ABSTRACT
The Jesuits interpreted a behavior as a Wendat disposition to comply or an instinctual response to Christian teachings. What has occurred in this interpretative process is a reduction of the Wendat to malleability and instinct, features often attributed to animals and women, who are to be ruled and contained according to Western patriarchal and anthropocentric values. Having looked briefly at the folly of negative stereotyping of Indigenous people in early Canadian history, this chapter will now turn to putative positive stereotyping or romantic ideals developed surrounding Indigenous people of this continent. Child welfare is but one example of the way social work has participated in the cultural dislocation and assimilationist performances enacted by the Canadian state in a contemporary context. Indigenous spiritualities, both the understandings and practices of, are unequivocally a part of this process. However, to reduce Indigenous people to their spirituality and to ignore the many other dimensions of what constitutes Indigeneity is problematic.
