Understanding conversion to Jehovism among Indigenous peoples: The case of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg

Abstract

French

Although present in Aboriginal communities since the early 1930s, Jehovism among Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States has not yet been the subject of any published ethnographic, sociological, or historical study. This article presents the result of the first ethnographic study with Jehovah’s Witnesses among Aboriginal peoples in Canada. From an online field of research spanning over a period of 10 months with Anishinabe (Algonquin) Witnesses from Kitigan Zibi (Outaouais, Quebec), I explore the motivations behind the decision to become a Jehovah’s Witness for the latter. I also show that the first conversions in Kitigan Zibi are mainly due to a dual historical context that created a fertile ground for conversion. Finally, I propose the concept of ‘small-scale conversion’ as another way to conceive the intergenerational transmission of religion.

Keywords

conversion First Nations indigenous peoples intergenerational transmission of religion Jehovah’s Witnesses religious changes

Introduction

Although Jehovah’s Witnesses represent a considerable number of persons worldwide – 8,699,048 members in 2022¹ – several researchers perceive a marked lack of scholarly interest in this religious group (Chryssides, 2016: 1, 7; Knox, 2011; 2017; Stark and Iannaccone, 1997; Wah, 2001). The relatively sparse academic literature reflects this lack of interest. This is even more the case as regards literature concerning Jehovah’s Witnesses among Indigenous peoples. In fact, besides a few publications from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania² (for example, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1978, 1984, 2009) covering North America, I have only been able to find one unpublished paper written by a Jehovah’s Witness concerning First Nations Witnesses in Canada (Placid, 2008). Outside of Canada, I only found a thesis and an article by the same author concerning Indigenous Chontal speakers Witnesses from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico (Barchas-Lichtenstein, 2013, 2014). I have found nothing specifically about Jehovah’s Witnesses of Native American communities. One might think that this lack of interest results from the recent attention paid by scholars to ‘new religious movements’ and the ‘individualization’ of religion. Indeed, Jehovah’s Witnesses register as an ‘old new religion’ (Chryssides, 2016: 7–8) which implies implicitly that they have not received the same attention as newer groups like the neo-shamans, druids, or the Bahá’í Faith. Moreover, Witnesses are quite far from what characterizes the individualization of religion, that is to say, ‘religious mobility and hybridity, the primacy of subjective experience over the institutional aspect of religion, and so on’ (Meintel, 2014: 196).

However, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a strong presence in Indigenous communities across Canada and the United States. For example, we can find Jehovah’s Witnesses in Aboriginal communities in Canada at least since the 1930s in British Columbia (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1978, 1984) and since the 1940s in Quebec (McGregor, 2004: 294 for the Algonquins and Library and Archives Canada (LAC), 1949 for the Atikamekw). Today, there are four Aboriginal congregations in Canada, two Odawa congregations in Ontario and two Blackfoot congregations in Alberta. In the United States, Native Jehovah’s Witnesses can be found in great numbers among the Navajo peoples – who are said to have been the first Native nation to create their congregation in their language (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, n.d.-a). Of course, this list is by no means exhaustive: many other Aboriginal nations in Canada or the United States have Jehovah’s Witnesses among their members.

Therefore, to contribute to documenting Jehovah’s Witnesses’ presence in Aboriginal communities and remedying – partially at least – this ethnographic vacuum, I undertook a research project (Simard-Émond, 2021) with the Gatineau Valley English Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses based in Maniwaki (bordering the Native community of Kitigan Zibi, Outaouais, Quebec). This congregation has 19 Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg (Algonquins) members.³ The primary objective of my research was to document the historical and current presence of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kitigan Zibi with the idea that to explain the success or failure of religious groups, practices, or beliefs among First Nations, it is, first, necessary to understand the mechanisms of conversion within the framework of Indigenous ethics and epistemologies.

In this article, I will explore the motivations behind the decision to become a Jehovah’s Witness for the Anishinabeg. After describing the methodology used and my theoretical approach (‘Methodology and theoretical approach’ section), I will present a brief portrait of Jehovah’s Witnesses (‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ section). In the third section, I will examine the first conversions in Kitigan Zibi and show that they are mainly due to a double historical context that created a fertile ground for conversion: (1) the increasing conflict between local priests (Oblate) and the Anishinabeg, and (2) a changing economic paradigm: the rapid arrival of modernity (understood in Indigenous context – see note 11). Accordingly, I will emphasize the pragmatism/empiricism of the Anishinabeg (Bousquet, 2013: 94) and the fact that conversion is less the adoption of a system of beliefs but rather one of knowledge, and that religion constitutes a system of verifiable truths that can concretely help people in their daily lives (Roberts, 2012: 278). Hence, I will argue that converting to a new religion and the desire to improve one’s condition, economically or otherwise, should not be underestimated; in other words, the links among religion, economy and modernity are not as tenuous as they seem (Gauthier, 2012; Gauthier et al., 2013), nor are the links between economic changes and cosmological changes (Duchesne, 2017). Since the number of new conversions in Kitigan Zibi is at an all-time low, in the fourth and final section, I will address the intergenerational transmission of religion by which Anishinabe Witnesses reproduced themselves. I will propose the concept of ‘small-scale conversion’ as another way to conceive the intergenerational transmission of religion.

