PCRC and Land
In the beginning… was Turtle Island.
Evangelicalism has not always existed on this land. Before this land was named North America, becoming home to evangelicalism and purity movements, it was first Turtle Island, an Indigenous land. North American evangelicalism and purity culture have been part of the genocide, marginalization, and silencing of this history and these peoples.
“Creation Story”
“Creation Story” is a piece created by Haudenosaunee Indigenous artist, Kyle Joedicke. The piece details Sky Woman and Turtle Island, the creation story of Turtle Island. Kyle created this piece specifically for the PCRC as a remembrance of what was before North American evangelicalism and purity culture.
Indigeous bodies have, and continue to be, silenced, harmed, and oppressed in the making and perpetuation of purity culture.
Purity’s Role in Indigenous Oppression
North America became home to evangelicalism and purity only by the theft of land and culture that came with European settler-colonialism, and the genocide of Turtle Island’s First Peoples. We experienced evangelical purity culture because this violence happened.
“Purity” is a racially constructed concept that links whiteness and white bodies to moral superiority and divinity. This concept has been used against Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) and has been key in the building of a white Christian heteropatriarchal North America.
Discourse was created by white European colonizers to code white bodies as “more proximate to purity” and thus, “more Godly as a race”. In the creation of this discourse, BIPOC bodies were coded “impure” and “less Godly”. This served to legitimize white dominance and Indigenous genocide.
The majority of the collective lives on the land that was first known as Turtle Island. Our research only exists because of the violence that has, and continues to be, perpetrated against Indigenous people.
“Evangelicalism is a religion that has benefitted and continues to benefit from racism on both an individual and structural level, always under the guise of morality and patriotic nationalism.”
Anthea Butler, White Evangelical RAcism.
Tessi Muskrat-led Ceremony
In March 2022, eight members of the PCRC travelled to Southern California to present on purity culture and sexual assault at the Religion and Sexual Abuse Conference. Prior to our presentation, Tessi, a biracial (white and Cherokee) member of the PCRC, led us in a smudging ceremony.
If purity culture work is done intersectionally with a remembrance of Turtle Island, then dismantling purity culture becomes a decolonial project.
