history were guided by group interest in a sample of urban Indigenous participants. Three themes were identified after thematic analysis of interview and focus group transcripts from thirty-five participants who identified as Indigenous. First, participants expressed concern that painful, victimization-focused representations of colonial history would harm vulnerable ingroup members, and urged caution when representing colonial history in this way. Second, while colonial history was clearly painful and unpleasant for all participants, many nevertheless felt it was important that representations of colonial history tell the whole truth about how badly Indigenous people have been mistreated by outgroups. Participants suggested these brutal representations of colonial history could also serve the interests of their group by bolstering ingroup pride when representations also emphasized the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Finally, participants described how brutal representations of colonial history could help transform intergroup relations with non-Indigenous outgroups in positive ways by explaining present challenges in Indigenous communities as the result of intergenerational trauma. We discuss findings in terms of their relevance for ingroup agency and their implications for public representations of colonial history.

scholarly journals Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), Aichi Target 11 and Canada’s Pathway to Target 1: Focusing Conservation on Reconciliation

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Zurba ◽  
Karen Beazley ◽  
Emilie English ◽  
Johanna Buchmann-Duck
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Aichi Biodiversity Targets

This article provides analysis of the issues relating to movement towards new models for Indigenous-led conservation in light of Canada’s initiatives for greater protected areas representation through Target 1. We provide a background on Canada’s Pathway to Target 1, which is based on Target 11 from the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set forth by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). We contemplate the past, present and future of colonization and reconciliation in Canada, and consider the influence of international declarations, programs and initiatives on the potential for the formation of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs). We then provide an analysis of “wicked problems” that Indigenous communities, governments, and other stakeholders in protected areas will need to navigate towards implementing the IPCA approach in Canada. We outline the different types of Indigenous involvement in protected areas and how they potentially fit within the principles for the development of IPCAs. We then turn our discussion to the need to refocus conservation on reconciliation by restoring nation-to-nation relationships and relationships between the land and peoples. The lessons we draw have potential parallels for other nation states, particularly those signatory to the CBD and with a colonial history, aiming for biodiversity conservation and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples through IPCAs.

Defiant Indigeneity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Nohelani Teves
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
The Face ◽  
Hawaiian Literature ◽  
The Way

"Aloha" is at once the most significant and the most misunderstood word in the Indigenous Hawaiian lexicon. For Kānaka Maoli people, the concept of "aloha" is a representation and articulation of their identity, despite its misappropriation and commandeering by non-Native audiences in the form of things like the "hula girl" of popular culture. Considering the way aloha is embodied, performed, and interpreted in Native Hawaiian literature, music, plays, dance, drag performance, and even ghost tours from the twentieth century to the present, Stephanie Nohelani Teves shows that misunderstanding of the concept by non-Native audiences has not prevented the Kānaka Maoli from using it to create and empower community and articulate its distinct Indigenous meaning. While Native Hawaiian artists, activists, scholars, and other performers have labored to educate diverse publics about the complexity of Indigenous Hawaiian identity, ongoing acts of violence against Indigenous communities have undermined these efforts. In this multidisciplinary work, Teves argues that Indigenous peoples must continue to embrace the performance of their identities in the face of this violence in order to challenge settler-colonialism and its efforts to contain and commodify Hawaiian Indigeneity.

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