Methodology and theoretical approach

An online field

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020, the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses decided that all meetings in person were to be postponed to an undetermined future. Thus, Witnesses started to use video conference – mainly Zoom – to conduct their activities. Therefore, from August 2020 until December 2020, I attended all online activities and the two weekly Zoom meetings of the Gatineau Valley Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. I also periodically attended meetings that contained discussions of interest to me or involved important events until June 2021. In addition, I attended a weekly Bible study with three collaborators from November 2020 through June 2021. I also conducted 15 semi-structured interviews by videoconference, with nine Anishinabeg and two Algonquins from Timiskaming now residing in Val-d’Or (Québec). All my collaborators are Aboriginal Witnesses and members of a local congregation in their places of residence. Finally, I communicated by email or telephone countless times with various members of the Maniwaki congregation.⁴ I could finally briefly visit some collaborators in Kitigan Zibi in the fall of 2021 and the winter of 2022.⁵ The data collected were mainly interviews verbatim and field notes. For this article, these data were examined using the oral history method that consists of directly interviewing people who lived or witnessed the events of interest to the researcher (Thompson and Bornat, 2017 [1978]; Vincent, 1991). Due to a long tradition of oral history in Indigenous communities, these (hi)stories are highly reliable (Drapeau, 1984; Inksetter, 2019). To analyse my data, I used the open coding approach (Tracy, 2020 [2013]: 219), first by identifying the emerging themes, and assembling the relevant ones – for this article – in another document (Ryan and Bernard, 2003).

My epistemological stance

Before going further, I would like to briefly examine my own epistemological – paradigmatic – stance. First, as an ethnographer who works in Indigenous studies, I do not differ from a lot of my colleagues who simply want to understand the other from an emic point of view; the interpretative paradigm. I am fully aware of the naiveté of this idea which has been repeated ad nauseam (beginning with Clifford and Marcuse in 1986 and more recently – and implicitly – with Viveiros de Castro, 2004). But why then do we continue to do what we do? Maybe because these critiques are necessary and helpful. Perhaps also that it only constitutes a part of the truth. My own work emanates from this paradigm (see Duchesne and Simard-Émond, 2019) and countless good papers and books that I cite in this article. Second, in this text, I have tried to do more than just explain the conversion to Jehovism in Kitigan Zibi; I have tried to show – as plenty of authors did before me (for example: Bousquet, 2008; Inksetter, 2017; Morissette, 2018; Westman, 2022) – one facet of the agency, resistance, and disobedience that Indigenous people have often shown in the face of colonization. Recent work tends to show – to paraphrase Michel de Certeau (1990 [1980]: XXXV–XXXVI) – that aboriginal people were – and are, as they have shown– less passive, disciplined, and docile than we once believed.

About conversion

First, I do not understand conversion as a linear, unequivocal, and complete transition from one religious system to another but rather as a fluid and dynamic process in perpetual movement over time (Beaucage et al., 2007). Concerning conversion among Indigenous peoples, Laugrand (2002: 10–16) defines three etymologies of the concept, where he classifies the main studies based on this theme. The first – older – approach defines conversion as the action of ‘turning to God’, that is, passing from a false belief to a true belief. The second emphasizes the transformation of the convert, in short, the change brought about by the conversion process. The third, more recent tendency is to focus on the conversion’s tactical, even strategic character (a functionalist approach that Laugrand seems to favour). Finally, he emphasizes the essential contribution of each of these approaches for defining the conversion process as well as the need to promote a ‘descriptive’ and ‘structural’ approach to conversion, that is, a contextual and historical perspective centred on the structures (social, religious, epistemological, etc.) of the groups in question.

Thus, varying slightly on Laugrand’s postulates and attaching it to the definition of Roberts (2012: 278), conversion will be understood here as a matter of discovery, with the idea that religion is less a ‘system of beliefs and practices’, but rather a system of knowledge that constitutes a system of verifiable truths through experience, and that it can concretely help people in their daily lives. However, the conversion process among Aboriginal peoples can only be fully understood within the framework of Indigenous ethics and epistemologies.

Indigenous ethics and epistemology

Beforehand, it is necessary to define what I mean by the admittedly vague concepts of ‘Indigenous ethics and epistemology’. First, these are broad notions; there are indeed wide intergroup variations and different points of view among the same group. I can only offer a generic version that includes the most important elements, based mainly on data from the Algonquins (this is what I refer to when I use the singular in this subsection title). Also, there is the question of the passage of time and changes. My goal here is obviously not to reify Indigenous populations. It is therefore necessary to remember that ethics and epistemologies, like any cultural component, figure as dynamic processes making them changeable and adaptable.

