| Summary: | Christianity is an aspect of Native history, not simply an external force acting upon it.
This dissertation examines the nature of Protestant missions (Anglican, Methodist, Salvation
Army) in their first few generations on the North Pacific Coast of British Columbia (1857-1901) by
focusing on Native roles in Christianization. It pays special attention to the Euro-Canadian
missionary perspective on this process, the Native spiritual specialists, missionaries, and
Christian lay workers themselves, and particvilar everyday events that illuminate the negotiation
of Christian identities. My regional focus examines the territories of the Tsimshianic speaking
peoples (Coast Tsimshian, Nisga'a, Gitxsan, Southern Tsimshian, with special emphasis given to
the Coast Tsimshian)—the North Pacific Coast of British Columbia, including the Lower Nass and
Skeena River watersheds. While they never entirely directed or controlled their own
Christianization, Native men and women frequently took the initiative and assumed roles of
leadership in mission activity, and within the churches themselves. The relationship forged
between Tsimshian and Euro-Canadian missionary was dialogic, although not necessarily a
mutually beneficial one.
This study examines the function of missions and the meaning of conversion,
demonstrating the themes of social action, hegemony, and gender in the writings of non-Native
missionaries. Likewise, evangelicalism shaped the emergent forms of Protestant Christianity
throughout the region, the discourses about them, and added to their attraction for the Tsimshian.
Yet, pre-existing indigenous discourse on transformation also informed Native reception to
Christianity, and the nature of the Native roles within the mission sphere did not entirely forsake
this spiritual history. While the Euro-Canadian mission record dominates historical missionary
sources. Native writings illustrate both a genuine evangelicalism and an indigenized Christianity.
Over time. Christian meanings were challenged from both within and without the mission
context, through revivalism and group evangelism. While the Tsimshian sought empowerment
through new forms of spirituality, those same power mechanisms could confine, challenge, and
assault their social and cultiiral structures. The exercise of power at the village level reveals how
social and cultural meanings of Tsimshian daily life were disputed, contested, and negotiated. === Arts, Faculty of === History, Department of === Graduate
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