Jesuit Missionaries in Early-Twentieth-Century Alaska, Colonialism, and Categories of “Superstition”

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Abstract This article unpacks Jesuit assessments of Indigenous Alaskan religious practices and does so through a focus on how Jesuit missionaries wrote about “superstition” and, especially, “medicine men” or “shamans.” Through a close reading of the Jesuits’ mission records, we can see the Jesuit, missionary, colonizing lens through which they viewed Indigenous Alaskan communities and their cultures. In particular, the “shamans” were of great interest to the Jesuits. The Jesuits saw these “superstitions” as an obstacle to their mission and the shaman as their major foe. Perhaps to explain the challenges of mission work, the Jesuits needed a foe. Native “superstitions” and the medicine men provided that. I argue that the missionaries were an arm of colonialism, and furthermore that their targeting of Indigenous religion and religious leaders were actions of ideological, social, cultural, psychological, emotional, and religious colonialism.