Operation Salvation: The Many Faces of Arctic Missions, Inc.

Introduction

Nestled in a valley at the base of the Talkeetna Mountains lies an unassuming cluster of buildings sandwiched between two lakes. A pristine snapshot of God’s creation, Victory Bible Camp serves as a “spiritual retreat” for Christians looking to escape urban living for a few days. The camp offers several activities: swimming, horseback riding, singing around the campfire (“Kumbaya,” of course), and hiking, to name a few. One hike takes campers up a dirt road and along winding trails through the forest to Inspiration Point, where they find a slab of bricks and a quaint bench with a plaque which reads,

In Memory of John McNeil Gillespie D.D. 1917–2005. This area was used by the founder of Victory Bible Camps and Conference Center, Dr. John McNeil Gillespie, as a quiet place where he could seek the Lord’s vision for his life and for the ministry he directed from 1946–1967. The desire of the Gillespie family is for you to seek the Lord’s vision for your life and that you live inobdience [sic] to God’s Word the Bible.

Psalms 145: 4-5 (Living Bible)
Let each generation tell its children what glorious things He does. I will meditate about your glories, splendor, majesty, and miracles. Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. Everyone will tell about how good you are, and sing about your righteousness.

Figure 1.Inspiration Point, VBC, 2015.

From Inspiration Point, one can see the entire camp, complete with glaciers in the distance and an awareness of the towering Victory Peak behind, casting a divine shadow across the vista. A song sung from Inspiration Point echoes as if it can be heard across all 400 acres of VBC – from the log cabins below to the mysterious industrial structures across the lake. Beginning in the quaint cabins, called “Alpine,” Victory had expanded to include “Teepee”^[1] and Ranch Camps by the time I became a Victory “camper” in the early-2000s. After many weekend and week-long excursions at VBC, I heard a disturbing rumor claiming that the industrial side of the campus, referred to as the “Conference Center,” had once been an Indigenous boarding school. Though I searched for answers, it wasn’t until the fall of 2020, almost a decade later, that I happened across a promising archive at Wheaton College in Illinois (via the Internet due to pandemic travel restrictions). This archive contained stories of Victory’s founder, a “strict Calvinist” who took it upon himself to save the souls of Alaska Natives; student testimonies which described their non-Christian spirituality as “dirty”; and a school handbook that dictated the proper dress, demeanor, and activities to be found in “Christian homes”—including the dormitories. With the help of several advisors, I have embarked on what has become an all-consuming quest for answers.

The first question I felt compelled to address on my search is whether Victory High School was a tool of Euro-Christian settler colonialism or whether it qualified as a decolonial Christian entity. This article utilizes the analytical frameworks of three foundational scholars of Indigenous religious history, Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker, Dr. Angela Tarango, and Dr. Michelle Jacob, to interrogate the VHS archives in an attempt to answer this question. Tinker asserts that Christian missionaries contributed to the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples through forced assimilation. He defines cultural genocide as “the effective destruction of a people by systematically or systemically (intentionally or unintentionally in order to achieve other goals) destroying, eroding, or undermining the integrity of the culture and system of values that defines a people and gives them life.”^[2] Tarango emphasizes the importance of the Indigenous Principle—rooting evangelizing efforts in the Indigenous communities themselves,^[3] and Jacob advocates for Indigenous interpretation and hermeneutics of Christianity.^[4] Both Tarango and Jacob’s approaches to Christianity involve Indigenous leadership as opposed to white control over Indigenous people and culture. Tinker’s definition, Tarango’s Indigenous Principle, and Jacob’s distinction between hurtful and healing leadership serve as a “checklist,” of sorts, for evaluating whether an institution is guilty of cultural genocide, which I will use in my evaluation of VHS.

It is important for readers to note that there is no monolithic Indigenous^[5] experience—and there was no monolithic student experience at VHS. As such, I will explore the perspectives offered by these scholars of Indigenous religious history to begin analyzing VHS’s founding mission, Arctic Missions Inc.‘s (AMI), commitment to substitutionary atonement, salvation, and Eurocentrism in their outreach and interaction with Alaska Native peoples. I will find that because VHS attempted to instill values of hierarchical authority, disdain for Indigenous life, and only encouraged Native language and culture when it furthered their advertising agenda, its legacy should be seen as a colonial one. I’ll prove this claim by first providing a brief history of Indigenous boarding schools in Alaska, then discussing AMI’s theology, as well as the white evangelical interpretation of the crucifixion, before analyzing several examples of racial prejudice in VHS administrators’ correspondence and some students’ apparent internalization of said prejudice. I will conclude by determining that, according to the guidelines set by Tinker, Tarango, and Jacob, VHS and AMI in the mid- to late-twentieth century were tools of settler colonialism.

