In the early nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries evangelical
hymns into the Ojibwe language, regarding this music not only as a
shared form of worship but also as a tool for rooting out native
cultural identity. But for many Minnesota Ojibwe today, the hymns
emerged from this history of material and cultural dispossession to
become emblematic of their identity as a distinct native people.
Author Michael McNally uses hymn singing as a lens to view culture in
motion--to consider the broader cultural processes through which Native
American peoples have creatively drawn on the resources of ritual to
make room for survival, integrity, and a cultural identity within the
confines of colonialism.