A complex and necessary meeting

When the Jesuit and Oblate missionaries began their evangelizing work among the indigenous peoples of Canada in the 17th and 19th centuries, they met with spiritual cultures of great wealth and complexity. The peoples of the First Nations were in no way, tabula flavour spiritual: they had elaborate cosmologies, ritual practices of great depth, and mediation figures between the human and the divine. The figure of the Virgin Mary proved to be, in many contexts, one of the most accessible elements of Christianity for indigenous peoples: in many traditions there were female figures of spiritual power and intercession that created a ground of resonance with the Mother of God.

This meeting was not free of tension and injustice. Religious colonialism left deep wounds that still hurt. But in the same complex process, traditions of truly uncultured Marian devotion emerged that are still alive in many indigenous communities today.

Note: The History of Kateri Tekakwitha, el Lirio de los Mohawks, y los Jesuit Martyrs of Canada are treated on their own pages. This page focuses on complementary aspects of indigenous Marian evangelization.

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate: the Church of the Canadian North

If the Jesuits were the first evangelizers of the indigenous people of New France in the 17th century, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (IMO) were the great missionaries of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in the most remote territories of Canada. Founded in 1816 by Charles- Joseph- Eugène de Mazenod in Aix- in-Provence, the Oblates adopted as charisma the mission "among the poorest and most abandoned," with the Immaculate Virgin as patron of the congregation - hence her name.

The first Oblates arrived in Canada the 2 December 1841: a group of four parents and two brothers, led by Father Honorat, arrived in Montreal at the invitation of Bishop Ignace Bourget. His devotion to the Immaculate Virgin Mary was at the heart of his spirituality and was, from the very first moment, an integral part of his presentation of the Gospel to the indigenous peoples.

The Oblates among the Algonquins, believe, give and Inuit

The Oblate expansion to the North was extraordinarily rapid and sacrificed. From Quebec, the Oblates soon reached the algonquins the Great Lakes and Northern Quebec (from ~ 1845), the believe (since 1845), the dene of the Northwest Territories (from ~ 1860) and, finally, the Inuit the Arctic (permanent presence since 1912).

The mission of Fort Good Hopein the Great Mackenzie River, was founded by the Oblates and dedicated to Our Lady of Good Hope - Our Lady of Good Hope - in a land where winter lasted eight months and temperatures fell to 40 degrees below zero. Marian devotion was the spiritual heat the missionaries offered to the communities in the midst of the material cold. In the Arctic, the Oblates learned Inuit languages and began to transmit Marian devotion in a radically different cultural context from European.

The translation of Marian prayers into belief

Los believe - the largest indigenous people in Canada, with more than 350,000 people distributed from Quebec to Alberta - had deep contact with Marian devotion through the Oblates. The system of silabic writing believes, originally developed by the Methodist James Evans in 1840 and adopted and disseminated by the Oblates for their missionary purposes, allowed the publication of prayers, catecisms and Marian hymns in the language he believes. Many Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta believe communities adopted devotion to the Immaculate Conception As an Oblate patron, and her holiday of December 8 was the occasion for great celebrations that gathered to believe from wide regions.

The most characteristic Marian devotion of the Canadian West believes, however, revolves around Santa Ana: the lake Lac Ste. AnneIn Alberta, called by the people themselves, he believed "Lake of the Great Spirit" before evangelization, he became with the Oblates instead of Marian pilgrimage. The annual pilgrimage of Lac Ste. Anne - which is held in July and brings together more than 30,000 First Nations people from all over the region - is the largest indigenous religious pilgrimage in Western Canada, one of the country's most massive.

The Algonquins and the Wampum Rosary

Las Relations of Jesuits - the annual reports that the Jesuits sent to their superiors in France between 1632 and 1673, documents of exceptional historical value - contain fascinating testimonies about the reception of Marian devotion among the Algonquin-speaking peoples of New France. One of the most unique is the description of the wampum rosary.

El wampum are cylindrical accounts of sea shell - white or violet - that the peoples of North-East America manufactured and used as ceremonial material, exchange and historical memory. After the evangelization of the ferrets and the Abenaki, the Jesuit Relations they document how the new converts adapted wampum for Christian practice: wampum beads stranded in a cord served as rosary beads to pray Marian prayer. In 1654, even the sending to Paris of a ferret necklace made as a votive offering for the Virgin is documented. The Relations of volumes 10, 61, 62 and 63 record this use.

This detail has a profound theological and cultural significance. Wampum, in the Algonquin tradition, was a sacred material, loaded with ceremonial and spiritual sense. When the wampum accounts became rosary accounts, the Marian prayer was incorporated into the algonquin spiritual universe not as a strange body but as something that could use the same sacred materials of that tradition. The Virgin Mary, prayed with wampum, was already - to some extent - an Algonquin Virgin.

Los orjibway (anisinabe): el Father Baraga y Wikwemic

Father Frederick Baraga: Venerable of the Church

The Father Frederick Baraga (1797-1868), a Slovenian missionary who arrived in the Great Lakes in 1831, is a figure of primary importance in the history of the evangelization of the Ojibway (anishinaabe). Baraga learned with considerable depth the indigenous languages of the region: he published in 1843 a Grammar de la Lengua Ojibwa and in 1853 a bulky Dictionary of the language Ojibwa, works that remain academic language references of exceptional value. In his dictionaries and grammar he included Marian prayers in Ojibwa - the Hail Mary, the Salve Regina - so that the indigenous faithful could pray in their own language.

Baraga was appointed first bishop of Marquette (Michigan) in 1857 and died in 1868. His cause of beatification was formally opened in 1952. Pope Benedict XVI declared it Venerable en 2012, thus recognizing the heroicity of their virtues. The cause is today in Rome pending the approval of a medical miracle attributed to his intercession. For the Ojibway Catholics of the Great Lakes region, Baraga is already a venerated figure whose memory is honoured in many indigenous communities in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario.

Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island: fe indígena enraizada

The reservation of Wikwemikong, on Manitoulin Island (Ontario) - the world's largest river island on Lake Huron - houses one of the oldest and most rooted Catholic indigenous communities in Canada. The Jesuits established a mission there in 1844, the oldest in northern Ontario, then continued by the Oblates. Wikwemikong has the distinction of being the only non-ceded reservation in Canada that remains autobernated under the terms of the original treaty.

The devotion to the Virgin Mary in Wikwemikong is expressed through rosary groups, Marian images in the parish church and in the homes, and liturgical celebrations that combine elements of the anishinaabe tradition with the Catholic liturgy. Every summer, Wikwemikong organizes the Cultural Festival - the largest festival of the First Nations of Ontario - where the Catholic faith and indigenous traditions coexist in forms of genuine inculturation.

The Haudenosaunee (Irochese): Kahnawake and Kateri's companions

Kahnawake: the sanctuary of the first indigenous saint of North America

The Community Kahnawake - on the southern bank of the San Lorenzo River, opposite Montreal - was founded as a Jesuit mission in 1676 under the name Sault Saint- Louis. There he lived and died in 1680 _, whose full history takes up a page of this website. The San Francisco Javier Chapel de Kahnawake houses the relics of the saint - canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012 - and is today the National Shrine of Santa Kateri of Canada. In its walls there are Marian icons of Jesuit tradition with decorative elements of mohawk culture.

Kateri's companions in Jesuit sources

Kateri Tekakwitha was not the only Mohawk woman who developed an intense Marian spirituality in Kahnawake. Father Pierre Cholenec SJ - Kateri's biographer - mentions in his writings several companions who shared their devotion to the Virgin and the practice of the rosary. The most documented are Anastasia Tegonhatsianga y Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta: The latter, an Algonquin widow migrated to Kahnawake, was a spiritual guide of Kateri in his early mission and was known for his devotion to the rosary. These women formed around Kateri a kind of informal spiritual community, united by Marian prayer and meditation of the mysteries of Christ and the Dolores of the Virgin.

The Northwest Coast of British Columbia: Inculturation and Marian Art

Los Oblatos entre los Coast Salish, los Tsilhqot’in y los Dakelh

In British Columbia, the Oblates worked from the second half of the 19th century among many peoples: Coast Salish (including Stó: lō del Valle Fraser), the Tsilhqot’in (chilcotines) y los Dakelh (carriers). Father Léon Fouquet OMI founded in 1861 the mission of St. Mary’s in Mission (Fraser Valley), which became an important centre of evangelization of the Stó: lō and other Salish peoples. The Oblate missions of the Northwest Coast introduced Marian devotion into communities whose traditional spirituality included female figures of spiritual knowledge and mediation.

La Coast Salish Madonna: artistic inculturation in the 21st century

In 2021, the Canadian iconographer Andre Prevostwith a study in Vancouver, created the Coast Salish Madonna & Christ Child by Oblate father Garry LaBoucane for the St. Thomas Aquinas High School chapel of North Vancouver. The work represents the Virgin Mary dressed in white-front Coast Salish regal, with the Child Jesus wrapped in a cradleboard (beholder) salish, and with 23-carat gold applications. It was documented by the National Catholic Register as one of the most successful examples of sacred art inculturated in Canada.

This image is significant: it is not an academic curiosity but a work of living devotion, commissioned by an Oblate priest for a school chapel with students of the First Nations. The Virgin Mary with face and dress Coast Salish states that the Gospel is not the property of any specific culture and that Mary can be represented - and venerated - with the colors and forms of every people who host it.

Residential schools and the path to reconciliation

It is impossible to speak of the Virgin Mary and First Nations of Canada without mentioning the painful chapter of residential schools. From the late 19th century to 1996, the Canadian government - often with the collaboration of religious congregations, including the Oblates of Mary Immaculate - managed a system of schools in which indigenous children were separated from their families and subjected to a regime of forced assimilation. In many of these schools, very serious physical, psychological and sexual abuse was committed. In 2021, the finding of thousands of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools shocked Canada and the world.

The figure of the Virgin Mary was present in these schools: her image decorated the corridors where the crimes were committed. The Catholic Church of Canada has asked for forgiveness for its role, and Pope Francis visited Canada in July 2022 specifically to apologize to indigenous communities.

On the path of reconciliation, the figure of the Virgin of the Dolores - the mother who weeps for her dead son, who sought the body of her Son to give her a decent burial - can resound again in the indigenous communities that continue to seek their missing children. The Virgin who knows what it is to lose a child can be, in this context, a comforting presence that does not explain the pain but accompanies it.

A path that continues

La historia de la Virgen María entre los pueblos indígenas de Canadá no es una historia cerrada ni simple. Es una historia viva, en proceso, llena de heridas que todavía duelen y de brotes de esperanza que sorprenden. Los wampums que sirvieron de rosario para los primeros hurones y abenaki que rezaron con los jesuitas; los diccionarios ojibwa del Padre Baraga con sus oraciones marianas; la peregrinación anual de Lac Ste. Anne donde 30.000 indígenas veneran a Santa Ana y a la Virgen; la Coast Salish Madonna de North Vancouver; el santuario de Kateri en Kahnawake… Todo esto es parte de una historia que el tiempo no ha cerrado sino que sigue escribiendo.

The Virgin Mary - which the Christian tradition presents as the woman who "kept all these things in her heart" (Lk 2: 19) - also keeps this story: that of her indigenous children from Canada, who found it in the forest, in the ice, in the meadow and in the Fraser Valley, and who continue to seek it on the difficult path of healing and reconciliation.