The first important aspect of Indigenous ethics and epistemology that needs to be addressed here is the ‘sense of individuality’ (Bousquet, 2012a: 397). The meaning of ‘individuality’ is not ‘individualism’ in the Western sense of the term but a form of dialectic between the ideal of autonomy and the necessary collaboration with the other members of the group (Black, 1977; Henrikson, 2010 [1973]; Ridington, 1998; Rogers, 1969: 47). In fact, as Bousquet (2009: 59) wrote, ‘a person demonstrating good behaviour, able to fend for himself in the forest, to feed himself and his family was a socially accomplished individual’. Also, this sense of individuality is guarded by the principle of ‘non-interference’, which means respect for the choices and decisions of others (Bousquet, 2012a: 397–398; Hamel-Charest, 2018).

In my opinion, the most important aspect of Indigenous epistemology is what Bousquet (2013: 94) called pragmatism and empiricism. As Ridington (1998: 102) noted, in Subarctic hunting societies, there is a strong relationship between knowledge and power and true knowledge derives from experience. Experience is therefore at the base of acquiring and verifying knowledge. This is how the concepts of pragmatism and empiricism defined by Bousquet come into play:

This [Algonquin] system of thought is based on a philosophy that could be described as both pragmatic and empirical. It is pragmatic because it is turned towards reality: only what has real consequences is true. One cannot think of something without thinking of its practical implications. Moreover, what is true is revealed through experience. There is no absolute truth: we learn by verification. This thought is therefore also empirical: experience is at the origin of all valid ideas. There is no objective truth independent of the actors since the truth is inseparable from the intersubjectivity of the subjects. (Bousquet 2013: 294, author’s translation)

With this brief premise on indigenous ethics and epistemology, I believe we will be better able to identify the process of conversion of the Algonquin populations to Catholicism and thus to Jehovism (see infra).

Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a premillennialist⁶ and restorationist religious movement that self-identifies as Reformed Christianity (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, n.d.-b). The movement is centred around two founding ideas: the importance of the Bible and the belief in the imminence of the end of the current world, which will be replaced by Paradise on earth, under the rule of the Kingdom of Christ in heaven (Genest, 2016: 52). Witnesses consider the Bible to be Jehovah’s words, and historically and scientifically accurate (Genest, 2016: 50). The Bible is therefore the first and only source of their beliefs (Rosa, 2015: 8). For the Witnesses, the only reliable authority to interpret Scripture is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (see note 2 – Chryssides, 2016: 146). This way of conceiving the Bible, which rejects all theological traditions and pre-existing biblical exegeses implies a singular doctrine that is often in opposition to other Christian denominations. Thus, the Witnesses reject the Trinity, the predestination of salvation and eternal punishment (hell).

Another distinctive aspect of Jehovah’s Witnesses is the door-to-door proselytizing. The most important religious activity for them is preaching, ‘a sacred duty’ (Beckford, 1975: 252–253; Genest, 2016: 139; Penton, 2015: 287; Placid, 2008: 28; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2015a). Each Witness must spend many hours (depending on their abilities) going door-to-door or distributing Watch Tower literature in public places (Stark and Iannaccone, 1997: 139–140). Members of a local congregation will be assigned a territory where they must meet each resident. They are to convey Jehovah’s words and distribute literature (Rosa, 2015: 2). In a typical preaching session, if the person is open to talk,

Witnesses will discuss a local or international issue with them and may offer to read a text to meditate on. They will also take the opportunity to submit one or two biblical passages to their reflection. If the person shows interest, the Witnesses will plan to come back and continue the discussion. A free Bible study may also be offered. (Rosa, 2015: 17, author’s translation)

The purpose of door-to-door evangelizing is to serve Jehovah, attract people to congregational activities, and ultimately lead them to baptism. It should also be noted that Jehovah’s Witnesses take advantage of every opportunity and every conversation to spread the word of Jehovah, which they call ‘informal witnessing’. They believe everyone should hear about Jehovah and have the chance to become a Witness and thus survive Armageddon, the final war between God and human governments (Chryssides, 2016: 20; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2020).

The first conversion in Kitigan Zibi

The conversion process among the Algonquian

Before discussing the first conversion in Kitigan Zibi, I will briefly describe my theoretical position on the conversion process among the Algonquian by examining their conversion from pre-Christian cosmology (Laugrand, 2013) to Catholicism. Like Bousquet (2008: 67), I assume that the conversion to Catholicism, starting in the nineteenth century, is analogous to conversion to new religions today. The validity of this assertion has already been shown for the Algonquins with the conversion to Pentecostalism and pan-Indian spirituality⁷ (Bousquet et al., 2012b, 2013; Polson and Spielmann, 1990) even if in the latter case, people adhere to religious practices and philosophy more than they convert (Jérôme, 2008). Let me reiterate here that the transition from a pre-Christian cosmology to Christianity should not be seen as linear, unambiguous, and complete but rather as a fluid, dynamic and constantly changing process in time.

