Massacres, Mining and Missionaries
This article was published in the NSW History Teachers’ Journal
When I was writing Back on the Block: The Bill Simon Story I had to research the history of the Purfleet Reserve where Pastor Bill Simon was born. I realised there was some confusion and misunderstanding about reserves and missions and this in turn led me to look at the history of Christianity in Australia and its relationship and effects on the indigenous people of this land. The early missionaries were products of their time and however well-intentioned their actions, their philosophy was nevertheless entrenched with the attitudes that saw the white race as being superior. However, there were some in the Church that sought to change conditions for indigenous people and took up their fight. As a secondary school teacher of English and History I thought about what I would impart to students of Australian history if asked about the relationship of Christianity with our indigenous people and I came up with the ten points below:
1. The Doctrine of Discovery & ‘Terra Nullius’
In 1452 a Bull, Romanus Ponifex issued by Pope Nicholas V, declared war on all non-Christians. This led in the early 1500s to the Doctrine of Discovery legitimising the dispossession of native peoples using the convenient myth of Terra Nullius. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and to a lesser extent, British and French explorers justified dispossession on the grounds of bringing the gospel to a heathen people. One Pope opined that ‘it pleased him and the Holy Spirit’ to establish bishoprics in the southern territories. Yet the plunder of natural resources and decimation of native inhabitants was often the result.
Terra Australis became The Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. Portuguese explorer, Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros, commissioned by the King of Spain, believed that the discovery of the Great South Land would bring ‘as much gold and silver as you can carry and such a quantity of pearls that you shall measure them by the hatfuls’.[1] On his discovery adventures, he believed he had discovered Australia. In fact, he had reached the New Hebrides.
In later centuries, explorers such as Cook were products of the Enlightenment and brought with them a Deism that excluded any real notions of personal faith. Such belief culminated in a policy of ‘civilising the natives before attempting to ‘Christianise’ them.
While the evangelical movement in England gave rise to enormous social reform, including the anti-slavery campaign and while the first chaplains on Australia’s shores, including Richard Johnson and Samual Marsden, were products of that movement, there remained a disconnect between their reformed beliefs and any notion of injustice resulting from occupation and dispossession.
2. No Treaty
Australia is the only major former British colony in the world not to have negotiated a treaty with its Indigenous peoples. Although various calls were made by (a few) settlers, governors, missionaries and others for a treaty, nothing ever came of it. For example, the Quaker missionaries Backhouse and Walker who visited Australia in the 1830s to look at the condition of the convicts and Aborigines at the behest of the English Christian reformers, advocated that one-fifth of all land taken from Aborigines in South Australia be returned. The British parliament (despite Thomas Buxton’s efforts – himself a Quaker) turned this down because of protests from settler interest groups.[2] Similarly when John Batman (1835) did a deal (with probably questionable motives) with Port Phillip Aborigines to exchange 600,000 acres of land for tomahawks, blankets, mirrors, and flour etc. Governor Burke, another product of the Enlightenment, overruled it, on purely pragmatic grounds in that it might create a precedent since, so he believed, only the Crown could deal with land.
Nothing much seems to have happened for the next hundred and forty years; however, in the last three decades, calls for a treaty have intensified. Christians have been involved in this call. In 2004 the General synod of the Anglican Church called for public debate on whether Australia should negotiate a treaty with its Indigenous people. In 2008 the CEO of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, called for a treaty.
(Hundreds of treaties were negotiated with the native Americans. Admittedly many of these treaties served the purpose of British imperialism, prevented Indian wars, and curtailed the expansionist motives of the French. Canada also had treaties, and some are quite recent, such as the Nunavut Agreement (1993). This determined that Inuit (Eskimos) own 1,994,000 Sq Km on Canadian territory. This was achieved by the surrender of Native Title but gave Nunavut people title to sub-surface minerals.
New Zealand negotiated a treaty in 1840. Although the British dishonoured the terms of the treaty, in 1975, the NZ Government passed the Treaty of Waitangi Act which has allowed earlier grievances to be addressed. Subsequently, in 1995, Queen Elizabeth while on a visit to NZ, signed a Deed of Settlement (including an apology) transferring land and forests to the biggest Maori iwi (tribe.)