A Brief History of Indian Boarding Schools in Alaska and the United States

When thinking of Indian boarding schools, some may think of the late 1800s to early 1900s. In fact, the first federally-run Indian boarding school opened in 1879 by a United States Army officer named Richard Henry Pratt. Officer Pratt coined the phrase that came to define Indian boarding schools for generations: “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The boarding school initiative came after years of mass genocide, forced removal, and broken treaties, and was an assimilation tool for addressing what was called the “Indian problem” among white settlers.^[6] Indigenous children were placed in these schools sometimes voluntarily, sometimes by force, and were subjected to cruel punishments in the name of conversion and assimilation.^[7] Students were sometimes stripped of their Native names and given white names,^[8] punished if caught speaking their Native language, forced to wear “American style” clothing and haircuts, and taught “trades that were marketable in American society, such as carpentry for boys and housekeeping for girls.”^[9]

The first Indian boarding school in Alaska was founded in Sitka in 1878 by Presbyterian missionaries.^[10] In 1885, Sheldon Jackson (another Presbyterian missionary) was appointed the General Agent of Education for the District of Alaska, but it wasn’t until 1888 that the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education officially opened government schools in the territory. Reporting on the state of education for Alaska Natives, Jackson wrote, “They are savages, and, with the exception of those in Southern Alaska, have not had civilizing, educational, or religious advantages.”^{[11],[12],[13]} While many Indian boarding schools in the Lower 48^[14] were government-run, Alaskan schools “were operated by Christian missionaries of various denominations until around the turn of the 20^th century when many of these schools were taken over by the federal government.”^[15] Some Indigenous Alaskan children were “sent outside of Alaska to Indian Residential Schools, such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School” in Pennsylvania^[16] and boarding schools in Washington state.^[17] Alaska’s state constitution, effective in 1959 with the proclamation of statehood, established a public school system that was “free from sectarian control,” asserting that “[n]o money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”^[18]

The Rev. John Gillespie founded a religious summer recreation camp, Victory Bible Camp (VBC), in approximately 1947,^[19] on 40 acres of land he secured through an act of the U.S. Federal Congress. The camp now spans 400 acres.^[20] While Rev. Gillespie described VBC to House Representative Bartlett as an “interdenominational” camp with “no discrimination as to races,”^[21] the staff training manual explicitly stated that “the majority of campers are of white extraction.”^[22] In 1951, with the help of several missionaries (including Jim Vaus: convicted wiretapper, gangster, and evangelical convert), Gillespie founded Alaska Missions Inc., whose main concern was “the reaching of the Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and training them to reach their own people.”^[23] Twelve years after VBC opened—the same year Alaska achieved statehood—Alaska Missions Inc. opened Victory High School (VHS) with the intention of offering an education “which is Christ-centered and which will prepare Alaskan young people for a life of witness for Jesus Christ primarily to their own people.”^[24] After the founding of Victory Bible Camp, Victory High School, and eventually Arctic Bible Institute (ABI),^[25] Gillespie started his own radio program, Eskimo Hour,^[26] which served as a marketing tool and broadcasted Bible studies, student testimonies, and prayer requests across the state. The stated purpose of VHS and ABI remained to “equip native believers to serve the Lord among their own native people,”^[27] while VBC’s purpose was to “reach all ages for Christ and to build up believers in the faith,” to “provide, under the most favorable circumstances, rest, relaxation and recreation,” and to “foster teaching Conferences with a strong Missionary Emphasis.”^[28]

