Subtle Subversion: The Sioux Catholic Congress and the Preservation of the Lakota Tiospaye

Abstract: Beginning in 1891, the Sioux Catholic congresses gathered Indigenous converts from scattered Plains Sioux reservations in the wake of the Wounded Knee Massacre. In Converting the Rosebud (2018), Harvey Markowitz posits that these congresses inadvertently sustained the Lakota tradition of extended kinship, known as the tiospaye , through an "intriguing subversion" of the Catholic missionaries' aggressive program of assimilation and individualization. This article tests Markowitz's claim, and argues that the 1893 congress marked a "subversion of subversion," a critical turning point that shifted Catholic missionary political ambitions toward a Lakota renegotiation of American colonialism. It nuances prior scholarship on this topic through a reexamination of overlooked and untranslated archival sources. A reconsideration of these sources' multilayered context raises further questions for historical assessment of missionary activity in the American West and Catholic theologies of evangelization today.