Let’s live peacefully and meaningfully together in this land

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/01/2025 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Among the many benefits of being a faith reporter and columnist at the Free Press is a chance to learn more, and write about, the experience of Indigenous people in this country, including their interactions with Christianity.

This has helped make up for my lack of education I received in school about this important history while growing up in the 1960s and 70s.

Like many others of my boomer generation, I learned Canadian history from a colonial point of view. In that telling, Canada was an empty and unsettled land until the Europeans arrived, bringing civilization, progress — and religion — to what they considered to be a backward people.

So while I learned about famous European explorers and the settling of this land, I heard nothing about Kondiaronk, a Wendat chief who lived from 1649-1701. Among other things, Kondiaronk challenged the assertion that Europe and its religion was superior to the beliefs and way of life of Indigenous people.

I discovered Kondiaronk in The Dawn of Everything, a 2021 book by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The book challenges traditional thinking about human progress over the ages and upends old ideas about how Indigenous were no match for the intellectual and religious superiority of Europeans.

The authors illustrate this point through debates between Kondiaronk and French missionaries, as quoted in New Voyages to North America, a book published in 1703 by the Frenchman Baron de Lahontan.

Considered the best work on 17th century New France for its detailed descriptions of the environment and North American native society, the book includes accounts of the nine years Lahontan spent there, including two winters he spent hunting with a group of Indigenous people.

In the book, Lahontan writes about a discussion between Kondiaronk and the missionaries — who insist their religion is the only true one. In reply, Kondiaronk notes there are many ways to seek God. What, he asks, makes the French religion the only good and true one?

In another discussion with the missionaries, Kondiaronk wonders why God, as described to him by the French, would create so many humans only to condemn most of them to Hell.

Kondiaronk also points out the hypocrisy of Christians he’s met who failed to live up to their religion’s lofty standards — they worked on holy days, they didn’t offer their most valuable goods as gifts to God, and they lied to and slandered their friends.

In the end, Kondiaronk feels nothing but pity for Europeans, viewing their way of life, and their religion, as inferior to his. To a Frenchman, he said: “In earnest, my dear brother, I am sorry for you from the bottom of my soul. Take my advice and turn Wendat; for I see plainly a vast difference between your condition and mine.”

Kondiaronk wasn’t the only Indigenous person to feel that way. Graeber and Wengrow quote a priest, sent to convert the Wendat, who conceded there were aspects of Indigenous life that were superior to that of the French.

“They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions,” he wrote.

“They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely,” he added.

To be fair, scholars have questioned whether Kondiaronk actually said all the things he is quoted as saying by Lahontan, or whether the author made things up to make his own points.

But there is general agreement, Graeber and Wengrow write, that the Kondiaronk’s comments reflected the feelings of many Indigenous people towards the settlers, and their religion, at that time.

As for me, I’m sorry I didn’t learn about Kondiaronk in school. It would have helped to give me a fuller perspective on Indigenous life and their thoughts about Europeans and their religions — something I’m trying to catch up on now, as part of my effort to decolonize my faith.

In 2023, the Roman Catholic Church officially repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, the idea that Europeans owned and were sovereign over any lands they “discovered.” In its place, perhaps we need a new doctrine of re-discovery — a commitment by non-Indigenous people to learn more about Indigenous history, life, belief and society and how those things can be beneficial for everyone in this country today.

Maybe churches, working with Indigenous people, can help lead us in that effort, so that we can live peacefully and meaningfully together in this land. The story of Kondiaronk is a good place to start.

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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