St. Kateri/catherine Tekakwitha

[Aloysius]

So I'm doing a short paper on St. Kateri for an ethnicity class... I think I had seen an article wherein someone was complaining about people portraying her more in Indian clothing and looks than she appears in some of her contemporary portraits where she's sporting a habit, for instance. I kind of wanted to point to this article as an example of some of the attitudes surrounding her... I've got plenty of stuff from different Native American perspectives, this was from a Catholic/European perspective that was complaining about her being portrayed like a Disney Pocahantas figure while they felt she should be portrayed more like just a nun.

has anyone seen this article I'm talking about, or did I just imagine it?

[Nihil Obstat]

I have not seen that article, but I would be interested in reading it too.
I guess a case could be made that, being the first Native American saint, she represents all indigenous Americans as a sort of patroness, which makes it appropriate to portray her wearing traditional clothing from that culture. I had not thought about the other perspective on that before though.

[Maximilianus]

Don't know what article that is, but I often thought about that myself. The painting by Father Claude Chauchetière, who was a contemporary or hers, has her in native inspired clothing in European materials, not stereotypical feathers and buckskins.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1352009810' post='2503767']
I have not seen that article, but I would be interested in reading it too.
I guess a case could be made that, being the first Native American saint, she represents all indigenous Americans as a sort of patroness, which makes it appropriate to portray her wearing traditional clothing from that culture. I had not thought about the other perspective on that before though.
[/quote]
I don't really agree with the article, portraying her in traditional native clothing isn't necessarily wrong or anything, I just wanted to find it again because I wanted to include that perspective, since I would also include a non-Christian Native American perspective that would portray her as not authentically Native American, it's sort of the flip side from someone who was basically to some extent thinking that the Native portrayal was not authentically Catholic and how both of those people are identifying what defines authenticity/ethnicity; I could've sworn I had seen an article written saying that somewhere, I suppose it's possible I just saw a posting on a forum somewhere saying that... hmm...

[Aloysius]

It is interesting, I've always loved this picture of her:
[img]http://www.marypages.com/KateriTekakwitha1.jpg[/img]

I wouldn't have recognized this picture as representing her:
[img]http://www.americamagazine.org/images/articles/kateri225.jpg[/img]

[AnneLine]

I'm not positive Aloysius, but I don't think Kateri ever WAS a nun/religious. She took a vow of chastity, but didn't enter a community.

This is the link to her shrine... perhaps they would have the answer, and perhaps even a source for you? f

[url="http://www.katerishrine.com/kateri.html"]http://www.katerishrine.com/kateri.html[/url]

From the 'museum' link:

"...The fully excavated site of Caughnawagha is up the hill through the woods about a quarter of a mile from the museum. The Mohawks lived there for about fifty years and it was there that Saint Kateri lived most of her life and was baptized."

Not sure whether she adopted European dress or not... She wasn't too well liked by her tribe, but I don't know what that meant in terms of her wearing European clothing... I would think more likely she wore what the women of her tribe wore... perhas a bit simpler as she wouldn't have been trying to attract a husband....

[Chiquitunga]

this one? [url="http://www.alleluiaaudiobooks.com/saint-kateri-takakwitha-the-lily-at-the-foot-of-the-cross/"]http://www.alleluiaa...t-of-the-cross/[/url]

[Aloysius]

YES, that's the article I was thinking of! Thanks Chiquitunga.

[Chiquitunga]

You're welcome! It was fun searching

[Maximilianus]

That article is my new hero

[Aloysius]

cool, I don't know how I missed it trying to search, I even went through my browsing history since I thought I had seen it before but I couldn't find it for the life of me.

anyway, my interest in this project is to relate St. Kateri to theoretical approaches of how people construct 'ethnicity', so I'm just using that to illustrate a particular perspective. my purpose is not to hash out what the actual historical reality was, but how people have constructed it, how some people consider her not authentically Native American because she accepted the faith, and how some people come from the other direction. In my devotion to St. Kateri, I do love the idealized image, and I think at least iconographically it's a good way to show her as a patron to her people; iconography need not be historically accurate necessarily (just think of all the different versions of Our Lady spanning many cultures), since her life did not end with her death, she still lives in heaven, I don't think there's any real problem with those portrayals (though there is of course a problem with trying to minimize her as not really as devoted to the Catholic Faith as she truly was)

[AnneLine]

Makes sense. Ironically, someone has added a statue of St. Kateri to the Mission cemetery at Mission Dolores in San Francisco....

Somebody was trying to 'repair' the problem of a common grave of MANY Native Americans who died in an epidemic dumped in a common, unmarked grave .... juxtaposed with individual, well-marked graves of many European Americans from the same time period. OK, I get that it is not necessarily a thing to be proud of... but to remove all traces of the earlier things, plop a statue of St. Kateri on top of the mass grave, and say that this is all good now is just as incorrect and disrespectful, in my mind, to the individuals buried in that plot... especially since more likely than not her tribe would have hated the local tribe....

And of course, guess what that St. Kateri looks like:

[url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsimpson/3238841939/in/photostream/"]http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsimpson/3238841939/in/photostream/[/url]

(hope that comes through OK....)

BTW... I really love St. Kateri AND Bl. Junipero Serra.... and I think both have had a rough time with al lthe people trying to make them into people they were not. You just have to honor that their times and our times are DIFFERENT.... and it is NOT ok to try to put either of them into 21st century dress. (Now I will get off my soapbox!)