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Research and writing of a chapter in a history of Jesuit missions to Native Americans in the American Northwest and Alaska, 1840-1940.

Using the rich and understudied archive of the Jesuits of the Oregon Province, this book project focuses on the interactions between Jesuit priests and Native communities in the Northwest region of the United States. While many scholars of American religion have studied Christian missions to Native communities in early America and the eastern states, this project shifts the focus westward and later in American history. It also expands our understanding of conversion and colonialism. Even as the Jesuit priests emphasized their dedication to serving native communities, their actions aided the expansion of the U. S. nation-state through processes of Christianizing and "civilizing." Thus, the book continues a turn in the scholarship on missions and Native Christians to think of conversion as a complicated process with no universal definition. The native communities who hosted them accepted, resisted, and adapted the Catholicism and culture brought by the Jesuits.