Scriptural Relations: Colonial Formations of Anishinaabemowin Bibles in Nineteenth-Century Canada

Abstract

In 1829 Anishinaabe chief and Methodist minister Kahkewaquonaby, or Peter Jones, published his first translation of the Christian bible into Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), an edition of the first seven chapters of the Gospel of Matthew printed in Toronto by the colonial government in Canada. This publication was soon followed by Anishinaabemowin translations of other Christian scriptures including the Gospel of John published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in London, England (1831) and Genesis published by the Toronto Auxiliary Bible Society in Toronto (1835). Despite deep imbrications in Indigenous, religious, political, and print histories of the country—and by contrast to vibrant scholarship produced on Indigenous-language bibles published in the United States—scholars have paid relatively little critical attention to Indigenous-language bible translation in colonial Canada. This article examines the materiality of Jones’s bible translations to argue that Indigenous-language bible translations mediated a range of relations between and among Indigenous peoples, missionaries, and colonial agents. In so doing, this paper shows how books can serve as useful archival objects to construct histories of religion and colonialism in North America, and how Indigenous-language bibles can reveal Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.