Mixed Blessings transforms our understanding of the relationship between Indigenous people and Christianity in what is now Canada.

While acknowledging the harm of colonialism, including the trauma inflicted by church-run residential schools, this book challenges the portrayal of Indigenous people as passive victims of malevolent missionaries who experienced a uniformly dark history. Instead, it illuminates the diverse and multifaceted ways that Indigenous communities and individuals across Canada have interacted, and continue to interact, meaningfully with Christianity from the early 1600s to the present.

Ranging widely across time and place, these insightful case studies explore how and why some Indigenous people – including Louis Riel and Edward Ahenakew – historically aligned themselves with Christianity while others did not. It also plumbs the processes and politics involved in combining spiritual traditions and reflects on the role of Christianity in Indigenous communities today.

Tolly Bradford's profile page

Chelsea Horton's profile page

Tolly Bradford is an assistant professor of history at Concordia University of Edmonton, where he teaches Canadian and world history. Chelsea Horton is a research consultant working with Indigenous communities in Canada. She completed her PhD in history at the University of British Columbia.

Contributors: Tasha Beeds, Jean-François Bélisle, Siphiwe Dube, Elizabeth Elbourne, Amanda Fehr, Carmen Lansdowne, Cecilia Morgan, Denise Nadeau, Timothy Pearson, and Nicole St-Onge

This book offers something truly unique that Canadian historiography very much needs at the moment: a nuanced approach to Indigenous history which returns agency to First Nations sources and actors … I would very much like to see a second volume.

American Review of Canadian Studies

Bradford and Horton present an interdisciplinary study that spans multiple centuries, allowing space for both historical and theological considerations of First Nations interactions with Christianity… Divided into three sections that focus on “community, individual, and contemporary sites of encounter” respectively (6), Mixed Blessings progresses from detached to increasingly personal analyses and also moves forward in chronology from investigations of the 18th century all the way through the present day.

Transmotion

[Mixed Blessings] is, of course, especially timely given the 2015 release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report… Taken together, the diverse and engaging essays in the collection suggest that the role of Christianity in Indigenous life is both intricate and extremely variable.

Canadian Literature, 236

Mixed Blessing is a highly readable update on what is happening in the field of missionary interactions. It exposes the silences – the factual voids in our understanding of the complex Indigenous encounters with Christianity in Canada – and for that reason, I recommend the book to those interested in achieving reconciliation.

BC Studies

Indigenous studies needs more strong volumes like this one to further conversations about evolving societies and goals. Too many new works rely on old questions: did Indigenous peoples truly become Christians? Was Christianity better or worse for Indigenous societies? Volumes like this one remind us that by letting the subjects guide our questions instead of imposing our questions on our subject, better answers emerge.

Canadian Journal of Native Studies