CONTESTED BODIES - AFFLICTION AND POWER IN HEILTSUK CULTURE AND HISTORY

The body is a primary domain of contestation in colonial encounters. T he indigenous response to virgin soil epidemics provides an opening fo r colonial agents, especially missionaries. Methodist missionaries amo ng the Heiltsuk of the Northwest Coast imposed a hegemonic conception of the body, involving the central practice of discipline. Hegemony an d resistance have been enacted in bodily beliefs, practices, and disco urses. A focus on the meaningful body as a mediating category reveals important dimensions of processes of culture change.