The Indigenous church in Canada covers a broad cross-section of geography, demographics and cultural beliefs. Moreover, it came into existence in different time periods, under varying colonial experiences, covering a wide variety of personal and ecclesial traditions. It also engages, perhaps most significantly, a broad range of Christian mission experience, including some good, some clearly bad and a significant amount that was outright ugly.

When I began this essay, I set out to describe the contemporary Indigenous church in situ, connected with the wider Christian church in Canada. After all, each of the denominations that find representation among the mainstream populations of Canada, particularly people of European origin, are also to be found among Indigenous peoples throughout Canada. I had imagined that if any mainstream denominations are not present among Canada's Indigenous populations, they have either not made a wide impact or they are so obscure as not to be readily found.

In the intervening months, however, events in Canada required, in fact demanded, that such an essay be revisited and rewritten to ensure that readers were provided with at least a glimpse of the historical context out of which the Indigenous church rose and in which the contemporary Indigenous church finds its existence. This essay, then, is the outcome of new and significant personal, extended family and community reflection. It is written not as an indictment but rather in the clear hope that what once was considered to be Indigenous Christianity is no longer, and hopefully never will be again – that the Indigenous church will not permit it to be so.

I have chosen to focus on denominational traditions that find a reasonably strong representation in the Indigenous Canadian landscape despite the history, and for some as a result of engaging the history in ‘redemptive’ ways. In some cases, this presence has been made strong by the increased presence of Indigenous leadership; in others, it is a result of risk-taking on the part of non-Indigenous denominational leadership; in still others, a renewed presence has come about because of a cooperative approach by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to addressing the impacts of colonisation.