Mistapew

Common card · No. 456323

Mistapew (Plains Cree mistâpêw, ᒥᐢᑖᐯᐤ, [ˈmɪs.tɑːˌpeːw], plural mistâpêwak) or (using the spelling system of Franz Boas) Mista´peo, also Mištapew, Mishtapew, is a spirit-being found widely in cultures across the Algonquinian Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi language continuum. Evidence is patchy for beliefs about Mistapew before Indigenous cultures were profoundly affected by Euro-Canadian colonial cultures. Discussing the evidence for belief in a superior supernatural being among the East Cree—which includes beliefs about mistapew—John S. Long, Richard J. Preston, and Cath Oberholzer argued in 2006 that the ethnographic fragments, gleaned from various sources and time periods, here underscore the difficulties inherent in reconstructing religious concepts from two such disparate points of view [Christian and traditional Indigenous]. Constraints imposed by barriers of language, diverse cultural world views and conflicting "missions" create a tangled web of misunderstandings and ambivalent behaviour...

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