Honouring All of Our Relations:
Centering Relationality in the Study of Indigenous Religious Traditions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/arc.v52i1.2284Abstract
Western studies of Indigenous religious traditions have historically been rooted in colonial systems of knowledge, dominated by Eurocentric understandings of both “religion” and “civilization.” The application of these categories in studies of Indigenous religious traditions has resulted in major misrepresentations or misinterpretations of Indigenous religions. The resulting studies have also often been used to police the "authenticity" of Indigenous traditions, falsely identifying any "modern" aspects of Indigenous traditions (including engagements with Christianity) as evidence of the deterioration of Indigenous religious and cultural practices. These misrepresentations of Indigenous religious traditions demonstrate the need in religious studies to de-center settler colonial categories of religion. The following paper presents a case study of misrepresentations of Métis religion through an examination of works on Métis historical and religious figure, Sœur Marguerite-Marie, née Sara Riel, who was one of the first Métis Grey Nuns, the first Métis missionary in the Northwest, and sister of famed Métis leader, Louis Riel. The ways in which Riel’s religious affiliations have been analyzed and misrepresented is illustrative and symptomatsanic of deep-seated conventions within Western scholarship on mixed-heritage Indigenous peoples and syncretic Indigenous religions specifically, and of all Indigenous religions more generally. Examining the misinterpretations of Riel’s religiosity provides a concentrated look into how the employment of Western categories of religion can result in the overlooking, and simultaneous undermining, of Indigenous expressions of both religious and national identity.
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