R.L. Decker, former director of the National Association of Evangelicals, once advocated for a “nationwide, evangelical ‘Secret Service,’ comprised of ‘trusted, loyal, evangelical people in every city and region of America’”^[29] in order to save the country he saw on a path to damnation. The militant imagery depicted in Decker’s rallying cry is not unique within premillennial^[30] evangelical Christian movements (I’m thinking of Billy Graham’s “Crusades,” for example). In fact, Rev. Gillespie himself describes Alaska as a “battle field” and America’s “last defense,” where missionaries have been “fighting the enemy,”^[31] and calls upon a “great army of prayer warriors”^[32] to support the mission. The success of Arctic Missions Inc. is in large part due to the Evangelical Secret Service of R.L. Decker’s dreams; the “inner circle” network of evangelicals with connections to several institutions, including Moody Bible Institute, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA), and Bob Jones College, as well as big-name evangelists to whom Rev. Gillespie turned for advice, mailing lists, and pocketbooks.^[33] A graduate of BIOLA himself, Rev. Gillespie may well have had an “in” with many of these men through alumni connections. BIOLA’s influence can also be seen in Rev. Gillespie’s Anchorage Church of the Open Door, an eerily similar (in fact, identical) name to BIOLA’s mega partner-church in LA which was famous for its massive “JESUS SAVES” signs. The similarities don’t stop there. Rev. Gillespie’s church attracted hundreds of congregants and school-age children for services and Sunday School.^[34] Other similarities between VHS/ABI and mid-twentieth century evangelical private schools in the Lower 48 included a commitment to enforcing God’s ordained hierarchy and stereotypical gender roles,^[35] steeping lessons in biblical values,^[36] and general preparation for service to “a country that desperately needed them.”^[37]

Alaska/Arctic Missions Inc.'s Theology

Anthea Butler, in an interview about her book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, discusses the connection between white evangelical theology and politics, asserting that “Racism is a feature, not a bug, of American evangelicalism.”^[38] In the context of mission work, racism is most prominently displayed in the white missionaries’ internalized assumptions of the superiority of “Christian culture,”^[39] which is interchangeable with “European” or “Euro-American” culture.^[40] In his 1993 book, Missionary Conquest, the Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker defines colonization as “a process involving an unhealthy relationship between two distinct peoples, the colonizer and the colonized” which necessitates “political, military, social, psychological, and economic domination that virtually requires the elimination of the culture and value system of the colonized and the imposition of the values and culture of the colonizer.”^[41] Tinker also refers to missionaries as “religiopolitical agents”^[42] and says they were the manifestation of “correlative structural powers of church and state,”^[43] effectively functioning as “a branch of the civil service.”^[44] While Tinker doubts that missionaries intended to harm Indigenous communities, he is critical of the “blindness to their own inculturation of European values and social structures,”^[45] assumptions (implicit or otherwise) of Euro-American superiority,^[46] and the greater system of Euro-American social structures that rendered it “impossible for any missionary to avoid complicity in the genocide of Native American peoples.”^[47] Regardless of intent, Tinker argues, Christianity and the efforts of Christian missionaries internalized white superiority in “white/Indian relationships.”^[48] In one of his more recent works, Tinker goes so far as to say that the “Euro-Christian worldview” is wholly incompatible with, and even detrimental to, the American Indian “egalitarian-collateral” worldview.^[49]

Dr. Michelle Jacob, however, makes the argument that spiritual syncretism between Christianity and Native traditions is not only possible, but potentially healing.^[50] Her book focuses on the first Native American saint to be canonized by the Catholic Church, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. Within Indigenous Catholicism, Jacob writes, “Indigenous peoples reclaim their Indigenous cultures and languages, and use Saint Kateri Tekakwitha as an inspiration of the narratives of Indigenous cultural pride and worthiness.”^[51] This is not to say that Jacob is by any means complicit with white colonialism—she critiques several forms of “settler colonial” violence.^[52] Saint Kateri Tekakwitha is a force of healing, Jacob states, because of the leadership of Native people and not the Catholic Church.^[53] Native leadership within the church allows for Native interpretations of the Bible and other Christian images and stories. In a similar vein, Dr. Angela Tarango, author of Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle, discusses the importance of rooting evangelism “within [the] local communities [missionaries] are serving.”^[54] She tells the story of missionary school in Arizona that strived to provide “a place where [Pentecostal Indians] could hone their own distinct Pentecostal and Native religious practices, develop their identities as Natives and Christians, and be taught and embrace the practice of the indigenous principle.”^[55] Tarango credits the school with educating and empowering Pentecostal Indians, instilling in them a sense of pride and identity, leadership and “willingness to confront the system.”^[56] The key for Tarango is building an evangelizing mission upon the Indigenous Principle—rooting the evangelizing in Indigenous communities and allowing the community to lead with their values.^[57]

Alas, Victory High and Arctic Missions Inc. did not involve Indigenous leadership, nor did they promote Indigenous Biblical interpretation or emphasize Native communities. The fact that Rev. Gillespie secured the land through an Act of Federal Congress and remained in contact with government officials demonstrates the investment of the United States in evangelizing missions, and thus a lack of separation of church and state. A representative from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, for example, advised Gillespie in a 1957 letter that “While property may not be donated for religious, eleemosynary, or welfare purposes, it may be possible that your organization could acquire Federal surplus property for any schools, hospitals, health centers, or clinics operated by your organization.”^[58] The school is far from the homes of its students, as shown in the map below. Students flew—sometimes hours—to get to the school, where they stayed for as long as nine months with limited family contact.^[59] The physical isolation and immersion in white Christian culture—literally living in missionaries’ homes—created a perfect atmosphere for VHS’s assimilative agenda.

