Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Set

AMERICAN INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS

AMERICAN INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS l 97 horses and cattle than the men. But conversion to Christianity , industriousness, and adoption of Euro-American culture failed to bring Native people acceptance among Euro-Americans or autonomy within their tribes. So Christianity was often discarded as a useless artifact of white society. The 1835 removal of Native people east of the Mississippi to land west of the Mississippi became a death march known as the Trail of Tears. Roughly 100,000 Natives in Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida were coerced and taken to Indian Territory by the military . Their land and possessions were confiscated, in spite of prior treaties. Thousands died along the trail. After removal and continued betrayal through abrogation of treaty rights, most Native people returned to their old religions and rituals. In spite of the presence of some devoutly Christian aborigines , the majority have demonstrated a blended faith. Christianity has been seen as a white man’s religion and essentially irrelevant to Native people. But just as missionaries once sought to transform Native society through Christianity, many aborigines have found methods of transforming Christianity and its symbols for application to Native society. Christian values like love, forgiveness, generosity, patience, and disapproval of aggression have become new resources in validation and support of similar Native traditions. Priests and ministers loosely fit roles as shamans. The story of the Virgin Mary and Saint Anne are used to support the importance of motherhood and the instillation of social values through child rearing. Crosses, stars, and crucifixes are worked into religiously significant Native designs. In effect, Christianity has become a tool for the reculturation of Native culture. The Methodist and Episcopal churches, for instance, have developed programs for ordaining women as ministers and priests. The Methodist church in particular has recognized an absence of Native clergy and has enacted plans to ordain Native peoples. There are also Christian organizations performing beneficial work in health care, domestic violence, education, substance abuse, and hunger. Misogyny and women’s subordination still exist in Christian institutions and Native communities . But many Native communities have received valuable and appreciated services by Christian organizations to individuals and families. The results of these efforts have often produced positive outcomes on social and economic problems faced by Native people. Thus, the relationship between Native women and Christianity is complex. Many Native women completely reject Christianity as a colonizing religion. Other women completely embrace Christianity and do not follow their traditional practices. Still other women practice both Christianity and their traditional spiritual beliefs. Even though it is clear that Christianity has negatively impacted their status, Native women have never simply acquiesced to Christian colonization. However, they have either resisted it or used it in various ways to support the sovereignty of Native peoples. SOURCES: Historical perspectives on aboriginal women, their status, and the effects of European colonization upon gender relations can be found in Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Women in Seventeenth Century New France (1993); Carol Devins, Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630–1900 (1992); and Nancy Shoemaker, ed., Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (1995). Native American perspectives on colonial relationships are discussed in Robert Warrior, “A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, R. S. Sugirtharajah, ed. (1991), 277–285, and in Who’s the Savage? David Wrone and Russell Nelson, eds. (1982). Essays on the roles of Native American women in Native tradition are found in Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1992). Research regarding the Native American response to Catholicism in the New World is detailed in Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (1994), and Rámon Gutı́errez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (1991). Brenda Child, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940 (1998), and Devin Mihesuah, Cultivating the Rosebuds : The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary , 1851–1909 (1993), both examine boarding schools’ use of Christianity to promote sexism and racist ideology, as well as Native women’s use of Christianity in resistance to domination . Quotation from Chief Dan George is discussed in Mardy Grothe, Chiasmus in History and History in Chiasmus at http://www.chiasmus.com/archive/msg00019.html. The cooperation between Protestant churches and the...