I Will Fear No Evil: Ojibwa-Missionary Encounters along the Berens River, 1875–1940 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: I Will Fear No Evil: Ojibwa-Missionary Encounters along the Berens River, 1875–1940 Catherine Murton Stoehr I Will Fear No Evil: Ojibwa-Missionary Encounters along the Berens River, 1875–1940. susan elaine gray. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006. Pp. 180, illus., $29.95 Historians of First Nations generally express a commitment to including Native voices in their work. In this oral history–based book, Susan Elaine Gray admirably fulfils this obligation. Gray interviewed members of the Ojibwa community at Berens River, on, to determine what oral tradition had to say about the relationship between community members and Christian missionaries who began arriving there in the late nineteenth century. The answers she got demonstrated the existence of a complex and psychically demanding practice of Ojibwa spirituality that anticipated postmodern philosophy’s embrace of multiplicity by incorporating Christian teachings without recanting other belief systems. Opening in 1875, when Methodist missionaries first came to live at Berens River, Gray’s book discusses Ojibwa spiritual practices in [End Page 279] general, describes the Methodist and Catholic missionaries who lived in Berens River, then offers three chapters on the Ojibwa’s responses to the missionaries and their teachings. In the preface Gray uses an interview with Percy Berens to present the idea that Ojibwa spiritual practice is characterized by flexibility and belief in the power of faith. Commenting on his attitude toward the Manitous who inhabited the Ojibwa cosmos, Percy Berens said, ‘I don’t choose to believe in them spirits . . . But they can exist for other people,’ adding, ‘If you believe strong enough to believe that there’s spirits there, then they’re there’ (xxvii). Community members, in other words, believed that the extent and intensity of individual people’s belief affected their access to spiritual power. At the same time, Gray points out that the individual Ojibway people relied on empirical evidence before accepting a belief for themselves. In the final three chapters Gray argues that community members who did embrace the new teachings of the missionaries internalized them without surrendering their culture. Many community members remembered the mission schools and missionaries fondly. They speak approvingly of the missionaries as guardians of social order who enforced marriage codes, promoted a strong work ethic, and disciplined children. Gray concludes the work by focusing on the persistence of non-Christian spiritual beliefs. Priests frustrated at the ongoing power of medicine men, ‘Christian’ Ojibwa afraid of being cursed by conjurors or hunted by Windigos, and informers speaking admiringly of the Thunderbirds – all these substantiate the oft-repeated claim that Christianity did not replace older spiritual beliefs in Ojibwa thought, nor did those who held ideas from both traditions feel the need to hide the breadth of their belief. The great strength of this book is that it presents post-contact Anishinabe philosophy-in-action as a cultural product in its own right – not as a hastily constructed bulwark against the deprivations of colonialism. Further, Gray casts off clichés about Native cultures, preferring to offer specific, meaningful assertions. Narratively freed from the circumstances of its enactment, Ojibwa/Anishinabe philosophy, as it appears here, evokes reflection and admiration rather than the regret and pity with which it is so often met by non-Natives. The weakness of the work is the correlative of that strength; material conditions are neglected, causal explanations are not offered, and only the most general of conclusions are provided. While it is possible that Ojibwa philosophy at Berens River was unaffected by events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gray’s failure to either assert and [End Page 280] defend total cultural constancy on the one hand, or to explain the causes and effects of change on the other, is unsatisfying. Scholars of First Nations history who wish to understand Anishinabe actions will need to incorporate Gray’s insights about Anishinabe philosophy, and students interested in specific information about Anishinabe culture will find it valuable. I Will Fear No Evil is written in a style that is easily accessible to non-academics, and its subject matter is so interesting and its tone so fresh that it may find an audience outside of the university. Catherine Murton Stoehr Queen’s...