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Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau: The Jesuit, the Medicine Man, and the Indian Hymn Singer. Chad S. Hamill. 2012. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, xiii, 169pp.
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: a Jesuit, a medicine man and an Indian hymn singer walk into a crosscultural context. Three types at odds by institutional convention, but as individuals-and quite remarkable individuals at that-united by spiritual power and song. In this compelling study, Chad Hamill reaches back two centuries to inform a contemporary reality of indigenous power through song, at the same time revealing the fluidity of belief systems in a two-way dialogue between Native spirituality and Christianity. On another level of discourse, Hamill's monograph deals with methodologies: specifically the contest between scientific ways of knowing and aboriginal ways of knowing. He makes a compelling case for the latter through anecdote and narrative, and through his own engaging prose. Hamill's narrative argument itself reads like a story, rather than the dissertation from which it has been crafted. Its organic structure admirably weaves together historical fact, anecdote, song analysis and reflection. Although Hamill's initial point of view is confessional, the winning arguments are firmly positioned at the level of voiced narrative, privileging storytelling as proof.
Like any good story, this one has a compelling cast of characters. Gibson EU was known as the "last medicine man of the Spokan tribe." As a distant ancestor of the author, he is Hamill's direct fink to the narrative. Mitch Michael was a respected hymn singer and prayer leader of mixed Spokan and Coeur d'Alene heritage, a mediator between many worlds: Native and Christian, ancient and modern. Finally there is Father Tom Connolly, a Jesuit priest stationed at the Sacred Heart Mission in De Smets, Idaho. He was Hamill's living informant who claimed Gibson Eli and Mitch Michael as his "two grandfathers."
[Spoiler alert.] The story reaches its climax in chapter six when 56-year-old Gibson EU presents himself for baptism. Witnessed by Mitch Michael and his wife...