HONORS JUNIOR SEMINAR: MISSIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Fall 2002

 Case Study: Christians in Native America

Assignment: Your group will be responsible for researching efforts to evangelize American Indians by Catholic and Protestant groups, from its origins to the present day.  You will present your research in a well-organized presentation to teach the class what you have learned.

Research topics:

• Primary: Because there are so many tribes and regions, and so many Christian groups with various methods, your first task will be to choose two or three tribes whose experiences you find especially interesting, typical, or significant.  (Consulting someone at the university or elsewhere who is very familiar with Indian culture and history will help you make this choice.) It would be helpful to the class to learn about tribes whose experiences with Christian missions were quite different ­ success vs. failure, violence vs. peace, synthesis vs. conversion, Protestant vs. Catholic, for example.  Be sure to give us key dates and figures, including the denominational or societal affiliation of the missionaries.  You will be able to weave these stories for us, so concentrate on what your group finds compelling.
• Secondary: Draw out the connections and distinctions among your narratives, generalize about the relationship of missionaries to Native Americans and vice versa, and comment on how the present state of affairs is connected to the histories you present.

Presentation guidelines:

• Group work:  Divide the labor of research among members of the group.  Meet often outside of class to report your findings, and keep in touch via e-mail.  Your presentation will be shaped by how your research is going, so frequent contact will give you a good idea of what the presentation will be like long before the details need to be planned.
• Preparation and rehearsal:  You will be teaching the class.  Therefore, prepare to be informative above all.  I will be happy to copy and distribute any handouts you’d like to make, and/or make arrangements for audiovisual equipment.  Not all members of the group need speak; your guide should be how the material can be presented most effectively.  You have one class period (75 minutes).  You must rehearse your complete presentation ahead of time.  Failure to do so will be obvious to the class and will detract from the effectiveness of your teaching.
• Evaluation:  After the presentation, each member of the group will anonymously evaluate the work of all members of the group (including him/herself).  Your grade will be determined by the instructor’s evaluation of the group’s presentation, combined with your peers’ evaluation of your individual work in the group.

Select Bibliography:

The following resources in print and on the web are starting points for your research.  Please include a bibliography of works actually cited in your presentation, either as a handout or on an overhead or slide.  Thorough research means consulting both print and online resources.  Websites are best consulted as you would an encyclopedia: to discover historical facts that are generally accepted, and to provide bibliographic information on journals and books to be consulted in print.  Both websites and books may come with an interpretive agenda, especially if they are produced by people or groups with a religious or anti-religious mission.  Such materials can still be useful if you are aware of potential bias and take them as spokestexts for particular sides in an ongoing debate.

George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide.  Scholarly work by an Osage/Cherokee showing how four famous and successful missionaries confused their religious values with their cultural values and became missionaries of the latter.

Robert F. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage.  Sociological/historical analysis of how successful 17^th century Protestant missions actually were.

Marquette University Library, “Christianity among the Indians of the Americas” (http://www.marquette.edu/library/collections/archives/indians.html).  Description of archive collection with bibliographic notes.

California Department of Parks and Recreation, “Five Views” (http://www.ohp.parks.ca.gov/5Views/5views1b.htm). Part of a history of California from various ethnic perspectives.

John Barry Ryan, “Listening to Native Americans” (http://www.op.org/DomCentral/library/native.htm). Journal article that refers to many accounts of Native American experiences with Christianity.