Re: Canuck defined

From: Steve Hayes (hayesmstw_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/16/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:54:04 +0200

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 01:53:30 -0900, floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson)
wrote:

>Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>Don't know whats causing it, but your articles are showing up
>multiple times.
>
>>On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 02:04:43 -0900, floyd@barrow.com (Floyd L. Davidson)
>>wrote:
>>>Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>Not that assimilation wasn't attempted beginning in the 1870's,
>>>just that it was unsuccessful until the late 1940s. By the
>>>1960's a change had taken place that became obvious: traditional
>>>education of Native youth was no longer functional. It was then
>>>that the effect took place, where an entire generation became
>>>adults without knowing how traditional Native governance worked.
>>
>>I seem to recall that an education official was sent from the US with orders
>>to Anglicise the natives, and encouraged the establishment of boarding schools
>>for that purpose.
>
>You are probably thinking of Sheldon Jackson (1834-1909). He
>was a Presbyterian missionary who, from 1877 to 1909 worked
>tirelessly to screw up the Native people of Alaska. (Okay, so
>that isn't quite what the history books say, but it's
>true... :-)

That's the one.

>He did do some interesting things, and his dedication is indeed
>remarkable, even if what he was dedicated to was not. The most
>significant thing he did was to literally divide up Alaska and
>parcel out territories to each and every church or missionary
>organization willing to take on the task of saving the Native
>people from themselves. And because Barrow was the most
>difficult and inhospitable place of them all, he could not ask
>anyone else to go there and gave that to his own Presbyterian
>church. As a result, there has been a large Presbyterian
>influence in Barrow since the first church was built here in
>1896.

Well, the way I've heard tell, he was the villain of the piece, and I thought
he was the one you were talking about when you mentioned boarding schools.

>Another result is that in most parts of Alaska you'll find that
>one, or maybe two, missionary churches were established and to
>this day are dominant. Usually when there are two or three, one
>of them is the Russian Orthodox church with of course preceded
>Jackson.
>
>Jackson was very much into "civilizing" the savages. He built a
>school (indeed, he was instrumental in passage of the Organic
>Act of 1884 that finally provided civil governance for Alaska,
>and money for education) in southeastern intended to make White
>men out of Tlingit Indians.
>
>>My computer has run out of memory to look them up, and I'm
>>afraid it may crash if I reboot, but titles of books I recall are "Bashful no
>>longer", "Nuvendaltin Q'hutana" and "Orthodox Alaska".
>
>"Bashful No Longer" is by Wendell Oswalt, and isn't bad at all.
>Of course if you want to know what is wrong with anthropology in
>Alaska historically, read his first book, "Napaskiak -- And
>Alaskan Eskimo Community" recounting studies done in the 1950's
>and published in 1963. (I'd imagine that to this day if you
>mention Oswalt's name in Napaskiak you might get an earfull!)

I haven't read that.

But one thing interesting in this part of the world is John and Jean Comaroff,
who in their studies of encounters between missionaries from Europe and
African cultures, were among the first to devote as much space to describing
the culture of the missionaries as to the cultures they went to. And in a
two-way encounter, that's the way it should be.

For those on soc.genealogy.britain who have ancestors who were 19th century
missionaries in Africa, their books could be worth a read. One was "Of
revelation and revoluition". It's flawed, but makes some interesting points,
and looks into lower middle class British culture in the 19th century.

 Now all we need is to have a description of the culture of the
anthropologists who do ethnographic studies.

>"Nuvendaltin Quht'ana: The People of Nondalton" is not a work
>that I'm familiar with.

My spelling was up the creek, but I posted the full bibliographical reference
later.

>"Orthodox Alaska" is of course Father Oleksa. His books are
>fine, but to really appreciate him you have to see him talk.
>Not just hear, but *see* him! He's a guy who can keep an
>audience gripping their chairs with their attention absolutely
>riveted for fear of missing a single word, and do it for hours.
>And of course he lectures wearing the black robes of
>a priest.

I met him about 10 years ago at a conference, and he read a paper there.

>There are two other people whose works should be mentioned too.
>Ann Fienup-Riordan has written several books about Yup'ik
>culture, and is just absolutely fascinating to read. Oscar
>Angayuqaq Kawagley is another person who writes wonderful words,
>but listening to him is just beyond imagination.
>
> <http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/HistoryCulture/kawagley.html>
>
>Oscar also has the distinct advantage of being a genuine Yup'ik
>Elder. Which among other things means that he was literally
>raised to teach his worldview. The man can take some concept of
>Yup'ik culture that you've heard about many times and never been
>able to see what the significance is, or how it could even be...
>and in half an hour he *will* convince you *that is* the way the
>world actually works, or at least should work.

That sounds interesting, and actually useful for my purposes, as I'm trying to
update a doctoral thesis and turn it into a publishable book. It has only a
part of a chapter on Alaska, but it's useful to have some good sources, and a
critique of them from someone who knows the territory.

>
>>Perhaps we should take this discussion to sci.anthropology, as it is getting
>>off-topic here in soc.genealogy.britain, but I find it very interesting.
>
>An off topic thread won't hurt anyone. And sci.anthropology is
>probably more likely to attract flamers. Besides, once a thread
>gets going in virtually *any* newsgroup, you really don't want
>to drop that newsgroup because you can never tell who is reading
>it there, or not.