Various initiatives by both white and Indigenous advocates have continued since the 1980s. No government, however, has been sympathetic to a treaty. A treaty, Agreement, Compact or whatever name it comes by would only be achieved by referendum – most of which historically have failed. A treaty would provide greater certainty for hard-won Indigenous rights such as native title which since 1998 has been watered down by legislation.)
3. Contact History
The first settlement in 1788 was a convict colony. Christianity, the convicts, were to experience, and that which Aborigines were to observe, thus had a heavy overlay of authority and harsh discipline. Aborigines wept when they saw convicts being flogged. A military drum roll announced the first Christian service where the convicts were ordered to attend, with the warning, ‘No Man to be Absent on Any Account Whatever.’ The sermon, based on Psalm 116, verse 12, ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?’[3] must have caused the convicts to wonder just what their benefits were. Perhaps it was the benefit of transportation, rather than the alternative, which was hanging.
Like Cook, Governor Phillip carried instructions. He was instructed to treat the natives with ‘amity and kindness’ because they were British citizens. At first, Phillip went to great lengths to ‘conciliate their affections’, even taking no retaliatory action when he was speared in the shoulder. However, when his gamekeeper, McIntyre, was killed by Aborigines (almost certainly for mistreating them) Phillip ordered the military to go out and bring back the heads of the first ten Aborigines they came across. When Captain Tench, a Christian, sought advice from Johnson as to what he (Tench) should do, Johnson advised him to obey Phillip’s instructions. When Tench complained to Phillip, he reduced the number to be killed to six.[4] Fortunately for the Aborigines, the military became bogged down in quicksand, and Phillip abandoned the exercise.
Within the first 60 years of settlement (some prefer ‘invasion’), it is estimated that the number of Aboriginal people fell from around 250,000 in south-eastern Australia alone to around 15,000.[5] The main reasons for this dramatic decline were, destruction of hunting grounds, introduced diseases for which they had no immunity, massacres and sexual abuse of females to such an extent that for many years fecundity remained virtually zero. Regrettably, the Church, for the most part, became part of ‘The Great Australian Silence’.
4. Massacres, ill-treatment, and missionaries
Many massacres would probably have never come to light but for the persistent efforts of dedicated missionaries. While some academics like Keith Windschuttle are in almost complete denial that massacres occurred at all, (see The Fabrication of Aboriginal History), many missionaries reported on killings such as occurred at Waterloo Creek and Myall Creek. For example, Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, a Congregationalist missionary at Lake Macquarie in 1838 reported to the London Missionary Society and the Colonial Secretary that up to 300 were killed at and around Waterloo Creek and 28 men, women and children massacred at Myall Creek.[6] Other missionaries incurred the wrath of settlers when they tried to intervene in the kidnapping of women as sex slaves. In 1928, the Coniston Massacre, in the Northern Territory, came to light through the efforts of a Lay missionary, Athol McGregor who put his life on the line in reporting the massacre to the southern newspapers. McGregor was told in no uncertain terms to keep his nose out of such affairs. His persistence resulted in an inquiry which turned out to be ‘kangaroo court’ in which all the perpetrators were acquitted.[7]
The extent to which perpetrators believed their killings were justified and their blatant racial prejudices acceptable is nowhere better illustrated than in their defence during the Coniston Massacre inquiry. The police constable, Murray, who led the killing expedition, commenting on why the Aborigines had become a ‘problem’, expressed the view that missionaries had been teaching the Aborigines that they were equal with whites. This was clearly a reference to Annie Lock, independent missionary, who, notwithstanding some of her controversial policies, saved many Aborigines from starvation and taught that they were equal with whites in the sight of God.[8]
Another notable missionary, John Gribble, started a mission on the Gascoyne River in WA in 1880 at the request of the Missions Committee of the Anglican Diocese of Perth. However, he was appalled to find the near-slavery conditions of Aboriginal workers employed under the ‘Master and Servants’ Act. If Aborigines escaped, police and wild dogs were sent after them. Some had been shot. He also exposed the commonly held practice of pastoral workers ‘keeping’ Aboriginal women. When he complained to the press, the attorney general, and other authorities, he was roughed up by thugs in the pay of the pastoralists. He was eventually sacked by the Missions Committee because many in the Church had pastoral interests.[9]