Figure 2.Villages represented by Victory High School students. All of the students must fly in from their villages with the exception of those coming from Anchorage, Victory, Copper Center, and Eagle. Reprinted with permission from Collection 407, Box 2 Folder 9, Billy Graham Archives, Wheaton College.

AMI’s disregard for Alaska Native culture and community can be seen in a story series AMI published called “Toby’s Tales,” in which stories are told from the perspective of a young sled dog who lives in an “isolated village in the interior of Alaska.”^[60] The first tale begins with a “loud shrieking and shouting,” leading Toby to question, “Could Alphonse be at his barrel of home-brew again […] beating his wife and four tiny children?” Eventually, Toby concludes the “clamor” must be the “Lucky Dance” taking place in the village Kashim, or “meeting hall where all of [the village’s] potlatches, parties and native dances are held,” complete with “weird costumes and masks” and “Native singing.” The observant Toby notes that the only man in the village who did not participate was “called a Christian.” Readers later learn the man is not only a Christian, but a missionary. While the concerned sled dog frets, wondering why the “superstitious” people don’t turn to Christ, he also gives evangelical readers some hope through his assurance that “when the time for church service came Sunday afternoon at the missionaries [sic] place, nearly everyone attended.”^[61]

Toby’s description of the village missionary as having “understood and believed that Jesus Christ had died on Calvary’s Cross to free him of all sin and superstition and make him a new man in Christ Jesus” reveals the author’s belief in Christ’s substitutionary atonement and the cross’s centrality to the Christian faith. This interpretation of the cross is coming from the missionaries and not from the Alaska Native communities, which places the power of interpretation in the missionaries’ hands, and therefore does not meet Jacob’s criteria for healing through religious syncretism. Additionally, Toby’s bewilderment surrounding the Indigenous people who haven’t yet “turn[ed] to the missionaries’ Christ” implies that there is an obvious correct choice of faith and that “these people” should convert to it. Finally, graphic descriptions of stereotypical “savage” behavior, such as drunkenness and physical abuse, “weird” and “wild […] ritualistic dance[s]” point to the author’s Eurocentrism and internalized whiteness. Toby’s final question, “Are the missionaries’ friends at home praying enough?”, invokes the power of prayer in converting the “superstitious” villagers—not only to Christianity, but to whiteness. Conversion to white Christianity, according to the author of “Toby’s Tales,” means putting an end to alcohol abuse, physical abuse, and public disturbances such as “throbbing drums” and “ritualistic dances.” Toby’s Tales implies that a Christian dog knows better than the village’s Alaska Native inhabitants. And if Toby’s readers were left wondering just how authentic his account was, the fine print at the end reads, “This true story of village life comes out of Alaska from one of the missionaries associated with Arctic Missions, Inc.”^[62]

1959: Alaska Gains Statehood and a New Christian School

“It rejoices our hearts,” the Reverend John Gillespie wrote his “Dear Brother Phillips,” “that leading evangelicals in the United States also sense the need for such an organized work in this neglected Territory, and thus in the counsel of many, we are more than every [sic] persuaded that the Lord is in this work.”^[63] The year is 1952—five months after the birth of Alaska Missions Inc. With what he interpreted as God’s expressed permission, the BIOLA graduate traveled to Alaska, founded a church, and secured acres of divinely “revealed” land in the wilderness.^[64] Listening ever-closer for God’s guidance, Rev. Gillespie and his newly incorporated Mission set out saving the souls of the Alaskan Bush, and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere (seriously—there is a gap in the archives around this time), God revealed the “need of a High School for natives; a place to train them for Christian leadership.” The blessings didn’t stop at the school’s first two applications in September of 1959—the school was “officially recognized” by the new state’s capitol in December. God “prepared and called the Wallace Bays, a young couple who heard His voice: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ They answered with Isaiah, ‘Here am I; send me.’”^[65] Despite their fellow missionaries’ hesitation, ^[66] Alaska/Arctic Missions Inc. moved forward with the vision. After all, there is no time like the present—especially when “we are in the last days and we do need to be up and doing,” and “the night is coming when no man can work.”^[67]

In a series of letters between VHS’s first principal, Wallace Bays, and Rev. Gillespie, Principal Bays (who also served as a teacher and “dorm parent” to several Alaska Native students) expresses concern over giving Indigenous students “such a good education.”^[68] “They are only natives,” he writes, “they come from a poor background and it is hoped that they will go back into their village where they will not need, perhaps should not have so much education that they would not be happy to settle back down in the village.” Principal Bays, tasked with caring for the intellectual, physical, and spiritual needs of his students, diminishes the students’ worth by callously referring to their Indigeneity as somehow less than an unnamed alternative. The students’ only value seems to be their capacity to serve as vessels for carrying the white Christian dualism of Salvation versus Damnation “back to their own people.”^[69] Thus, it appears Principal Bays has a desire to create the whitest evangelical “disciples” he could out of Native bodies while simultaneously ensuring their sequestering in remote locations, away from the white world. Note that his concern does not seem to be with the students’ wellbeing in terms of their proximity to village life, but with the Mission’s need for “Native Christians”^[70] in specific, remote locations and not in white urban centers.

By asking if “too much education” is “bad for the natives,”^[71] Principal Bays reveals an unspoken fear of educating the Indigenous students. Historically, one might note, white people have also feared “too much education” for women and Black people, as well as other marginalized groups. In response, Rev. Gillespie qualifies his advocacy of education for Alaska Natives by saying that “the Christian native should have the BEST education as long as he can get it to the glory of God for uses that will glorify God.”^[72] Board Members reiterate their belief that “if we cannot do a better job than the state schools we should not be doing it,”^[73] but before assuming that these Board Members hold the purest of intentions in providing a “better” education for these students, we must remember the subjectivity of what is “better” and for whom. Recall that the same year VHS was founded, the Alaska state constitution secularized public schooling. One source reports that the state Board of Education didn’t pass regulations for local schools until 1992, long after VHS closed.^[74] Additionally, the 1928 Meriam Report had exposed the abusive conditions of American Indian education institutions.^[75] Thus, beyond striving for livable and non-abusive conditions, what other criteria would AMI Board Members have had to compare themselves with government schools than those of religious education?

A letter from one “Pastor Jim,” also dated 1963, advises that Native students should be kept from going into town because “They get too much of the big city for their own good.”^[76] There is no explicit mention of white students. Implying that the Native students lacked self-control harkens back to Toby’s description of “superstitious” and “wild” villagers and Sheldon Jackson calling Indigenous Alaskans “savages,” which both depict Alaska Natives as less than their white counterparts. Pastor Jim later invites the reader to rejoice in the saving of two girls who “found that they had been professors of eternal life without being possessors of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Excitement over students dedicating their lives to Christ is common in correspondence between Board Members, which is interesting considering that testimony of an applicant’s salvation through Jesus Christ was required for admission.^[77] Granted, “[a]n exception [was] made occasionally to admit an unsaved student who shows definite interest in spiritual things,”^[78] but in one correspondence alone, Principal Bays reports two students regressing in their spiritual journeys and one student having “disappeared.”^[79] It is difficult to tell whether the majority of students admitted had already converted to Christianity (and, specifically, a Protestant Christianity as opposed to an Orthodox Christianity).

Victory High School Expands

In 1964, the AMI Board voted to extend VHS’s mission into a seven-year program—“four years of high school […] during which the student will receive additional Bible, giving him the equivalent of one year in Bible School. Following graduation from high school it will be possible for the student to go on for three more years to complete a Bible School training program, equipping him to assume Christian leadership in his own land.”^[80] The additional three-year program came to be known as Arctic Bible Institute (ABI) and spanned all twelve months of the year: “during the winter the student learns and prepares himself for Christian service,” a brainstorming document reads, “[t]hose selected for summer ministry will form into Gospel Teams taking the Gospel back into the bush country of Alaska.” As justification for the newly accepted program, the brain-stormer continues: “We believe Native young people supervised by capable counselors and leaders, going to their own villages and people in this type of ministry will establish and strengthen them in their formative years, and it will also keep them from the wicked influences in their own villages.”^[81] The “capable counselors and leaders,” archival images show, were white.

Word about VHS spread to the Alaskan Bush through brochures, “Gospel Team” trips, and AMI’s radio show. At first glance, these communiqués appear similar to those distributed amongst AMI’s established and prospective missionary audiences, but they leave out certain words and phrases which are central to their missionary-audience brochures, such as “That These May Know” with an accompanying photo of young Alaska Natives,^[82] the word “evangelization,”^[83] and coded requests for monetary donations. Instead, these advertisement brochures included student testimonies,^[84] an official-looking guide to the application process,^[85] and what the school called “Prayer Calendars.” Media geared toward prospective students could be easily distributed to established and prospective missionaries without damaging the school’s reputation, but the same could not be said for media geared toward established and prospective missionaries being distributed to prospective students. The biggest difference, in a word, is salvation: one set of advertisements is geared toward the saved, the “Friends in Christ”^[86]; the other is geared toward the unsaved—those souls which have yet to “claim Christ’s victory over the enemy.”^[87]

One VHS Prayer Calendar features a poem about “teaching young natives the way” and giving them a “future,” “friendship,” and “beauty.”^[88] Inside the front cover are “unedited excerpts” of testimonies from students who write that “God is showing [them] the way to a brighter life.” One unnamed student expresses their internalized disdain for non-Christian spiritualities:

When I think of Victory I think of changes—growth. Just as I outgrow some of my school clothes I outgrow my spiritual ‘clothes.’ I guess you might say my dirty old wardrobe is gradually being cast off.

In reading this student’s testimony, one is first drawn to the words, “growth” and “spirituality,” which are not particularly value-laden outside of this context, but obviously serve to uplift Christianity and denigrate non-Christian spiritual practices. Without explicitly stating it, this testimony tells the reader that the student was spiritual prior to their time at VHS, that the student is still in the process of transforming their spirituality, that the student has come to the conclusion that Christianity is a superior form of spirituality, and that VHS played a crucial role in this decision, for which they are grateful (“I am extremely thankful that God sent me here.”). Including this testimony in advertisements for prospective students serves to paint Victory as an accepting and nurturing community of spiritual support, meant to encourage spiritual growth. It is important to remember that by the 1960s, white people had been on Indigenous Alaskan land for almost 200 years. Advertisements such as these may not have been readers’ first encounter with Christianity—in fact, AMI’s brochures for prospective missionaries refer to missionaries already “stationed” in villages.^[89]

A second student’s testimony reflects their internalization of submission to authority:

Sure we’ve had our problems. It was my fault, tho. I was not willing to submit to authority. When I first filled an application to come to V.H.S. I signed a statement that said I would be willing to submit to the rules and standards of the school. But I disobeyed and got punished for it. Now that I think about it I appreciate the punishment. It helped me to grow up and think about the importance of submitting to those in authority.^[90]

In including this student testimony, VHS conveys several messages: that the Native students are attending the school of their own volition (the student mentions they would choose VHS over any other school), responsible for their misbehavior, and taught to conform to what Dr. Seth Dowland describes as “Family Values,”^[91] such as authority and hierarchy. So dedicated is VHS to instilling these “Christian” family values that missionaries were appointed as “dorm parents”^[92] and “prayer parents” for students.^[93] Indeed, for the first several years of the school’s existence students lived with missionaries and their families for the purpose of creating a “home atmosphere,” sharing “the same living room, dining room, even bath room.” Principal Bays expresses a desire for missionary “couples who are willing to almost literally adopt a houseful of young people and raise them as they would there [sic] own.”^[94] The school’s pastor agrees, “Personally I think that we ought to work toward the time that the women will be in the home and be given time to raise the children. This is what I believe to be the Biblical position and necessary for the home.”^[95]

AMI’s commitment to “Christian” family values can be seen in its advertising of both VHS and missionary opportunities with VBC. In one VBC brochure, AMI expresses its desire for male religious leadership, saying the mission is “happy to offer several opportunities for young men who are spiritually motivated and athletically inclined to serve in a summer camp counseling program.”^[96] Communication between Board Members and VHS recruitment flyers articulate the “need” for male students. A 1973 VHS curriculum update included gender-specific courses including “girls [sic] shop” and “boys [sic] cooking.” ^[97] Not only are these course offerings reminiscent of instilling marketable skills tailored to American capitalist society in early boarding schools,^[98] but they reinforce binary gender roles by modifying the subject matter based on the student’s gender.

The Victory High School Student Handbook^[99] identifies five goals for the student, categorized as spiritual, social, mental, emotional, and physical. Each goal is followed by biblical “evidence” proving its relevance. The spiritual goal is identified as being growth in Jesus Christ, “knowledge of the Word,” and “sense of responsibility for the unsaved.” VHS’s social goal encourages students to “practice Christian citizenship in every situation.” For the mental goal, VHS seeks to “develop [students’] ability to think objectively,” which seems somewhat contradictory to the following emotional goal of “develop[ing] a personality controlled by Jesus Christ.” The final goal, a physical one, is written as learning to “care for and develop a respect for your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.”^[100] The handbook continues to discuss mandatory church services and “Friday Night Activity,”^[101] sports, permissions, tardiness, “personal appearance” and conduct, and more.

Personal appearance, according to the VHS handbook, is a judgement of one’s Christian testimony.^[102] A “good Christian testimony” via physical appearance means girls wearing “dresses and/or skirts” to Sunday service and boys keeping their hair “above a dress shirt collar,” short enough that one can see the ears and above the eyebrows. Personal conduct also communicates Christian testimony. Such conduct involves refraining from “criticizing and complaining to one another regarding the school, dormitories, food, regulations, teachers, or any other part of school life.” It also forbids participation in “any unwholesome activity,” including watching any movie or television program “which would be harmful to you or which would wound another Christian’s conscience or cause him to stumble.” Accordingly, VHS’s young people should be “better student[s] than a person without Christ.” ^[103]

Victory High’s student newspaper, the Victory Torch, features on the front page an eagle carrying a torch in one claw and a Bible in the other.^[104] The eagle, as many are aware, is the United States’ national bird. It is said to represent “the American values and attributes of freedom, courage, strength, spirit, loyalty, justice, equality, democracy, quality, and excellence.”^[105] The torch could mean many things, including the call for Christians to spread the Gospel’s light around the world. A May 1962 publication includes brief comments from students on their vacations, their favorite things about Victory, and future plans. One student—we’ll call her Mary^[106]—laments that she has “failed the Lord” many times, and states that “if we really want to live for Him, we only have to resist the devil.”^[107] She implies that truly living a life for the Lord necessarily entails resisting the devil but doesn’t explain what exactly that looks like. Mary’s vagueness is similar to the warning against “unwholesome activities” in the VHS student handbook. Another student expresses their newfound “courage to stand for the Lord as we go to our homes [so] even there we can be shining lights for Him.”^[108] The words “resist” and “courage” stand out to me as being from a theological fear of the devil and his temptations. In Mary’s excerpt, she resists the devil and any of “those activities” which the devil endorses. In reading this sentence, I was not notably concerned until the word “even.” In the context of this student’s testimony, the word implies a sort of exceptionalism—the student’s home is so unwholesome, they must have exceptional courage so that even at home, amidst the devil’s temptations, they can stand for the Lord and spread the Gospel. The second student speaks of standing “for the Lord,” perhaps as opposed to standing for the devil, which would be the logical opposite.

Both students credit Victory High with teaching them these “very valuable things concerning spiritual happiness.” Rev. Dr. Tinker might argue that the testimonies are evidence of their internalization of the Euro-Christian worldview. Dr. Tarango might advocate for a reading of the testimonies which centers the students’ senses of self-responsibility, agency, and empowerment. As Tarango might also point out, however, the testimonies reveal a dedication to Victory and not their communities. Dr. Jacob would have us question whether these students were encouraged to interpret Biblical symbols (such as the devil or a torch) themselves or if the power of interpretation remained with the missionaries. It is worth noting that as far as I’ve read, the only representation of student voices in these archives is found in publications such as the Victory Torch—which, I might add, had missionary staff advisors—and student testimony featured in advertisements.

Conclusion

Through an analysis of advertisements and student testimony geared toward missionary audiences, we have learned that AMI sought to receive sympathetic prayer and support for their success in Operation Salvation: reaching the unsaved souls of Alaska. Propaganda through fictional stories such as “Toby’s Tales” reinforced pre-existing colonial stereotypes of Indigenous Alaskans and village life. We have read correspondence between Principal Bays and the founder of AMI, Rev. John Gillespie, reiterating their desire to educate young Native children for lives among their own people and not in urban centers, around white communities. While the student handbook and application advertisements do not attempt to hide the fact that VHS offered a Christ-centered education, they utilize broad and ambiguous language condemning non-Christian life rather than pointedly calling the students themselves “unsaved.”

This paper has engaged with Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker’s argument that Christian missions to Indigenous populations are inherently colonial. Rev. Gillespie and the legacy of AMI are quite similar to the types of missions Tinker condemns. In the history of Indigenous boarding schools, VHS is not alone—Dr. Angela Tarango discusses the founding of a Pentecostal Indian boarding school in her book, Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle.^[109] In Tarango’s view, being trained for Christian mission work gave Indigenous Pentecostals “autonomy and education.”^[110] A key difference between the American Indian College in Tarango’s book and VHS/ABI, however, is the use of the Indigenous Principle, which “stresses that Christian missionaries must root their evangelism within the local community that they are serving [by] encourag[ing] locally run churches, leadership, and educational systems, and they should be willing, after a time, to turn the mission over to the locals to run on their own.”^[111] Founded in 1957 by a Pentecostal missionary, the school (originally called All-Tribes Bible School, or ATBS) was dedicated not only to “educating Indians to be missionary helpers,” but to “providing ‘a foundation for an indigenous Indian church program.’”^[112] The school’s first “Indian president” assumed the role in 1978.^[113] While VHS/ABI and ATBS shared a goal of educating Indigenous people for spreading the Gospel “to their own people,” VHS/ABI was an Indigenous school run by white missionaries, whereas ATBS became an Indigenous school run by the Indigenous principle and an Indigenous principal. Dr. Michelle Jacob similarly encourages relationships with Christianity on Indigenous terms and condemns the “colonizing discourse that displaces the power and organization from Indigenous communities and kinship networks, and places the power into the hands of Western institutions.”^[114]

Victory High School closed in the spring of 1982. The Board cited four reasons for the school’s closure: firstly, that the “place for these young people is in their homes under parental care, rather than […] sent away to school;” secondly, that the school has been “continually short of staff;” thirdly, that the cost of keeping the school open has increased; and fourthly, that “the school has served its original purpose well, but that it is no longer needed.”^[115] After its closing, VHS’s buildings became the Conference Center side of Victory Bible Camps and Conference Center. Its evangelizing mission lived on through Arctic Bible Institute in Palmer, the Multi-Media Production center, and the Bible Education by Extension program, geared toward “taking the Bible School to people who cannot come into a resident Bible School.” Rev. Gillespie later received an honorary doctorate from BIOLA for his work in Alaska. A Google search of Arctic Missions, Inc. will result in a wide array of web-addresses—none of which are, to my knowledge, affiliated with the Gillespie name. The legacy of Rev. John Gillespie survives through a mission called InterAct Ministries, which today sends missionaries across the North Pacific Crescent, including Russia, Siberia, Canada, and, of course, Alaska.^[116] InterAct Ministries has expanded its evangelical reach to include not only Indigenous populations, but Muslim and Sikh communities, too.^[117]

I have heard arguments made for missionaries’ “good intentions,” but that argument won’t be made here. As Rev. Dr. Tink Tinker so eloquently states, “Identifying their actions as well-intentioned but misguided […] merely serves to explain behavior that is finally inconsistent with the goal of salvation they proclaimed, and as responsible human beings they must be held accountable for the disastrous consequences of their actions.”^[118] I return now to the Bible verse at Inspiration Point:

Let each generation tell its children what glorious things He does. I will meditate about your glories, splendor, majesty, and miracles. Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. Everyone will tell about how good you are, and sing about your righteousness.^[119]

When I reached Inspiration Point for the first time and read this verse, I sang. High above the VBC campus, with 360-degree views of God’s creation, I felt close to my God and compelled to sing God’s praises—to proclaim God’s greatness. I sang song after song, reveling in the echo across the valley. My best camper-friend and I took selfies with crosses made from twigs and flowers, tossed our heads to the heavens, and felt thankful for the holy space we occupied at VBC. I snapped a photo of the plaque, intent on carrying the verse with me as a reminder of my Christianly duty to share God’s glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles with the world. If I return to Inspiration Point again, I imagine I’ll have a different experience. The verse reads somewhat balefully to me now. It doesn’t inspire spontaneous song or makeshift crosses. The joyous overtones have been almost entirely replaced by colonial undertones.

Gillespie and his missionary associates sought to save souls from eternal hellfire, but their salvation favored white evangelical Christianity and condemned all else. Good intentions do not excuse colonialism. This paper has served as the first step in my journey to uncover the messy and complicated truth behind VBC. It is not my story to tell—I didn’t enter the scene until 2001, long after ABI relocated and VHS closed. I have attempted here to not only uplift part of this story, but to place VHS and AMI within the analytical frameworks of established and respected scholars of Indigenous religious history. I will conclude by noting that the closest AMI came to acknowledging the land it occupied was an origin story depicting a “Native guide” leading them to it.^[120] The absence of land recognition is evidence of a one-sided, exploitative relationship in which white missionaries claimed land with no regard for the relationships the land held prior to their arrival. The next step is to begin healing these relationships. In this spirit, we must remember that Victory Bible Camps is located between Nay’dini’aa Na’ (Chickaloon) and Tezdlen Na’ (Tazlina), on Ahtna lands.^[121]