The history of Christian missions in Canada has traditionally been told only from the point of view of the missionaries, and not those they were attempting to convert. In "I Will Fear No Evil" , Susan Gray offers a new perspective on missionary-aboriginal encounters between the Berens River Ojibwa and Methodist and Catholic missionaries between 1875 and 1940. Supplementing her historical research with conversations and interviews with Berens River elders, Gray explores the ways in which Christian beliefs have become incorporated into the traditional Ojibwa worldview. The Ojibwa were active participants in these missionary encounters. They accepted those missionaries who treated them with sensitivity and respect and integrated Christian beliefs and practices into their established belief system. Today, a blend of Christian and Ojibwa ideas is still interwoven in the lives of Berens River residents, with both traditions holding meaning and sincerity. Their uniquely adaptive religion sheds new light on our understanding of cultural contact and conversion, placing the indigenous experience of these events at centre stage.

From 1930 to 1940, A. Irving Hallowell, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, made repeated summer fieldwork visits to Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, and to the Ojibwe community at Berens River on the lake's east side. He traveled up the Berens River several times to other Ojibwe communities as well, under the guidance of William Berens, the treaty chief at Berens River from 1917 to 1947 and Hallowell's closest collaborator. "Contributions to Ojibwe Studies" presents twenty-eight of Hallowell's writings focusing on the Ojibwe people at Berens River.
This collection is the first time that the majority of Hallowell's otherwise widely dispersed essays about the Ojibwe have been gathered into a single volume, thus providing a focused, in-depth view of his contributions to our knowledge and understanding of a vital North American aboriginal people. This volume also contributes to the history of North American anthropology, since Hallowell's approaches to and analyses of his findings shed light on his role in the shifting intellectual currents in anthropology over four decades.