Abstract
Previous research on remote nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Indigenous missions in northern and central Australia point to their often tenuous existence and the complex nature of engagements between Christian Missionaries and Indigenous people. This paper explores the contribution and significance of Indigenous production of wild foods in the context of one such settlement located at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula, north eastern Australia. It is premised on the assertion that investigation of the economies of these often remote settlements has the potential to reveal much about the character of cross-cultural engagements within the context of early mission settlements. Many remote missions had a far from secure economic basis and were sometimes unable to produce the consistent food supplies that were central to their proselytizing efforts. In this paper it is suggested that Indigenous-produced wild foods were of significant importance to the mission on a day-to-day basis in terms of their dietary contribution (particularly in terms of protein sources) and were also important to Indigenous people from a social and cultural perspective. We develop this argument through the case study of culturally modified trees that resulted from the collection of wild honey.
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Acknowledgments
This article is dedicated to the memory of Mrs T. Coconut and Mrs A. Heinemann, widely respected senior Traditional Owners of Ndrua’ngaith and Nggoth lands and who sadly passed away during this research. We are grateful to them and other Traditional Owners for generously sharing their time and knowledge with us. We also thank Beatrice Gordon, Stanley Coconut, Ivy Gordon, Florence Hector, Suzie Madua, Robert Madua and Nicholas Heinemann for working with us. This research has been partially funded by a grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (G2007/7266) and we thank them for their support. Data on culturally modified trees has largely been obtained through Rio Tinto Alcan cultural heritage management projects between 2003–2008 and we acknowledge the hard work of Eleanor Cooper, Alex Walter, Amanda Woodley, Lavinia Kris, Nicky Horsfall, Grant Cochrane and Richard Woolfe. We also thank Cameo Dalley for bringing to our attention the Nelson collection at the University of Queensland as well as Annie Clarke and a second anonymous referee whose comments on an earlier draft have greatly improved the final product.
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Morrison, M., McNaughton, D. & Shiner, J. Mission-Based Indigenous Production at the Weipa Presbyterian Mission, Western Cape York Peninsula (1932–66). Int J Histor Archaeol 14, 86–111 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-009-0096-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-009-0096-8