Conversion to Catholicism among the Algonquins was mainly conducted and coordinated by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate at the start of the nineteenth century (Morissette, 2012). If it is not necessary to describe their methods here, let us simply assert with Deslandres (2005: 109) that they were ‘incorruptible of the faith’. Or, more specifically, that they had a ‘very marked Marian spirituality, and (...) also a very militant mentality [in the missionary aspect]’ (Laperrière, 2001: 178).

In her recent book, Inksetter (2017) proposes an original and convincing way of conceiving the conversion to Catholicism for the Algonquins. She postulates that the missionaries’ elements of Catholicism were perfectly compatible with certain aspects of the Algonquin religious system. She cites the ability to ask for favours, the protective power of objects/rituals and the power of priests (Inksetter, 2017: 255). Indeed, this is evident in the account of the Jesuit Paul Le Jeune and the shaman Carigonan: the latter invited the Jesuit in hopes that he would ‘use his expertise and connections with the powerful beings of the Christian pantheon to heal him’ (quoted in Anderson, 2007: 26). Also, according to Inksetter, Catholicism would have been adopted to preserve Algonquins from possible transgressions by shamans of their social order. To caricature, one could say that the priests, unlike the shamans, were generally benevolent. From this point of view, Algonquin Catholicism would be a new and original form.

In line with Inksetter’s (2017) view of conversion, Bousquet (2008: 67) offered a relatively similar interpretation: ‘(...) people converted because they thought that this would make them stronger, because they thought it would reduce the consumption of alcohol, and because, in the final analysis, they thought Catholicism would re-establish the social order’. This statement is again echoed by Paul Le Jeune’s account of how the collective prayer he organized during a time of famine – which worked – generated great gratitude for his Christian God on the part of the Montagnais (Innu) whom he accompanied (quoted in Anderson, 2007: 27). With my understanding of the Algonquin pattern of conversion established, we can now look at the first Anishinabe Witnesses.

The opposition to the Oblates and the First Anishinabe Witnesses

As mentioned above, it was in the 1940s and 1950s that Jehovah’s Witnesses established themselves in Kitigan Zibi. The Jehovist publishers were sent by the Canadian National Branch based in Georgetown (Ontario) and usually spent 2 or 3 weeks in the community. The first Anishinabe to become Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kitigan Zibi was Madeleine Buckshot in the early 1950s. Since there was no congregation in Kitigan Zibi then, they received their instructions and literature for distribution directly from the national branch. What is distinctive about Madelaine Buckshot – as well as other Anishinabeg who became Witnesses in the 1950s – is that she had learned to read the Bible in Ojibwe before the arrival of the Jehovah’s Witnesses publishers. Before speaking of Madeleine Buckshot, I would like to examine the situation of another Anishinabe who opposed the missionaries as Madeleine did later.

In the 1920s and 1930s Kichi Mide, also called Pien Kijemite or Pien Chimity, was already opposing the Oblates in their desire to extinguish the last connections to traditional Algonquin (shamanic) culture (McGregor, 2004: 247–248). Morissette (2018: 66) adds that Pien Kijemite was not only opposed to the Oblates in their desire to extinguish ‘Algonquin spiritual values’ but also represented Anishinabe customary law and their way of doing politics by opposing the Indian Act (among other things). Pien Kijemite was the last known ‘shaman’ in Kitigan Zibi as he was considered a ‘spiritual leader’ and a ‘great medicine man’, two typical attributes of shamans (McGregor, 2004: 248; Morissette, 2018: 60–65). Also, ‘Kijemite’ means ‘shaman’ or ‘medicine man’ in Anishinabemowin, according to Anishinabe linguist Ernest McGregor (n.d.). Pien Kijemite and his followers opposed the Oblates and Indian Affairs agents by holding traditional (shamanic) ceremonies with sweat lodges and dances – and perhaps even shaking lodges – in undisclosed locations (McGregor, 2004: 251–252). In any case, the movement launched by Pien Kijemite gradually faded in the face of pressure from Oblates and Indian Affairs agents supported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who feared that their assimilation strategy would fail if the Anishinabeg decided to renounce Catholicism and follow Pien Kijemite’s teachings (McGregor, 2004: 249–252). With the death of Pien Kijemite, probably around the mid-1930s, and his most loyal followers, the movement disappeared completely, or at least from the attention of the authorities (McGregor, 2004: 252). It should be noted, however, that most of the Anishinabeg remained faithful to the Oblates in the 1920s and 1930s and continued to attend mass at Notre-Dame-du-Très-Saint-Rosaire church. Were they afraid of the resurgence of a shaman who could make deleterious and evil use of his powers (Inksetter, 2017: 187)? This possibility seems highly likely to me since the fear that shamans could inspire has already been well documented (Hallowell, 1955: 250–290; Lips, 1947).

