Village Among Nations

"Royden Loewen is an engaging storyteller and a solid scholar. Village among Nations will be of interest to those curious about the experience of transnationalism among Canada's minority groups." -- Doreen Klassen, Department of Folklore, Memorial University "In Village among Nations, Loewen covers a tremendous amount of geographic territory and nearly a century of time. Like an expert guide, he takes the reader through all of this with a fine mix of storytelling and historical analysis." -- Brian Froese, Department of History, Canadian Mennonite University

Village among Nations recuperates a missing chapter of Canadian history: the story of traditionalist Mennonites who emigrated from Canada for cultural reasons, but then in later generations “returned” in large numbers for economic and social security.

Between the 1920s and the 1940s, 10,000 traditionalist Mennonites emigrated from western Canada to isolated rural sections of Northern Mexico and the Paraguayan Chaco; over the course of the twentieth century, they became increasingly scattered through secondary migrations to East Paraguay, British Honduras, Bolivia, and elsewhere in Latin America. Despite this dispersion, these Canadian-descendant Mennonites, who now number around 250,000, developed a rich transnational culture over the years, resisting allegiance to any one nation and cultivating a strong sense of common peoplehood based on a history of migration, nonviolence, and distinct language and dress.

Village among Nations recuperates a missing chapter of Canadian history: the story of these Mennonites who emigrated from Canada for cultural reasons, but then in later generations “returned” in large numbers for economic and social security. Royden Loewen analyzes a wide variety of texts, by men and women – letters, memoirs, reflections on family debates on land settlement, exchanges with curious outsiders, and deliberations on issues of citizenship. They relate the untold experience of this uniquely transnational, ethno-religious community.