ABSTRACT
This chapter describes colonial bodily regimes instituted through missionary conversion and education aimed at erasing the cultural identity of the Anishinaabek, Native American peoples resident in lands around the Great Lakes. Missionary presence in the Great Lakes brought about cleavages between different religious factions within Anishinaabe society. The chapter focuses on the Anishinaabe nation of the Great Lakes region to explore the values and processes of Protestant visual assimilation programmes. Nineteenth-century Protestant values were formed around a belief in different moral virtues for different social classes. Lacemaking is a particularly salient symbol of Protestant female virtue because the white colour of the lace demands practical cleanliness. For Protestants, the whiteness of lace was a symbol of Western standards of both physical and spiritual ‘cleanliness’. Protestant visual assimilation programmes teach us that First Peoples can reappropriate the power of dress and harness it to effect social change for cultural decolonization, indigenization and revitalization.
