Ojibwe Singers Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion

by McNally, Michael D.

• ISBN13: 9780195134643
• ISBN10: 0195134648
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Ojibwe or Anishinaabe are a native American people of the northern Great Lakes region. 19th-century missionaries promoted the singing of evangelical hymns translated into the Ojibwe language as a tool for rooting out their "indianness," but the Ojibwe have ritualized the singing to make the hymns their own. In this book, McNally relates the history and current practice of Ojibwe hymn singing to explore the broader cultural processes that place ritual resources at the center of so many native struggles to negotiate the confines of colonialism.

Author Biography

Michael D. McNally is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Overview	3	(20)
PART I: HISTORY
Sacred Musics
Traditional Ojibwe Music and Protestant Hymnody	23	(20)
Ojibwes, Missionaries, and Hymn Singing, 1828--1867	43	(82)
Music as Negotiation
Uses of Hymn Singing, 1868--1934	81	(44)
PART II: ETHNOGRAPHY
Twentieth-Century Hymn Singing as Cultural Criticism	125	(82)
Music as Memory
Contemporary Hymn Singing and the Politics of Death in Native America	165	(30)
CONCLUSION: DOES HYMN SINGING WORK?
Notes on the Logic of Ritual Practice	195	(12)
Notes	207	(22)
Glossary	229	(2)
Selected Bibliography	231	(10)
Index	241