"Rendezvous" for renewal at "Lake of the Great Spirit": the french pilgrimage and indigenous journey to Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, 1870-1896 ...

• Main Author: Buresi, Jessica Anne
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Graduate Studies 2012
• Subjects: History; Missionary; Indigenous; Pilgrimage; First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/27628; https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/11023/173

The Lac Ste-Anne Pilgrimage is an Indigenous-Catholic gathering that takes place along the lake at Lac Ste-Anne, Alberta, seventy-five kilometres west of Edmonton, and continues to attract approximately 50, 000 pilgrims yearly, most of them of First Nations or Métis heritage. It was initiated on June 6, 1889, by Jean-Marie Lestanc, a Catholic father with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a congregation which originated in Marseilles, France. This thesis discusses the long history of both Catholic pilgrimage and aboriginal rendezvous traditions in France and Canada respectively, and addresses the complexity of conversion among North-Western Canadian indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century. It suggests that the event was borne of an implicit negotiation and compromise between the largely francophone Oblate fathers and the local First Nations and Métis peoples over the significance of Lac Ste-Anne, and the “nomadic” ritual journey needed to arrive there. ...