The Mismeasure of Manabozho: Unsettling the Science of the Mind in Henry R. Schoolcraft's Algic Researches.

This article examines how the writings and story collections of Irish-Ojibwe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and her brother William Johnston challenge nineteenth-century mental science and colonialist narratives promoted by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Jane’s husband and an Indian agent. Contrasting Henry’s portrayal of Indigenous peoples as intellectually stagnant, Jane and William’s translations of Anishinaabe stories—especially those about the trickster Manabozho—emphasize collective adaptability, interdependence, and resilience as central to mental health and well-being. The article reinterprets Jane’s expressions of “melancholy thoughts” as reflections of kinship and community disruption during treaty negotiations rather than individual pathology, thereby offering a decolonial framework that situates mental health within communal and environmental relationships. This perspective highlights Indigenous storytelling as a form of “equipment for living” that counters colonial assessments by valuing complexity, mutual care, and the social matrix sustaining individuals.