With this digression regarding Pien Kijemite, I seek to show that in the 1920s and 1930s, Oblate priests for the Anishinabeg were still seen as benevolent figures, unlike shamans. However, the situation of priests in Kitigan Zibi began to change in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, the difficult situation of the young people attending the residential schools (boarding schools) administered by the clergy was already known;⁸ physical and psychological violence towards the boarders, prohibiting them from speaking Anishinabemowin, insufficient or inadequate food, and children often sent against their will very far from their communities in an environment they did not understand (McGregor, 2004: 281–283). As Hamel-Charest (2017: 23, author’s translation) states, ‘This episode [the residential school episode] in Canadian history is important because it contributed to the transformation of the figure of the missionary and the way some Aboriginal peoples viewed the Catholic religion’. Thus, resentment towards the missionaries was growing in Kitigan Zibi. Oblate Father Joseph-Étienne Guinard, who officiated in Maniwaki in the 1940s, noted that ‘the Algonquins were filled with resentment and animosity towards the whites [the Oblates and the Indian Affairs agents]’ (Bouchard, 1980: 221).⁹ As a combined effect of the difficult situation of the young people attending the residential schools and quarrels with the priests concerning the church and the presbytery (see note 9), Father Guinard also noted that ‘(...) the attendance at Mass was very low and most of the faithful did not make their Easter. The Indians [sic] did not frequent the residence [the presbytery built by Father Guinard in 1942] very much (...)’ (Bouchard, 1980: 223). Chief Jean Baptise Chabot (1939–1951), speaking to Father Guinard, summed up the atmosphere that prevailed on the reserve: ‘(...) to put the white men out of the reservation. That is what I intend to do’ (Bouchard, 1980: 222).

At the same time, Madeleine Buckshot, the first Anishinabe to become a Jehovah’s Witness in Kitigan Zibi, emerges in the accounts of the people I interviewed opposing the Oblate missionaries in place in the 1940s and 1950s. I was not told the name of the missionary in question, but it could well be Father Guinard, who officiated in Maniwaki from 1940 to 1963 (Bouchard, 1980: 12–13 and 221–222). Madeleine opposed the missionary in different ways. For example, she did not particularly like his home visits. The custom at the time was that when the missionary visited a house, all the occupants had to kneel and kiss the ring on his hand.¹⁰ However, when the missionary visited Madeleine’s house, Madeleine required that all the people present remain standing and that they do not kiss his ring. Obviously, this did not please the missionary, and a present person, Madeleine’s grandson, remembers that ‘The priest did not like that and had some harsh words, that scared us young children’ (John, 72). Two other collaborators confirmed this story. One stated, ‘Madeleine took a stand against the priest and Catholic customs before she became a Witness’ (Elizabeth, 48). The other collaborator added, ‘Madeleine saw that what was written in the Bible differed from what the priest told her. You know, nothing in the Bible says you must kiss the priest’s hand. She was doing that long before the first publishers came along’ (Lena, 42). I was also told a story about Madeleine going door to door and being attacked by a man who wanted to force her into his house. Madeleine clutched her Bible tightly and prayed to Jehovah, which made the man lose his strength. Thus, we find in this narrative ‘(...) the protective power of objects [the Bible] and rituals [prayer] (...)’ that Inksetter (2017: 254–255) describes as an ‘(...) element of Algonquin [shamanic] cosmology’. I thus perceive in the discourse on Madeleine Buckshot a ‘utopian space’ (De Certeau, 1990 [1980]: 32–36) – in opposition to the socio-economic space that is often beyond the control of local actors – one where a possible by definition ‘miraculous’ (one might say ‘shamanic’ in this case) is affirmed. For me, all these narratives are enough to make Madeleine Buckshot, in the same way as Pien Kijemite (see supra), an ambiguous figure, certainly, but above all, a central persona in the discourse of opposition to the Oblate missionaries.

