In the early nineteenth century, missionaries translated a body of their favorite evangelical hymns into Ojibwa, hailing them as key weapons in the campaign to Christianize and civilize Qjibwa people. For many Minnesota Ojibwas, however, the hymns have evolved to become central expressions of the integrity of their way of life as distinct. Hymn singing has come to hold a prominent place alongside other expressions of the religious in Ojibwa life. heard most prominently at funeral wakes and other charged moments in the community, the songs arc chanted by elders according to distinctive rules of structure and performance. Precisely because hymn singing makes present the Ojibwa language and the world of values, beliefs, aesthetics, and life-ways said to inhere in that language, the hymns serve as resources of deep memory that enable many Qjibwa people to meet the challenges of contemporary life. My dissertation relies on both historical research and ethnographic reflection rooted in two years of community work. With a theoretical orientation toward the ‘practice of religion, I move beyond the specific textual meaning of hymns to the fuller meanings generated contextually in situated moments of hymn singing. The story of hymn singing, then, provides a lens through which we can more fully view the motion of Ojibwa religious culture, the better to understand its interactions with and transformations of American Protestantism.