“When Joe and I went to the sacred walk . . . it seemed like you could feel her”: Pilgrimage Traditions and Devotion to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Pilgrimages associated with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha serve to honor her and invoke her saintly intercession, often, but not always, incorporating the sites that recall key moments of her life—birth, conversion, and death. These pilgrimage traditions converge when the annual meeting of Native American Catholics known as the Tekakwitha Conference takes place near to Auriesville and Fonda, New York and Kahnawake, Quebec—all sites related to Saint Kateri. When the Tekakwitha Conference takes place elsewhere, honoring her takes on new and varied inculturated forms. A look at one particular pilgrimage site, Lac Sainte Anne in Alberta, Canada, visited during the 2008 Tekakwitha Conference, offers a glimpse of the rich and diverse inter-tribal traditions that characterize a form of portable pilgrimage and devotion related to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.