Heathen

In Du Vernet’s diary, the word heathen operates as an important marker of difference by distinguishing the Christian Ojibwe from other Ojibwe.  Though he thought these people’s “souls needed saving,” the diary also provides evidence that Ojibwe ceremony, including the Midewiwin society, was flourishing in the lives of the Rainy River Ojibwe.

During Du Vernet’s time, missionaries and government officials liberally applied words like “heathen” and “pagan” to Indigenous persons in missionary and government reports. Their overlapping use of these derogatory terms shows the close alliance between Christian missionary and Canadian colonial perspectives on Indigenous peoples at the turn of the twentieth century.