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Full Description
The Mohegan-Brothertown minister Samson Occom (1723-1792) was a prominent political and religious leader of the Indigenous peoples of present-day New York and New England, among whom he is still revered today. An international celebrity in his day, Occom rose to fame as the first Native person to be ordained a minister in the New England colonies. In the 1770s, he helped found the nation of Brothertown, where Coastal Algonquian families seeking respite from colonialism built a new life on land given to them by the Oneida Nation. Occom was a highly productive author, probably the most prolific Native American writer prior to the late nineteenth century. Most of Occom's writings, however, have been overlooked, partly because many of them are about Christian themes that seem unrelated to Native life.
In this groundbreaking book, Ryan Carr argues that Occom's writings were deeply rooted in Indigenous traditions of hospitality, diplomacy, and openness to strangers. From Occom's point of view, evangelical Christianity was not a foreign culture; it was a new opportunity to practice his people's ancestral customs. Carr demonstrates Occom's originality as a religious thinker, showing how his commitment to Native sovereignty shaped his reading of the Bible. By emphasizing the Native sources of Occom's evangelicalism, this book offers new ways to understand the relations of Northeast Native traditions to Christianity, colonialism, and Indigenous self-determination.
Contents
Foreword by Amy Medford and Megan Fulopp
Acknowledgments
Introduction, on the Occasion of Samson Occom's Three Hundredth Birthday
Part I
1. "Asylum for Strangers": An Approach to Occom's Traditionalism
2. Occom Obviously: Literary Studies and the Problem of Indigenous Knowledge
Part II
3. A Theology of Land and Peoplehood
4. Piety and Placemaking: Styles of Strangerhood Among Occom and His Kin
Part III
5. Seft at Last: Occom's 1768 Autobiography in Native Space
6. "Time to Awake": Occom on Perception, Alienation, and "Pure Religion"
Conclusion: "Good Enthusiasm"
Appendix: Unpublished Letters by Susanna Wheatley and Samson Occom
Notes
Bibliography
Index
