Flesh, Dreams and spirit : life on Aboriginal mission stations, 1825-1850 a history of cross-cultural connections

During the first half of the 19th century, Indigenous Australians suffered rapid and brutal colonial dispossession, resulting in loss of land, life, health, culture and independence. Alongside this, though, they also experienced the efforts of a number of self-styled Christian humanitarians: Protestant missionaries and government appointed protectors with a mandate to shelter and nurture Aboriginal people physically, and to change and control them culturally. This work focuses on such projects in New South Wales and Victoria between 1825-1850; specifically, the missions at Lake Macquarie, Wellington Valley and Buntingdale, and the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. These institutions ran on the assumption that a viable future would be available only to those Aboriginal people who submitted to missionary observation and authority. These people were expected to experience (Protestant) Christian conversion, embrace hard, regular farming work, and allow their bodily functions and hungers to be regulated by missionaries, whilst learning Christian shame and self-discipline. However, missionaries' and protectors' efforts were shaken, weakened and transformed by the relationships they developed with other white colonists and with Aboriginal people. During this period, protectors and missionaries often lacked the political and physical power they would display in later decades, and their writings were shaped by fears about the forms Australian colonialism was taking and the possibility that the white civilisation they wished to represent was neither dominant nor safe. This led to powerful feelings of loneliness and moral siege, affecting missionaries' views on savagery, civilisation, morality and race. Moreover, life on missions and protectorate stations was shaped not only by European attitudes but also by the vital and complex relationships that developed between missionaries and Aboriginal people. Historical discussions of these early missions have tended to be dominated by a focus on the reasons for missionaries' and protectors' "failure" to achieve their civilising aims. However, a more nuanced understanding of this period can be gained by exploring the different ways Aboriginal people saw their relationships with missionaries and with the country on which mission stations stood, and their various responses to missionary projects of evangelism and bodily control. The power of Indigenous ideas, actions and choices, at a time when missionaries' authority was greatly limited, makes the story of these early stations in many ways unique and vital to our overall understanding of mission history and Australian colonialism