5. Settler attitudes
How the wife of a settler saw things in 1883:
‘They brought a new black gin with them who can’t speak a word of English. The usual method here of bringing in a new wild gin is to put a rope around her neck and drag her along from horseback, the gin on foot. The next day, the new gin whom they call Bell is chained up to a tree a few yards away from the house and is not to be loosed until they think she is tamed’.[10]
How Mounted Constable, (and Aboriginal Protector) William Wiltshire saw it, 1896:
‘The mongrel half-caste inherits only the vices of civilisation…If it is a male, he is born for the gallows or to be shot, if a female she becomes a wanton devoid of shame. I hold out no gleam of hope for such a repulsive breed. God meant Aboriginal women to be used by white men as he had placed them wherever the pioneers go.’ [11]
A respondent to a Church Inquiry into the condition of the natives, 1915:
‘It would be foolish to argue that all men are equal. The blackfellow is inferior and must necessarily remain so, but he is by no means so inferior as to be able to rise above the level of a working animal’. [12]
While these views might seem extreme, they are in part attributable to Social Darwinism a view that saw ‘primitive peoples disappearing in the inevitable advance of civilisation’. Such a view was espoused by Bishop William Brought and many Church leaders who were influenced by Enlightenment philosophy. Even by the 1940s, many believed that ‘full-bloods’ would die out and that ‘half-castes’, ‘quadroons’ and ‘octoroons’ would eventually be absorbed into the white race and would lose their Aboriginality. The Church’s role was seen by some to ‘smooth the pillow of a dying race.’ It was not until people like Dr Charles Duguid – a surgeon and moderator of the Presbyterian Church went out into the back blocks of South Australia by camel, that society began to accept the fact that Aborigines were here to stay. Duguid was responsible for highlighting the condition of remote Aborigines in South Australia and for the setting up of the Ernabella Mission whose choirs still perform to amazed audiences today.
6. Missions and Missionaries
A responsible and balanced view of Christian missions must be seen between the two extremes of Marxist ideology that saw all missionary activity as objectionable and destroying Indigenous culture and those conservative Christians (not all) unwilling to acknowledge that missionaries made mistakes.
It needs to be recognised that virtually all missionaries were recruited from overseas. They were French Trappist Monks, Italian Pallentines, German Lutherans and Moravians, Irish Catholics, Spanish Benedictines, British and Scottish. They all came with their fairly entrenched theological and world views. Few arrived on Australian shores with the slightest idea of Aboriginal culture and way of life.
It is indisputable that by the mid-1800s, virtually all missionary activity in NSW had been abandoned. The main reason for this was a total lack of support from the Christian Churches and the colonial government. Most missionaries were dedicated and often lived under the same deprivations as their ‘flocks.’ They had to be gardeners, ‘barefoot’ doctors, plumbers, stockmen, and builders and at the same time, carry out what they saw as their gospel mandate. A few were misfits and overly authoritarian. Some treated Aborigines badly and viewed Aborigines as pagan, not understanding their deeply-held animistic beliefs that often accommodated a belief in a creator spirit. As Harris has quipped, ‘God didn’t arrive with the first fleet!’
Harris points out that the main mistakes made by missionaries – at least in the Northern Territory were first, a failure to see the importance of Aboriginal languages, (the first complete Bible in any Aboriginal language, the Kriol Bible, was published in 2007). Secondly, a failure to acknowledge the Aborigines as ‘mates’, (few missionaries ever invited Aborigines into their homes) and thirdly, a failure to support the training and ‘ordination’ of future pastors/ministers/clergy, (when Aborigines presented for baptism or ministry leadership, they were always told they were not yet considered ready.)[13]
Yet, notwithstanding the many mistakes missions and missionaries made, no less a scholar than Charles Rowley, distinguished historian and no apologist for missions was able to say that, ‘Destruction of Aboriginal populations was eventually arrested, partly by the efforts of missions on the large reserves’.[14]
It is certainly true that missionaries came with their own cultural baggage. Most believed implicitly that British civilisation was just waiting to be adopted by the Aborigines once they saw the benefits. Another failure was the belief that Aborigines should adopt the protestant work ethic and give up their ‘hunter and gatherer’ nomadic way of life.
Yet missionaries were probably the least racist of any of the social groups around them because if they accepted the Bible as the Word of God, they had no option other than to see Aborigines as being made in His image. By contrast, many scientists were obsessed with phrenology and went to any lengths to obtain ‘specimens’. When William Lanney – the last ‘full-blood’ Aboriginal man in Tasmania died, there was a most undignified struggle between the honorary medical officer at Hobart hospital, Dr William Crowther and the house surgeon, Dr Stockell, in order to obtain Lanney’s body parts. Such was the intrigue that Crowther’s wife invited Stockwell to tea while Crowther broke into the morgue and removed Lanney’s head taking it home in a briefcase. When Lanney was finally buried, mourners were horrified to discover the next morning that grave robbers had dug up the remains because of the high demand by scientists in England for body parts.[15]
Whatever the shortcomings of the missionaries, many missions became havens for Aborigines who might otherwise have been shot or ill-treated. At Roper River in the NT, Aborigines have testified that the missionaries saved them from being shot by police or cattlemen.
One of the white stockmen who shot the Roper River people was George Conway. When he was a very old man, in 1957, he told the truth about himself. He said he was boss of a hunting gang of 10 or more white men. They would ride out to Elsey Station along the Roper River shooting any people they found.[16]
‘If the missionaries hadn’t come, we would have all been shot down.’ [17]
‘...there are many here in fear of the police who had shot a number of natives... The police also visited Hermannsburg...and took four...away. As a result of our mediation one has been returned but the others have been shot.’ [18]
On cape York, Presbyterian missions on the west coast at Aurukun, Weipa, and Mapoon at the turn of the 20th Century became havens for those fleeing from the pastoralist expansion. The missions also persuaded the government to introduce tougher laws to prevent pearling and trepang lugger captains from ‘hiring’ divers, including women and treating them cruelly.
Finally, contrary to popular belief, most Aborigines were not ‘brain-washed’ by missionaries. Just as Reynolds argues that ‘Aborigines didn’t sit around their campfires waiting to be massacred’, nor did they sit around their campfires waiting to have views imposed on them by the missionaries. Aborigines often had deep and meaningful ‘theological’ discussions with missionaries. They questioned, for example, why, if God loved everyone, that the white ‘Christians’ flogged convicts within an inch of their lives. Missionaries were often surprised to discover how similar to the Genesis story was their creator ‘sky hero’ stories. Those like Aboriginal pastor James Noble who assisted Gribble were completely clear and non-syncretic in their understanding of the Christian faith. While it is true that in recent years some sincere but misguided white ‘missionaries’ – generally freelance ones – have been advocating that all Aboriginal culture is evil, many informed and articulate Aboriginal Christians are challenging such 19th Century views.
7. Stolen Generations
Despite what has happened in the past, it is significant that in the 2001 census, approximately 70% of Indigenous respondents nominated the Christian Religion, either Indigenous or mainstream as their belief. No doubt much of this might be considered nominal. Yet those who have been involved with the Stolen Generations issue know that many men and women, the products of the Kinchela Boys Home and the Cootamundra Girls Home both NSW and other institutions have either retained or embraced the Christian faith. Much rhetoric surrounds the Stolen Generations. Were they taken for their own good? Did they get an education they otherwise would not have received? Were they removed because they were neglected? In most cases, the answer to these questions is a resounding NO. While a few children were given up by parents unable to care for their children and taken into foster care, as records of government policy show, the reason for such removal was to ‘breed out the colour’ and ‘wipe away Aboriginality’. Protectors like AO Neville in WA and Dr Cecil Cook in the Northern Territory were obsessed with eradicating ‘the problem of the half-caste.’
‘Are we going to have a population of [1 million] blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia ?’’(AO Neville)[19]
‘Generally, by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.’ (Dr Cecil Cook) [20]
Many children were forcibly removed by police or welfare officers purely on the grounds that they were (generally light-skinned) Aborigines. One of the most notable women to have been removed by police, Margaret (Lilardia) Tucker OAM, one-time opera singer, became a strong supporter of the missionaries who befriended her. Tucker’s experience of being taken away by police is recorded in the iconic documentary film, Lousy Little Sixpence. Some have become Christian pastors like Bill Simon whose book, Back on the Block, has recently been published.[21] Others like Jean Carter who with her three siblings were abducted on their way home from school in broad daylight by welfare officers and taken to three separate institutions have told of their conversion to Christ in spite of the way they were treated.
Generally, the Churches were silent during the era of the stolen generations. While Christian missions didn’t remove children – only the government had that authority; nevertheless, they were in an unenviable position because they relied on government funding, often pitifully inadequate, to help sustain their work. To this extent, the Churches and missions were party to a policy that was later to be condemned.[22]
There were Christians who spoke out about such policies. Mary Bennet was a well-connected influential Christian woman who taught at the government Mount Margaret Mission. There she introduced sweeping changes to the curriculum, replacing the strict religious regime with education that brought the schooling up to state school standards. As writer and activist, Bennet appeared before the 1932 Mosley Royal Commission describing institutions such as Moore River to which children were taken as ‘prison farms’. She also declared war on the pastoralists, the police and the Aborigines Department blaming the latter for ‘smashing up families’.[23]
8. Stolen Wages
Long before it became illegal in the 1960s to pay below-award wages or in some cases, no wages, to Aboriginal workers, especially on pastoral properties, there were those who spoke out against such injustice. One such person was the missionary Rod Schenk of the Aborigines Inland Mission, (not to be confused with John Flynn’s Australian Inland Mission). Although Schenk was a product of his time, believing that Aboriginal culture was incompatible with Christian beliefs, he became a strident critic of those pastoralists who ill-treated Aboriginal workers by not only paying inadequate wages but also denying them the right to hunt on their traditional land. Schenk was also a vociferous critic of Aboriginal Protector A O Neville who attempted at every turn to frustrate the attempts of the missionaries.[24]
Many Christians have been affected by stolen wages policies. The Aboriginal wife of a well-known Aboriginal pastor worked as a domestic for twelve years and had her wages taken by the Queensland government. She has been offered $4,000. Prior to 1975, when Australia passed the Racial Discrimination Act, it was legal for governments to pay no wages or under-award wages. In Queensland, Aboriginal men that worked in silica mines, sawmills or on government reserves, and females who worked as domestic servants, had most of their wages (often 80% or more) paid into a bank account in their own name, but with the bank book held by the local policeman who invariably doubled as the local protector. In addition, allowances such as old-age pensions, war-service pensions, child endowment and other allowances were confiscated. Aborigines who wished to withdraw money from their account had to plead with the policeman who was often indifferent to their requests and often absent from the town. As investigations carried out by Dr Ross Kidd would later show, police often helped themselves to the money. Furthermore, the Queensland Government itself, drew money out of the accounts to top up government coffers.[25]
Kidd has estimated that the total funds improperly taken (stolen) from personal accounts totalled $500 million. After being threatened with legal action in 2001, the Queensland Beattie government paid out a total of $40 million to workers who could show that they had their wages taken. A cap of $4,000 applied to any claimant regardless of how many years they worked. The government in 2008, after being threatened with further legal action increased the cap by a maximum of $3,000. A sum of $20 million remains undispersed.
In NSW, most of the stolen wages were taken from apprentices, boys who worked on farming properties and girls as domestics. Like in Queensland, the money was taken and placed in accounts the bank books of which the apprentices rarely if ever saw. In NSW, the stolen wages had strong links with the stolen generations because many of the apprentices had come out of institutions like the Kinchela Boys Home and the Cootamundra Girls Home. Although an inquiry in 1937 found serious irregularities in the accounts, it wasn’t until 2004 that a leaked NSW cabinet document revealed that the government was trying to avoid paying back wages. In the same year, the government set up the Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme, which sought to redress the problem. All jurisdictions (except Tasmania) will eventually have to face up to their Stolen Wages issues. Many Indigenous Christians have been affected by such policies and are only now eligible to have some of their wages returned.
9. 1967 Referendum and Citizenship Rights
As early as August 1910 the Australian Board of Missions had called on ‘Federal and State Governments to agree to a scheme by which all responsibility for safeguarding the human and civil rights of the aborigines should be undertaken by the Federal Government’.[26]
Many people involved in advocating for the rights of Aboriginal people since the 1938 Day of Mourning where Christians. Aboriginal Pastor Doug Nicholls, for example, one-time premier of South Australia was not only a pastor but a strong advocate for citizenship rights. As a child, Nicholls narrowly avoided being taken away by police by hiding under the school floor when they came to take him and his siblings away.[27] Nicholls was a member of the 1938 Day of Mourning committee that sought to claim citizenship rights denied to Aboriginal people, such as the aged pension, child endowment, war pensions, the right to move from reserves/missions, the right to marry, to work, to have relatives visit without Aboriginal Welfare Board approval and the right not to have their children taken away.
Another Christian advocate was David Uniapon (man on the 50 dollar note) who was pastor, inventor, and social justice advocate. Known as the ‘Black Leonardo’, Uniapon read widely in literature, philosophy, and science. He predicted helicopter flight, polarised light, and patented numerous inventions between 1909 and 1944. He also invented a modified shearing tool which was to revolutionise the industry. When he complained about conditions for Aborigines and called for land rights, he was arrested under the vagrancy laws. At a time when white Christian views of syncretism excluded everything Aboriginal, Uniapon was able to live within his Ngarrinyeri and Christian cultures without compromising his Christian faith.[28]
The lead-up to the referendum saw an unlikely grouping of unionists, communists, and Christians meeting in the Sydney Town Hall. Doug Nicholls who chaired the meeting is reported as saying he was uncomfortable sharing the platform with ‘that communist, Jessy Street’.[29] Other non-Indigenous Christian supporters included the indefatigable Mary Bennett.
The 1967 federal referendum was a landmark in Indigenous Australia when over 90% of Australians voted to have changes made to the Constitution. Contrary to popular belief the referendum did not for the first time give Aborigines the vote. By 1965, all jurisdictions gave Aborigines the right to vote in state and territory elections. What the referendum did was to change the Constitution at s52(xxvi) removing the exception clause that gave the Commonwealth the power to make laws for the people of any race (except the Aboriginal race). Removing the exception, meant that the Commonwealth could override the states where their laws were discriminatory. The second thing the referendum did was to remove s127 which excluded Aborigines being counted in the national census. This removal accorded Aborigines full citizenship rights and the right to vote federally.
10. Land Rights and mining
Prior to the introduction of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act in 1975, governments could grant mining companies licences to explore for or mine minerals on traditional Aboriginal land without any need for consultation or compensation for the destruction of significant sites.[30] After the Whitlam Government drafted the legislation and following Whitlam’s demise, the passing of the legislation by the Frazer government, gave Aborigines for the first time some control over mining. Significantly, CMS missionaries were strong supporters of reserve land and mission land being handed over to traditional owners.
Another aspect of mining not often appreciated is that on Groote Eylandt, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) took out a mining licence for gemstones before the major mining companies. This gave CMS some bargaining power and led to the employment of Aboriginal workers.[31]
In Cape York, the attitude of the Christian missions was more ambivalent. When armed police in 1963 forced Aborigines off their land at Mapoon – burning down the village and the James Ward Memorial Church in order to facilitate mining by Comalco, the Presbyterian Church acquiesced – much to its later regret.[32] However, in 1975, when the Bjelke Petersen government took over mission land at Aurukun on the west of Cape York, forcing the (now) Uniting Church out, the Church put up a fierce defence on behalf of the Aborigines. Although the Commonwealth intervened in support of the Church’s position, the Queensland government outwitted it. However, with strong support from the Church for the Aborigines, the Bjelke Petersen government was forced into a compromise where Aboriginal communities at Aurukun and Mornington Island became Aboriginal-run shire councils with a high degree of autonomy.[33]
Jo Tuscano is co-author of Back on The Block: Bill Simon’s Story, published by Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS 2009.
[1] M Estersen, Discovery: The Quest for the Great South Land, St Leonards, 1998, p.215
[2] W Oates, Backhouse and Walker: A Quaker view of the Australian Colonies 1832-1838, Sandy Bay Tas, 1981, p.54
[3] N. Macintosh, Richard Johnston: Chaplain to the Colony of New South Wales, Library of Aust. History, Sydney, p. 49
[4] W Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years: A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, Nth Sydney, 1979, pp.207-215
[5] N Butlin, quoted in J Harris, Counting the Bodies, Zadok Paper, S115, Fitzroy, Spring 2001, p.2-3
[6] R Millis, Waterloo Creek: The Australia Day Massacre of 1838, Ringwood, 1992, pp. 166-203: N Gunson, Australian Reminiscences & Papers of L E Threlkeld: Missionary to the Aborigines 1824-1859, Vols I & II, Canberra, 1974, pp. 275-276, Vol II
[7] J Cribbin, The Killing Times: The Coniston Massacre 1928, Sydney, 1984, pp.93-104
[8] Cribbin, op.cit., p.146
[9] See J Gribble, Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land, Perth, First published 1905, Republished 1987
[10] J Harris, We wish we’d done more, CMS, Adelaide, 1998, p.2
[11] R Manne, In Denial, Quarterly Essay, Issue 1, 2001, p38
[12] Love J R B, 1915, The Aborigines: Their Present Condition As Seen in Northern South Australia, the Northern Territory, North-West Australia and Western Queensland, Report to the Presbyterian Church of Australia, quoted in H. Wearne, (Ed.), A Clash of Cultures, Uniting Church, 1980, p.13
[13] See J Harris (et al.), (Eds) One Land, One Saviour, Sydney, 2009
[14] C Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Middlesex, 1970, p.246
[15] R Travers, The Tasmanians: The Story of a Doomed Race, Melbourne, 1968, pp.219-225
[16] Ngukkur community, We are Aboriginal: Our 100 years: from Arnhem Land’s mission to Ngukurr today, Sydney, 2008, p.13
[17] Barnabas Roberts, an Alawa Aboriginal, 1979, quoted in J Harris, One Blood, pp 703-04
[18] Missionary W F Schwarz, quoted in, J Harris, One Blood, P386
[19] WA Protector of Aborigines, A O Neville, 1937
[17] Dr Cecil Cook, Chief Protector, Northern Territory, 1927
[21] T Mayne, Jean Carter: Sister of the Son, in Zadok Perspectives, No 72, Spring 2002, pp.20-25
[22] Harris, op. cit., We wish we’d done more. pp.310-323
[23] A Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, Freemantle, 2000, pp.266-267
[24] Haebich, op cit., p.267
[25] See R Kidd, Trustees on Trial: Recovering the stolen wages, Canberra, 2006: Senate Committee Report: Legal and Constitutional Affairs: Unfinished Business: Indigenous stolen wages, December 2006
[26] See http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rb/2006-07/07rb11.htm#involvement
[27] J Horner, Vote Ferguson: for Aboriginal Freedom, Sydney, 1974, p.13
[28] J Harris, in The Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, published in National Baptist, March 2001
[29] See http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au/UserFiles/File/National%20Conference/2007/MarilynLake, ConferencePaper07.pdf
[30] The term ‘Sacred Site’ is a white construct. A preferable term is ‘significant site’
[31] Private correspondence with CMS missionaries
[32] J P Roberts, (Ed), The Mapoon Story by Mapoon People, Book 1, Fitzroy, 1975, pp.14-15
[33] A Country’s Shame: Aurukun and Mornington Island (Queensland), Uniting Church, Mission Probe No 11, 1978