Austin, Alvyn

The chapter, "'The picturesqueness of his accent and speech': Methodist missionary narratives and William Henry Pierce's autobiography" was written by Gail Edwards (Douglas College Faculty). Christian missions and missionaries have had a distinctive role in Canada's cultural history. With Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples, Alvyn Austin and Jamie S. Scott have brought together new and established Canadian scholars to examine the encounters between Christian (Roman Catholic and Protestant) missionaries and the Indigenous peoples with whom they worked in nineteenth- and twentieth-century domestic and overseas missions. Broadly adopting a postcolonial perspective, Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples contributes greatly to the understanding of missionaries not only as purveyors of western religious values, but also as vehicles for cultural exchange between Native and non-Native Canadians, as well as between Canadians and the Indigenous peoples of other countries.