True, and I've tried to point out the relevance of related anthropological
studies to British genealogy. And we have a missionary in the family, or at
least my wife does. My mother in law used to talk about a great uncle who was
a "missionary in Africa" (she lived just outside Durban, so I wondered a bit
about her point of view). But investigation (by her double second cousin)
turned up some quite interesting information. He was Charles William Pearson,
and was a missionary in Uganda. Went there up the Nile, met "Chinese" Gordon
in Khartoum, and returned bia the East Coast, invalided out witb fever, so
having missionaries in the family is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

>>>The Russian history in Alaska is very much misunderstood. They
>>>made absolutely no effort to conquer, assimilate, change, or
>>>whatever, the Native population of Alaska. They barely
>>>scratched the surface as far as even exploring the geography!
>>>The entire Russian America period is one of mercantile
>>>operations!
>>
>>They did, however, exploit the natives economically and treat them unjustly.
>>Some missionaries had harsh words for some of the promyshleniki.
>
>Oh, definitely. If we on occasion think of Capitalist Pigs as
>being less than compassionate, they appear to be a near emulation
>of Jesus compared to Russian merchants in the 18th and 19th
>centuries.
>
>...
>>>In fact, the Russians were vastly different, even when some of
>>>the effects were the same.
>>
>>I have been interested in comparing the efforts of the Russian North American
>>Company in Alaska with the Dutch East India Company in South Africa, and the
>>differences between Protestant and Orthodox missionaries in both places.
>
>I know virtually nothing about the Dutch East India Company, so I can't
>really comment.
>
>>Oleksa (in "Orthodox Alaska" records the correspondence between an Orthodox
>>priest and the matron of a Protestant boarding school, and their attitude to
>>the natives and their culture are poles apart.
>
>The Orthodox church was put in charge of relations with the
>Native people, and sent to Alaska specifically to get between
>the Natives and the merchants. Given how crude, class conscious,
>and distant Moscow was, you can imagine how bad it must have
>been if the Czar thought correction was necessary!
>
>Oleksa, because he has done research in Russia, is an authority on
>the history of the Russian period in Alaska. That results in some
>really interesting conflicts with the only other history available
>for that period, which is Hubert Howe Bancroft's "History of Alaska"
>published in 1886. Bancroft was not exactly kind to the Orthodox
>church, and it clearly annoys Oleksa anytime Bancroft is used as
>the only source to indict the church's activities in Alaska. And
>of course he is indeed correct (and at the drop of a hat can rattle
>off detail after fascinating detail). I've read Bancroft multiple
>times and hence when I hear Oleksa's comments they actually make
>sense to me.

The very date of publication would make one suspicious.

But one thing I found interesting was the attitude towards clothes. Here, for
what it's worth, is a quote from my thesis (saves re-typing, and looking up
words whose spellings I've forgotten).

     There was little change in the first couple of decades
     after the purchase of Alaska by the USA in 1867, but
     the passing of the First Organic Act of 1884 opened the
     way to an aggressive cultural imperialism on the part
     of the US government in alliance with Protestant mis-
     sionaries. Sheldon Jackson, the first commissioner of
     the Board of Education in Alaska, who served from 1885-
     1908, used his position to promote his own version of
     Presbyterianism in educational policy. He explicitly
     announced his intention of wiping out the Orthodox
     faith. He divided the Alaskan natives and territories
     among various Protestant denominations, and imported
     teachers to instruct the natives in "civilised" methods
     of food production. He prohibited the use of native
     languages in missionary schools that received federal
     subsidies. There was a conscious and deliberate policy
     of suppressing native language and culture, and
     assimilating it to the Western (i.e. modern) world
     view. Modernity was to be imposed by the government
     educational system (Ellanna & Balluta 1992:300; Oswalt
     1990:137ff; Oleksa 1992:171ff).

     The contrast here is stark, but it was not unique to
     the Alaskan situation. There are significant parallels
     to the South African Bantu Education Act of 1954, which
     effectively nationalised most of the church schools in
     South Africa, and thereafter tended to limit access to
     them to the three Afrikaans Calvinist denominations
     whose theology had much the same source as the Pres-
     byterians favoured by Sheldon Jackson (see Kinghorn
     1997:147).

     There were also, of course, significant differences. In
     the USA, the aim was the assimilation of the newly
     acquired territory of Alaska to the dominant culture of
     the USA as a whole. In South Africa, the Bantu
     Education Act was aimed at furthering segregation,
     which was in many ways opposite to assimilation, and
     the supporters of the Act claimed that assimilation was
     precisely one of the evils the Act was designed to pre-
     vent. Nevertheless, the manner in which it was imposed
     represented crude cultural and political domination by
     the state, in alliance with certain religious bodies,
     and with the aim of eliminating the influence of other
     religious bodies.

     Protestant missionaries in Alaska, such as the
     Moravians, found it very difficult to accept even the
     non-religious culture of the Alaskans. They were
     appalled at the lack of cleanliness, and especially at
     the dirty clothing. Eskimo skin parkas were never
     cleaned, and might not be discarded until they were
     full of holes and the fur worn away (Oswalt 1990:83).
     But St Herman of Alaska, we are told, "did not wear a
     shirt, but instead a smock of deerskin, which he did
     not take off or change for several years at a time, so
     that the fur on it was completely worn off, and the
     leather glossy" (Oleksa 1992:119).

     In the case of Alaska, then, Orthodox missions were far
     less insistent on cultural change than Protestant
     missions, with Roman Catholic missions falling
     somewhere in between (Ellanna & Balluta 1992:299;
     Oswalt 1990:134,183). 

-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk