Positioning the Missionary ― John Booth Good and the Colonial Confluence of Cultures

In the cramped confines of the Fraser Canyon, the Nlha7kapmx people’s encounter with Europeans began when Simon Fraser passed through their territory in 1808. By the time British Columbia entered into Confederation in 1871, disease and the sudden influx of thousands of miners in search of gold had exacted a heavy toll, and a pattern of European settlement and expropriation of Native land had been established.

In Positioning the Missionary, Brett Christophers explores the place of missionaries in histories of colonialism, focusing on John Booth Good, Anglican missionary to the Nlha7kapmx from 1867 to 1883. Christophers examines the genesis of Good’s mission and the question of why the Nlha7kapmx were interested in Christianity. He goes on to discuss Good’s methods and impact on the Nlha7kapmx as well as their influence on his own beliefs and prejudices, and to position missionaries in terms of representations of Natives, views on Native-European contact, and the politics of the Native land question.

The concluding chapter examines Good’s role in Nlha7kapmx dealings, first with the colonial authorities and later with provincial and federal governments.

Drawing on a diverse range of sources, from local ethnographic accounts to current postcolonial theories, Christophers uses Good’s experience to offer fresh perspectives on the nature of colonial representation and power. Positioning the Missionary is an important contribution to the scholarly reassessment of colonialism, valuable not only to historians and students of British Columbia but also to anyone interested in the disposession and marginalization of Native societies.