The process of conversion in Kitigan Zibi

Not long after Madeleine Buckshot, seven other Anishinabeg became Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1950s. To return to my hypothesis about the first Anishinabe Witnesses, I believe that their conversion – as Madeleine Buckshot example shows and like the conversion of Algonquins to Catholicism (Inksetter, 2017) – also had the purpose of preserving them from the control and negative influence of Oblate priests. The problems of the residential schools, combined with the conflict with the missionaries over the rectory and church, showed the Anishinabeg that the priests were no longer as benevolent as they had once been and that they might even be harmful in their repeated transgressions of the Anishinabe social order. Returning to shamanism was not an option since this system and its shamans were even more dangerous than Catholicism and its priests. However, a new religious movement appeared in Kitigan Zibi in the late 1940s: the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A new alternative to the priests to whom the Anishinabeg were strongly opposed had presented itself. Moreover, since Jehovah’s Witnesses were the first non-Catholic religious movement to establish in Kitigan Zibi, they were the only alternative.¹¹ In addition, they were an alternative that could be appealing: benevolent proclaimers only present temporarily, a literal reading of the Bible that opposed what the priests wanted and demanded, and above all, no clergy and no Oblate missionaries – all this without being too different from the Catholicism that they knew. This alternative had at least enough to please since another 20 Anishinabeg became Witnesses in the 1960s (putting the total to around 30). Stark and Iannaccone (1997) point out some elements that can favour the success of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. First, ‘religious continuity’: the Witnesses establish themselves better in places where we find a Christian majority (Stark and Iannaccone, 1997: 142), as in Kitigan Zibi. Second, and more significantly, the Witnesses are more likely to establish themselves in places where local religious organizations – in this case, the Oblate missionaries – are ‘in a period of tension [conflict] and weakness’ (Stark and Iannaccone, 1997: 150–151). I hope to have demonstrated in the preceding lines that this was the case for the Oblates in Kitigan Zibi in the 1940s and 1950s.

In addition, another factor must also have played a role in the conversion of Anishinabeg. Indeed, around the same time, the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg saw their ties to their traditional territory disrupted, even broken (Frenette, 1993: 40; McGregor, 2004: 219; Speck, 1929). In short, several factors led to the erosion and eventual disappearance of the family hunting grounds of the members of the Kitigan Zibi band. First, well before the creation of the reserve in 1853, the colonization of the territory by Euro-Canadian farmers and activities related to the forest industry were destabilizing local ecosystems in addition to driving away the game. In short, the colonization of the territory ‘(...) threatened the continuation of the customary activities of the Algonquins’ (Frenette, 1993: 46). The creation of more and more forestry roads allowed an increasing number of Euro-Canadian hunters/trappers to compete with the Anishinabeg. As a result, the beaver became endangered during the 1930s. The establishment of private hunting and fishing clubs in 1899 dealt a severe blow to the system of family hunting territories. Many families had to give up their hunting ground if it overlapped or was taken over by a private club. Furthermore, the establishment of a natural park by the Quebec government in 1939 (the present-day réserve faunique de La Vérendrye) covered many Anishinabeg family hunting territories (McGregor, 2004: 275). The system continued to crumble and was almost entirely lost by the turn of the 1940s (Frenette, 1993: 46). During the 1940s, wage labour became the primary source of income for the Anishinabeg (Frenette, 1993: 48). However, it was the registered trapline system in 1947 that dealt the final blow to the system of family hunting grounds. The Anishinabeg were now required to lease a trapline from the Quebec government to gain access to the territory, which was often too small to support a trapper and his family (Frenette, 1993: 47).

There is no need to pursue this exercise further since the period of interest here is the 1940s–1950s, when the first Anishinabeg became Jehovah’s Witness. Several authors have emphasized the links between Jehovah’s Witnesses and modernity (for example, Holden, 2002; Wilson, 1977). Furthermore, as I have observed, Jehovah’s Witnesses tended to settle more easily in Aboriginal communities that were catapulted into ‘modernity’¹² since colonization and a break from their ancestral territory. This suggests that the Witnesses respond to the specific questions and ‘problems’ that modernity brings. For example, in Kitigan Zibi, wage labour had become the most crucial source of income – with government grants – since the early 1940s. It is precisely at this time that the Jehovah’s Witnesses arrived. The latter put much emphasis on the importance and benefits of salaried work and the importance of supporting one’s family financially, in addition to providing guidance in adapting to modern life and avoiding its ‘excesses’, for example, the ‘dissolution’ of the family model and excessive alcohol consumption (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 2015b; Wilson, 1977). Hence, becoming a Jehovah’s Witness may have seemed advantageous economically and on other levels in the 1940s and 1950s Kitigan Zibi. I thus think that the conversion of Anishinabeg to Jehovism can be explained in this way: they found that the movement would bring them more benefits and fewer problems than Catholicism and the Oblates. Therefore, it was a pragmatic and empirical decision based on their experience with this religious movement (Bousquet, 2013: 94), aiming to improve their daily life by acquiring a new system of knowledge (Roberts, 2012: 278).

The question at this point is whether those who did not convert were less ‘pragmatic’ than those who became Witnesses. I think not. First, some people could still feel comfortable in Catholicism.¹³ Second, there were probably many other options besides conversion to Jehovism to oppose the Oblates, as the example of Chef Jean Baptise Chabot clearly shows (see supra). Finally, one had to be at least minimally ‘interested’ in the movement or connected to Witnesses, to know the benefits of becoming a Witness. Finally, I would like to emphasize that my hypothesis does not reduce the sincerity and conviction in the Truth – Witnesses call their doctrine ‘the Truth’ – of the first Jehovah’s Witnesses of Kitigan Zibi. On the contrary, I believe that their conversions, as part of a particular historical context, may have made such a change more appealing (Mair, 2012).

