"In this study, Michael McNally shows how the Ojibwe people of northern Minnesota and the Great Lakes region took missionary Christianity and remade it in their own religious idiom through the ritualized singing of missionary hymns.".

"Ojibwe Singers takes hymn singing as a sharply focused lens through which to view culture in motion. McNally shows how Native American peoples have creatively drawn on the resources of ritual to make room for survival, integrity, and a distinctive cultural identity within the tight confines of colonialism.

Grounded in the author's archival research and two years of fieldwork in Minnesota, this book traces the historical development of ritualized singing and shows how the practice has been put to different uses at various moments in Ojibwe history."--BOOK JACKET.