Spirit Wars: Native North American Religions in the Age of Nation Building by Ronald Niezen (review)

222 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 book from the other recent edition of Joscelin=s work, that by Sylvia Brown in Women=s Writing in Stuart England (1999). Brown=s edition is based on Joscelin=s manuscript, and her transcription is more visually correlated to Joscelin=s manuscript; the editor marks the line breaks and paragraph spacing of the original and does not introduce contemporary punctuation, editorial choices which may be preferred by readers interested primarily in manuscript production. Metcalfe=s edition, however, is probably the more readable for not having these features, and she does achieve a balance between accessibility for today=s readers and historical accuracy by enclosing the interpolated contemporary punctuation in square brackets. In addition to making the manuscript text more readily available to scholars interested in Joscelin=s views, Metcalfe=s edition also facilitates the study of the text=s reception and editorial history. The appendix usefully reprints three nineteenth-century introductions to The Mother=s Legacy by Robert Lee (1851), Sarah Hale (1871), and Randall T. Davidson (1894). The parallel texts, along with this appendix, will allow study to proceed on two fronts. Attending to the more authoritative manuscript version, scholars will be able to consider Elizabeth Joscelin=s commitments to religion, maternity, education, and authorship, along with her prose style. The more widely read printed version will also make it possible to analyse Goad=s editorial influence and to consider the social conditions that could make a woman=s writing popular, as well as merely socially acceptable. Both types of questions, one focused on the author and the other on her readers, are critical to thinking about women=s literary history, and this edition accepts both challenges. (EDITH SNOOK) Ronald Niezen. Spirit Wars: Native North American Religions in the Age of Nation Building University of California Press. xviii, 256. US $45.00, US $17.95 The author of Spirit Wars finds fault with available surveys of Native American religions in their focus on an assumed timeless past, the history of interaction with colonial powers and the modern situation being barely touched. Instead, Ronald Niezen presents >another kind of survey of indigenous North American religions, one that considers the dynamic uses and responses of spiritual traditions in the contexts of colonization and nation building.= His focus is on the attempts of Euro-American institutions to destroy Native religious traditions and spirituality, on a long history of cultural genocide. The author has worked with the Cree of the James Bay area, and the Canadian situation is well represented throughout the text. Following a brief introductory chapter, there are six chapters focusing on different modes of repression, with a brief concluding chapter. At the ends HUMANITIES 223 of chapters 2 through 7, there are brief pertinent essays by other authors, including the author=s students, of whom several are Native. Chapter 2, >The Conquest of Souls,= focuses on early missionary and military endeavours, with particular reference to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680; the >Black Robes= of New France, and the consequent spread of epidemics; and the Puritans of New England, including the massacre of the Pequots. The next chapter, >Learning to Forget,= concerns the imposition of European education on Native peoples, especially the history and effects of residential schools in both Canada and the United States. >Medical Evangelism,= the fourth chapter, is on the contrast between Western and Native healing concepts and strategies and the impact of Western medicine on Native traditions. Chapter 5, >The Forces of Repression,= deals with later military and the legal repressions of Native spiritual practices and rituals. There are sections on the >Ghost Dance Religion,= the Canadian Potlatch Laws, Peyote Religion, and >Transgressions of Sacred Space.= >The Collectors,= chapter 7, discusses the relevant effects of ethnology and museum collecting of both material and human remains on Native traditions. The chapter ends with a section on the recent repatriation laws and practices. The following chapter concerns >New Age= appropriations of Native spirituality, both actual and fictional, reflecting critical Native concerns and positive arguments for the use of Native religious rituals and concepts. The goal of the book is laudable: an up-to-date, multifaceted discourse on the history of the interaction between Western...