The intergenerational transmission of religion

The five ‘Witnesses families’

If the first conversions in Kitigan Zibi are mainly due to a dual historical context that created a fertile ground for conversion, as I have proposed, then the number of conversions should have dwindled when the ‘fertile ground’ fade away.¹⁴ That is precisely what happens in Kitigan Zibi. In fact, ‘The Truth took in five families in Kitigan Zibi: the Buckshot/Decontie, the Odjick, the McConini, the Ottawa, and the Saint-Denis/Chabot’ (Martina, 69). Hence, most Witnesses in Kitigan Zibi were or are members of one of these five families: ‘They were big families, and in each one there were several Witnesses’ (Martina, 69). Indeed, 18 of the 19 current Anishinabe Witnesses come from one of the five ‘Witnesses families’. At the same time, in Kitigan Zibi, the last person who did not come from one of these families to convert to Jehovism was in 1975. Thus, it is almost exclusively through intergenerational transmission of religion (Meintel and Le Gall, 2009) that Anishinabe Witnesses reproduce themselves. In the next subsection, I will propose the concept of ‘small-scale conversion’ as another way to understand the intergenerational transmission of religion.

Why remain a Witness when you are Anishinabe

First, the intergenerational transmission of religion is not necessarily automatic. In fact, in Quebec today, the transmission of religion from parents who claim to be believers and practitioners – at various levels – to their children often remains quite uncertain (Meintel and Le Gall, 2009: 221–222). It should also be noted that in the case of Christian religions, when both parents are practicing and teaching their religion to their children (like Witnesses), transmission is very likely to occur (Bader and Desmond, 2006). In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, the retention rate – in the United States – varies over time. For example, in 1994, Stark and Iannaccone (1997: 153) pointed out that Witnesses have a retention rate of 60% to 70%. However, recent studies tend to show a lower retention rate: 37% in 2007 (Hookway and Habibis, 2015: 845) and 34% in 2014 (Pew Research Center, 2015: 39).¹⁵

What then makes the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses become Witnesses? The answer necessarily varies according to my collaborators, but one common point often emerges. For several of them, there was a ‘turning point’ when they decided to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. For Olivia (36), who was interested in many religions at a young age – she describes herself as a ‘critical thinker’ – it was by reading a book (Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom) that crystallized her decision. The book made sense to her since the information in it was ‘rational’, that is, consistent with the Bible. As for Lena (42), she had always found that Witnesses seemed to ‘live a good life’ and be happy, unlike many of the non-Witnesses she was around at school: ‘I was never really attracted to drugs, alcohol and throwing up. I found it repulsive. The Witnesses had fun without throwing up (laughs)’. However, it was a booklet she read that sealed the deal (What Is the Purpose of Life? How Can You Find It?). This booklet explained Bible prophecies that had come true in the past, which convinced her that the prophecies about the future would also come true. This deepened her relationship with Jehovah and her certainty in the Truth. One last example will suffice. Elizabeth (48) was baptized at age 15, but it was not until she was 19 that she began to take the Truth seriously. It was in the singular circumstances of relocation that the ‘click’ occurred. She realized that she could do things on her own with Jehovah’s help, and the more she did for him in her preaching activities, the more ‘blessed’ she was: ‘The best way to live was to cultivate my friendship with Jehovah’.

However, whether we find a pivotal moment or not, becoming a Witness is always a process of learning faith. In other words, if one can learn to know if it is God who speaks to him, as Luhrmann (2007) has shown, one can also learn to have faith (Hérault, 2007; Severi, 2007), that is for Jehovah’s Witnesses, to love and serve Jehovah. I understand ‘faith’ here primarily as something that manifests itself (in a Christian context, at least), primarily through action and through what faith makes one do – or not do – following it (De Certeau, 1981; Wittgenstein, 1969). This is particularly true in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are something of an archetype of the ‘faith = action’ – or non-action – equation (e.g. all the things Witnesses should and should not do). Thus, becoming a Witness is primarily a process of learning faith, which Severi (2007: 30) defines as follows:

(...) the process of ‘learning to believe’¹⁶ should be seen as involving a two-level structure. One level concerns the memorization of the semantic content of the religious message. A second, more important level concerns the unconscious acquisition of the context where apparently ‘new and free’ inferences, emerging as part of a social process of recollection, will enrich and confirm the establishment of the belief.

