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1 Evangelical and Aboriginal Christianity on Baffin Island: A Case Study of Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), 1929-1934 C.M. Sawchuk Trinity Hall Thesis submitted in completion of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Polar Studies Scott Polar Research Institute/Department of Geography University of Cambridge June 2006 2 Preface I hereby declare that my dissertation, entitled Evangelical and Aboriginal Christianity on Baffin Island: A Case Study of Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), 1929-1934, is not the same as any I have submitted for any other degree, diploma, or similar qualification at any university or similar institution. I also declare that no part of my dissertation has already been or is concurrently being submitted for any such degree, diploma, or similar qualification. I declare that this dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text. Finally, I declare that this dissertation does not exceed the 20,000 words, excluding footnotes, appendices, and references, that has been approved by the Board of Graduate Studies for the MPhil in Polar Studies. _________________________________________ Christina M. Sawchuk 3 Acknowledgements No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. (John Donne) The process of researching and writing a dissertation is akin to being stranded on a desert isle, in that very few others can truly understand the parameters of the intellectual, physical, and mental ordeal. I wish to thank the people who have provided bridges to the mainland, as it were, in all these matters. I am incalculably indebted to my supervisor, Michael Bravo, for his challenging and sympathetic supervision this year, and for reading my last-minute draft with assiduity and levity. Ian MacLaren, my undergraduate supervisor, rekindled my long-dormant interest in the Canadian North and directed my attention to the Scott Polar Research Institute. Bob Cole has been an unofficial mentor in matters of graduate education as well as an unexpected friend. Lynn Kiddoo, Bob Cole, and Liz Cassell have all read drafts of this dissertation, and their comments have been much appreciated. My research would have been much the poorer without the assistance of the Institute‘s library staff, who have been invariably willing to lay their time, resources and knowledge at my disposal. In particular I would like to thank Mark Gilbert, Shirley Sawtell, and Heather Lane for being lovely people as well as efficient librarians. Naomi Boneham has also been of great assistance. The staff at the Ipswich Record Office very kindly helped me navigate the Turner collection. My time at the Institute has been immeasurably enriched by the company of my fellow MPhil students, Liz Cassell and Ian Bartholomew, and by the Friday afternoon musical outlets provided by Toby Benham and Isabella Warren. These times of fellowship have lightened my spirit when work was bearing down insistently. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and my sister Elizabeth, for providing endless wells of love, support, and inspiration throughout my first year away from home, and Ben Adcock, for being there morning, noon, and night, and for making Cambridge into my new home. 4 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5 I. Twentieth-century missions historiography: an overview ...................... 7 II. Methodologies: situated knowledge ....................................................... 9 III. Methodologies: postcolonial discourse analysis ................................... 12 IV. Methodologies: resacralization of mission studies .............................. 14 Chapter One: Anglican Evangelicalism .................................................................. 17 I. The Protestant missionary movement ................................................... 17 II. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century evangelicalism ............................... 20 III. The Bible Churchmen‘s Missionary Society (BCMS) ........................ 22 IV. Harold Duncan and John ―Jack‖ Turner ............................................... 23 V. Harold Duncan‘s and John Turner‘s personal theologies ..................... 26 Chapter Two: Aboriginal Christianity ................................................................... 29 I. Christianity‘s arrival at Baffin Island ................................................... 29 II. Christianity‘s arrival at Mittimatalik .................................................... 31 III. The Tununermiut rationale for conversion .......................................... 34 IV. Why Tununermiut wanted a missionary (and received four) ............... 36 Chapter Three: Worlds Collide ............................................................................... 42 I. The mission: an English representation of space ................................. 42 II. The settlement: a secular Euro-Canadian representation of space ....... 50 III. The land: an Inuit representation of space ........................................... 58 Chapter Four: The Aftermath ................................................................................. 64 I. Christians and the (br)other .................................................................. 65 II. Tununermiut Christianity, post-1934 ................................................... 69 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 73 I. The Anglican missionary: a complicated soul ..................................... 74 II. The missionary and colonial arenas: complicated spaces .................... 74 III. Boundedness and boundlessness .......................................................... 76 Appendix A: Maps .................................................................................................... 79 Appendix B: Diagrams and Photographs of the Anglican Mission ...................... 83 Appendix C: Photographs of Mittimatalik People and Places ............................. 88 References .................................................................................................................. 92 5 Introduction In September of 1929 the Bible Churchmen‘s Missionary Society (BCMS) missionaries, Harold Duncan and John ―Jack‖ Turner, made their way North on the Hudson‘s Bay Company (HBC) ship The Nascopie to establish a new mission near the company post at Pond Inlet. To their surprise, two Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) missionaries, Fathers Étienne Bazin and Prime Girard, were also en route to the same destination. The shock was mutual. Further surprises were also to follow. … [M]ost of Inuit [sic] had already been baptized Anglicans. This was evidently not the pioneering adventure that all parties had anticipated. How had this state of affairs come to be?1 As the Nascopie came into the bay, Turner and Duncan would have sighted the rocky beach upon which they would build their new mission. The shore would have been thickly crowded with Inuit eager to glimpse the ―teachers‖2 they had requested the previous year. Before long the physical gap would close as the ship anchored near shore, yet the cultural gap between the missionaries and Inuit would take much more effort to bridge. Speaking of this chasm, Donald Larson writes, ―It is one thing for missionaries to cross the world and quite another for them to slip through the symbol-strewn mine field that separates them from their hosts.‖3 This dissertation is interested primarily in defining the parameters of that physical and cultural gap between the Anglican missionaries and the Tununermiut, the traditional residents of that area, in their first five years at Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik).4 In framing this discussion not only in terms in history and society, but those of space as well, this dissertation reflects the growing awareness among social scientists of the ―simultaneity and interwoven complexity of the social, the historical, and the spatial, their inseparability and interdependence.‖5 1 Christopher Trott, ―Mission and Opposition in North Baffin Island,‖ Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 40 (1998): 31. 2 ―Teachers‖ were the name that Inuit gave to missionaries. See Archibald Fleming, Archibald the Arctic (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), 216 for an example of this usage. It is not clear whether Harold Duncan knew of the Inuit meaning of this term. Evidence suggests that he thought that the Tununermiut actually wanted missionaries with educational training. See Harold Duncan, interview with Wendy Arundale, 25 April 1989, tape 2. 3 Donald N. Larson, ―Closing Space: De-alienation in Missionary Orientation,‖ Missiology 20 (1992): 514. 4 I will use the settlement‘s Inuit name for the remainder of this dissertation, in line with Shelagh Grant‘s recent observation that ―symbolic of growing respect for their heritage, the community is gradually reverting back to the use of the original Inuktitut name – Mittimatalik.‖ Shelagh D. Grant, Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923 (Montreal: McGill-Queen‘s University Press, 2002), 255. 5 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 3. 6 The central conundrum of the Mittimatalik mission is not, as Christopher Trott implies above, why the missionaries were unaware of the

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