Beyond Disease Transmission: Evangelical Missions and the Consequences of Colonialism | The Exchange | A Blog by Ed Stetzer

Beyond Disease Transmission: Evangelical Missions and the Consequences of Colonialism | The Exchange | A Blog by Ed Stetzer:

The reasons for this spread, in addition to contact with infected outsiders, were due to the disruption of indigenous foodways. The Russian and American commodification of Alaska’s forests and animals devastated regions where people survived by hunting and gathering. According to former Alaskan public health worker Penelope S. Easton, many of the food and care providers in indigenous communities quickly died off from tuberculosis and other diseases. These realities introduced widespread poverty and malnutrition, two significant risk factors for the spread of tuberculosis.

It in this season of mass death that many Protestant missionaries entered Alaska. Many missionaries saw the malnourishment, the strange homes, the alcoholism, and the disease, and concluded that Native Alaskans needed the gospel of civilization to save them from complete ruin. As missionaries established orphanages and industrial schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many instituted policies restricting the use of Native languages and the consumption of traditional Native foods.