Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands

Chapter 4. The Wasitay Religion: Prophecy, Oral Literacy, and Belief on Hudson Bay

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Pa [104], (1 Lines: 0 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal PgEnds: [104], (1 4. the wasitay religion Prophecy, Oral Literacy, and Belief on Hudson Bay Jennifer S. H. Brown Ever since Anthony F. C. Wallace’s seminal work on revitalization movements in the 1960s, the concept of revitalization has served to frame discussions of religious innovations and renewals in postcontact indigenous societies. Yet, like Richard White’s “middle ground” more recently (Joel Martin [ch. 2]), the phrase may become a substitute for more developed descriptions and explanations. The analysis of any religious movement, however framed, presents challenges, especially when the subject matter leads us across cultural borders and into historical situations beyond our range of observation. For one thing, the writers of the documentary sources we must use were usually outsiders (fur traders and missionaries, in the events studied here). Their cultural and religious views shaped what they thought they saw and how they wrote about and perceived what was going on among the people they observed. We who later try to analyze what these old sources tell us are doubly removed from the events and actors in question. Another problem is that in searching for effective ways to formulate and conceptualize prophetic movements in terms considered effective and intelligible within our academic disciplines, we risk exoticizing them, distancing ourselves from the people involved, and neglecting the historical and cultural perspectives that their descendants could offer. There is also a risk of idealizing these movements. Their themes of energy and hope, rebirth, revival, and innovation in the face of deprivation or cultural loss may win our favor but may obscure their negative aspects . Their success may have served some community members’ needs and interests well but could be hurtful to others. Leaders may fail or become self-serving, leaving a mixed legacy that celebratory traditions about them may not capture. Recently, I have had opportunities to review a Hudson Bay Cree the wasitay religion 105 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [105], (2) Lines: 18 to 2 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [105], (2) prophetic movement of 1842–43 with an Omushkego (Swampy Cree) scholar and storyteller, Louis Bird, who has thoughtfully reflected on some questions of language and narrative bearing on this topic. His commentaries have enriched this study, encouraging me to return to a topic I last examined in the 1980s. The invoking of Omushkego memories and views of these events and of narratives about them provides a reminder that the concept of “revitalization movement” is itself emic to social science and is not readily translatable into Cree or other indigenous languages. To illuminate 19th-century spiritual and religious experience on the west coast of Hudson Bay, we need to turn not only to outsiders’ documents and anthropological models but also to insights that the Cree language and Omushkego stories and scholarship can provide .1 This chapter begins by reconstructing the Hudson Bay prophetic movement of 1842–43, building on earlier, shorter studies to outline its main events (Brown 1982, 1988; Long 1989). Exploring the generative role played in it by a Cree syllabic writing system that had just been introduced in the region by a Methodist missionary, I then look at some intellectual and symbolic aspects of the movement as they were recorded at the time, taking particular interest in Omushkego concepts of worship, writing, and books. Finally, I discuss some 20th-century Omushkego oral narratives and perspectives that provide a range of indigenous assessments of the subject and some fresh contexts in which to view it. The Events of 1842–43: Context As pieced together from European writings, the story of the rise of the prophets Abishabis (“Small Eyes”) and Wasitek or Wasitay (“The Light”), and of their heavenly visit and the novel ideas and practices that resulted, begins in the summer of 1842. By that time, the Hudson ’s Bay Company (hbc) had been trading for furs at several major posts on Hudson Bay for more than a century and a half. Numerous Omushkegowak, known to the hbc men as...