Our Shared Shelf discussion

Perhaps it's my stage in life (middle aged Mom), but the point that resonated most strongly with me was the indifference of the natives to Nettie's missionary teachings. It's just like the experience of being a parent, and it's probably the same for teachers. You give your all to pass on some of your wisdom, but for the most part, you get ignored anyway.

I'm just putting that out there for you young folks to show your appreciation to your parents and teachers because it's often a rather thankless task.

Certainly, it's important to respect teachers and parents. But I'd just re careful about comparing missionaries to those types of figures. It's a colonialist practice, and it suggests that the natives need to learn and/or are children that need to be taught proper behavior and punished for bad behavior. I realize you probably didn't mean it that way, so I don't mean to accuse you of anything, I just think it's important to recognize that distinction.

The reason the Olinka were not as receptive to the missionaries as they though they would be is because they have their own culture, spiritual practices, and ways of living. Missionaries attempt to impose their ways onto others as superior. While good things can come of it (for example, from The Color Purple, better gender equity through education of girls and discouragement of certain damaging practices), the overall results are often primarily negative. This is the main reason that I sometimes had a hard time sympathizing with Nettie's letters. Missionaries are often unwelcome, and native populations are under no obligation to welcome their teachings.

Katelyn wrote: "I'd just re careful about comparing missionaries to those types of figures. natives need to learn and/or are children that need to be taught proper behavior and punished for bad behavior. I realize you probably didn't mean it that way, so I don't mean to accuse you of anything, I just think it's important to recognize that distinction."

You're right that I didn't mean it that way - no infantilizing of the natives and certainly no punishment - but the missionaries did go there to teach, and they didn't really cause that much damage. It was capitalism in the end that did the village in.

The specific trigger to my post in my own life is that I volunteered to mentor a high school student in my town. The school district had me fingerprinted and everything. But then when it came to contacting my student, she never bothered to write back. I should have known that would happen. What teenager wants another adult in her life?

I love this idea of indifference, and I too was struck by how much the Olinka really didn't care that the missionaries were there.

I hadn't given much thought to missionaries until I was an Anthropology minor in college. Let me be clear that I am speaking to religious missions, not humanitarian aid. The two are very different, though I know that modern missionaries have endeavored to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of the people they are traveling so far to help. The problem for me is the underlying idea that these people need spiritual help in the first place. Generally, a missionary's understanding is that the group to whom they are proselytizing have an inherently WRONG understanding of the world and must therefore be saved. Missionaries tend to go into their mission field with the understanding that their own story is correct and worth sharing, while the stories of the people whose homes they are entering is wrong and needs to be changed. This is tragic to me because it misses the beauty and richness that has lived and thrived in the native culture. The so-obvious-it-really-shouldn't-need-to-be-said-but-I-will-say-it-anyway exception to this is any tradition or custom that infringes on basic human rights.

Kressel: I too am a mom, with a daughter entering that oh-so-lovely "tween" stage. I had not made the connection, but it is an interesting point. I think the point you are getting at, that feeling of trying to be there and trying to help but being shut out, can be seen both in parenting and in the situation in the book. Perhaps the best way to handle both issues is to make other humans (our own children or not) aware that we are THERE and we want to provide whatever it may be that they need. Then stand ready when (and if) they ask for our help.

erika wrote: "I love this idea of indifference, and I too was struck by how much the Olinka really didn't care that the missionaries were there.

I hadn't given much thought to missionaries until I was an Anthr..."

I like your comment.

To me, very bluntly put, "missionary work = actions coming from a place of superiority, with the aim of shoving down the throat of others one's own belief system, whilst implying that local beliefs and customs are not only wrong but less worth". It is unsolicited advice at its worst.

While I agree with the statements about when missionaries force cultural, and even spiritual, ideals on a group of people, that this is horribly wrong and irretrievably damaging, I will say that the majority of persons that I know who are foreign missionaries (meaning going to a country to whom they are not native) they are truly doing so out of the belief of wanting to share a joy that they have found that they see missing in someone else. That does not mean discounting their culture, but enriching it. Much the same way that we want to liberate third world nations by teaching hygiene, birth control, health standards, etc (which could be argued to be Western cultural incursions), their desire is to share a spiritual element. Many may disagree with this, but for (most), I do believe this is the intent.

I personally have not read the books but anything that involved the Native Americans or Indigenous peoples in any way having to deal with missionaries, or those who come in and force changes in their lives, leaves quite the horrible taste in my mouth.

I've had to do a lot of years' worth of research into the history, culture, and practices of certain tribes here in North America, and I have been long infuriated by what was done to them in the name of "Christianity's God" and white people's arrogant sense of "superiority." Missionaries may have good intentions, but as I've learned in intersectional feminism, your "intentions" are bupkis compared to what you've actually done, the effect of your actual actions and words upon others.

Honestly, I'd applaud the Native Americans mentioned in the book (Which tribe by the way? Was that ever mentioned??) for their sheer indifference. They are not "lacking" in anything and I would wish the missionaries to see that from the get-go and not force their own biases, beliefs, and prejudices upon the others in order to satisfy their own need for "having a good effect upon the world" as in, personal ego.

As for some of the comments regarding the "need" the third world nations have of hygiene, birth control, health standards, and the like, I would first direct you to researching for your own purposes who was actually responsible for their rather cruddy lack or attempt of it. Many of the places in Africa, South Asia, and other places were not like that originally when the white Europeans came. The white Europeans robbed their land of resources, goods, and did their best to force the people of the land into a cruel slavery of working their own ancestor's land with no legal (in the European's eyes) way to "claim" their own land of birth.

In that way, we are directly responsible for the appalling conditions of those "third world" countries people like to quote as reasons for pity and conversion. Yes, it is good that we are trying to mitigate our own worst offenses, but the fact that so many come from the misguided impression that such end result is actually the "natural state of the people without white people intervention" rather than "the actual end result OF white people intervention (aka forced conquest and invasion and destruction)" is extremely worrying to me.

Why indeed should anybody want to listen or "have" to listen to a group of foreign people who tries to change their culture when they do not wish for change? We would be outraged if someone send groups into our country to try to change us, would we not? Why can we not understand the others' reactions to our invasions into their lands?

As for the comment that capitalism was the one that "did them in" not the missionaries, I beg you to think for one moment upon this question: ...Who was the one that brought capitalism to their land in the first place?

I know for a fact it did not exist before the white Europeans' arrival. And the fact that they had to conform to the capitalism or die, was a result of the enforcing of the white Europeans' culture upon them in that systemic invasion and conquest. The missionaries merely played a part in it, even if they did not believe they did.

So I will judge them by the frame of their overall actions, not by their stated intentions.

There is Teaching and Teaching the missionary movement well meaning as it was came from a belief one people and culture was inherently superior to another. Not a practice we would condone here.

The Terra Nullius doctrine fucked this world up, it really did...