The Mennonite case for counter-sovereignty through Indigenous assimilation: Settler colonialism, self-determination and relation to place in religious identity

Abstract

This essay analyses settler colonialism’s impact on religious settler identity through one community’s perceptions and interactions with Indigenous peoples. It combines a normative commitment to Indigenous self-determination with an empirical study of Mennonite settlement narratives by drawing on Indigenous sources to interpret Mennonite descriptions of Indigenous communities between 1880 and 1939. Specifically, using two central characteristics of Indigenous religion and politics to frame the analysis – relationality and self-determination – reveals how Mennonites narrated Indigenous presence to establish their own self-determination. The study identifies the evaluative categories that Mennonites used to narrate Indigenous communities and then uses those categories with a focus on relationality and self-determination to assess North American Mennonite religious history in the same period. It demonstrates how Mennonites’ arguments for Indigenous peoples’ assimilation to settler society were motivated not just by Christian conviction but also by their desire to secure their own sovereignty. Mennonites’ interest in assimilation has at least as much to do with their relation to place as it does with their religious claims.