The young Witnesses are likewise simultaneously led to learn and memorize the doctrine of their Organization – the Truth – through Bible study, Bible reading, and the reading of many Watch Tower articles, as well as to the ‘unconscious acquisition of context where seemingly new [but not free in the case of the Witnesses] inferences’ emerge in the course of their preaching activities, their weekly meetings, and the many other activities that they have throughout the year. These two levels of acquisition – or learning – will enrich and confirm their faith and their love for Jehovah. Their faith is manifested concretely by all the things they do for him and those they do not do. Nevertheless, if it manifests itself in actions, faith also allows for something else:

Having faith is [not only] knowing a creed but being able to establish a relationship with God and other human beings; a relationship which is experienced as a revelation, a transformation of the self, of one’s life and one’s way of viewing the world. (Hérault, 2007: 164)

Finally, it seems to me that being a Witness involves so much work and dedication, and so many restrictions/constraints that for those who remain, it is a real personal choice. Thus, to speak of a ‘small-scale conversion’ does not seem unfounded to me. Let us first say that I understand the ‘small-scale conversion’ – used here for lack of a better concept – as a situation in which a person does not pass from one religious’ movement to another (what is defined as a conversion), but a situation in which a person, through a process of discovery in movement, chooses to remain in the religion of his or her parents. Indeed, in the journey of my collaborators, we find a process of discovery and mobility in their adherence to the Truth which is consistent with the definition of conversion that I proposed earlier. Small-scale conversion can also explain the large number of Witnesses who do not follow their parent’s example and the fact that intergenerational transmission of religion remains uncertain in Quebec, whether among the various Christian churches, Islam, or Judaism (Meintel and Le Gall, 2009).

Finally, I think that becoming and especially remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses today are still a pragmatic and empirical decision. Let me explain: (1) pragmatic: in the context of neoliberal modernity, of rupture with the territory, and the necessity of salaried work, being a Jehovah’s Witness provides benefits in one’s daily life as well as in one’s salaried work (Simard-Émond, 2021: 144–145). To put it more simply (and to paraphrase my collaborators), they remain Witnesses for all the good things it brings and the good life it gives to them. (2) Empirical: it is first by observing other Witnesses, then by reading numerous biblical passages presenting characters who serve as examples (Noah, Abraham, Lot, Job, Eli, Nehemiah, the Apostles, and especially Jesus) and finally by individual experience – verification – that one adheres to the Truth. Thus, becoming and remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses are entirely in line with the Algonquin epistemology (Bousquet, 2013: 94). And as one collaborator stated to me quite clearly, ‘It was through observation that I understood that Truth was going to set me free, by observing my situation in opposition to that of my classmates’ (Naomy, 49).

Conclusion

A few words are in order as regards the limits of this analysis. The history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kitigan Zibi is based on information from research participants – oral history – concerning a few people, such as Madelaine Buckshot and on the historical data that I could find on Kitigan Zibi. The ‘truth’ unfortunately died with the first Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kitigan Zibi: ‘Almost everyone who remembers the fifties and sixties and the first Algonquins who became Witnesses on the reserve at that time is now dead’ (John, 72). That is why Canadian and American scholars should not waste time: Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long and strong presence in Indigenous communities across Canada and the United States. Due to the lack of archives concerning Jehovah’s Witnesses in aboriginal communities, oral history often remains the sole source to write their (hi)story. I hope to have shown with this article that documenting the presence of Jehovah’s Witnesses among Indigenous peoples can be an interesting and heuristically fruitful avenue. Finally, I am wondering about the application of the small-scale conversion concept to other religious groups. While it does not seem to be very useful in explaining intergenerational transmission in the case of religious groups with a high retention rate (see note 14) – cultural dimensions would probably have to be added to explain the transmissions – the concept does seem to have potential in groups whom like witnesses are high-demanding and have a low retention rate. In these cases, the individual/relational agency¹⁷ (De Certeau, 1990 [1980]: XXXV–XXXVI) must be examined to explain the intergenerational transmission of religion as well as disaffiliation. Thus, the small-scale conversion concept tries to contemplate the idea that ‘staying’ and ‘moving’ can sometimes coexist.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I want to thank all the members of the English-speaking Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation of the Gatineau Valley for welcoming me into their meetings and other activities and for all the help and time they gave to my research. My thanks then go to Marie-Pierre Bousquet and Deirdre Meintel for their insightful comments as well as to the two anonymous reviewers. It goes without saying that I am solely responsible for any errors that may have crept in.

Correction (August 2023):

Article updated to correct the author of the quote on page 6 from Ridington 1998 to Bousquet 2013

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Arnaud Simard-Émond

Notes

Author biography

Arnaud SIMARD-ÉMOND is a doctoral student in the Department of Communications at the Université de Montréal. He completed a master’s degree in anthropology (Université de Montréal, 2022) on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ historical and current presence in Kitigan Zibi. His research focuses on the links between territoriality and cosmopraxis among the Naskapi of Kawawachikamach. His work has been published in Recherches amérindiennes au Québec.

Address: Université de Montréal, 1216 Rue de la Visitation, Montréal, Québec H2L 3B4, Canada.

Email: arnaud.simard-emond@umontreal.ca

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