Positioning the Missionary

Positioning the Missionary examines Anglican missionarywork in nineteenth-century British Columbia. Its chief protagonists areJohn Booth Good, an agent of the Society for the Propagation of theGospel, and the Nlha7kapmx poeple of southwestern B.C. Asking why theNkha7kapmx embraced Good, how he sough [...]
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Positioning the Missionary examines Anglican missionarywork in nineteenth-century British Columbia. Its chief protagonists areJohn Booth Good, an agent of the Society for the Propagation of theGospel, and the Nlha7kapmx poeple of southwestern B.C. Asking why theNkha7kapmx embraced Good, how he sought to evangelize and civilizethem, and how they responded, it situates Good's mission at severalscales: the local ethnographic literature; histories of contact andconflict in mainland B.C. from the early nineteenth century; thetheology and sociology of mission; and the recent critical literatureon European colonialism.Christophers rethinks mission work in the light of contemporarytheories of colonial discourse and disciplinary power, and speculatesabout the interpretative potential of such concepts. In addition toGood's encounter with the Nlha7kapmx, Positioning theMissionary also refers to other colonial missions, identifying byturns the peculiarity of Good's experience and the ways in which itconforms to broader patterns of mission history. As a reflection on theongoing politics of colonialism, this book discusses Good'scontribution to the devastation of Nlha7kapmx culture and hisduplicitous role in the appropriation of Nlha7kapmx lands.