By examining oral narratives we may renew our historical knowledge of the cult of Saint Ann in Acadia, thus building a history from the bottom up, where life experience supplants theories and accepted norms. In Acadia in 1881, some of the clerics who belonged to the nationalist elite acted in the name of the entire Acadian people in choosing the Assumption of Mary as the symbol of the Acadian cause. This was a time when the devotion to saints was being rationalized following the Council of Trent, with the resulting insistence on the Marian cult as a way of promoting a more monotheist religion centred on Christ. This movement slowly marginalized the most popular of saints, Saint Ann, who embodies the difficult passage from paganism to Christianity in colonial Acadia. As the true symbol of Catholicism in the New World, Saint Ann quickly became the patron saint of First nations groups. She was successful in replacing ancestor worship and devotions based on solar myths. Many narratives telling of Saint Ann’s fondness for « the Indians » explain the ties between Christ’s grandmother and First nations people. The link is felt so strongly that some go so far as to suggest that « Saint Ann was an Indian ». In colonial Acadia, Micmacs considered her as a queen because of the wisdom they attributed to elders, and specifically the respect given to grandmothers as educators. The most popular image of Saint Ann used to evangelize Natives in the New World was « Saint Ann and the Book » (Sainte Anne au livre). This image has always popularly been known in French Canada as « Saint Ann educating Mary » (Sainte Anne éducatrice de Marie). Most images of Saint Ann, however, present her as an old woman, and one of the curiosities of religious art history is a 15th century engraving entitled « Saint Ann as a Witch » (Sainte Anne est une sorcière). This is exactly the personification of the medicine woman, midwife and sorcerer that is referred to as the « taoueille » in Acadian folklore. Saint Ann thus challenges orthodoxy, just like the Apocryphal narratives that describe her. She is part and parcel of the type of knowledge that resists the dominant discourse in theological recta ratio, in the same way that folklore opposes a certain canonical vision of religious history.