Language and the mission : talking and translating on Groote Eylandt 1943-1973
Abstract
This thesis examines the ways missionary encounters with indigenous languages challenged or contributed to processes of colonisation - an issue that is contested by historians and anthropologists alike. Missionaries all over the world have faced the challenge of sharing their Word with another culture, another language. The thesis grapples with the question of whether the imperatives of translation resulted in cooperative relationships with local people or whether the determination to translate made indigenous languages and cultures vulnerable to 'colonisation' by the missionary 'expert'. That is, did missionaries turn indigenous languages themselves into instruments of colonisation? In the case of Christian missions to Aboriginal people in Australia, the Australian languages have, so far, received little attention from historians. In redressing this, the thesis discusses Australia's Aboriginal mission history to the context of broad international debate about the colonising nature of missionary engagement with indigenous languages. It does this by investigating the relatively recent case of the Church Missionary Society missions to the Anindilyakwa people of Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory from 1943 to 1973. The thesis argues that the mission was a site of diverse engagements, strategic resistance, adaptation and negotiation on behalf of Anindilyakwa people and missionaries. Missionaries used language both to assure themselves of their own ascendency and to coax Anindilyakwa people to listen to their teachings. Yet the missionaries' dependence on interpreters meant that their power was always limited, their message mediated, and their teachings translated. Furthermore, ideas and practices were transmitted or translated across cultures in ways that were not always expected or harmonious. Differences in language and in cultures of orality and literacy, as well as the possibilities of translation, allowed Anindilyakwa people to selectively embrace missionary teachings and practices, incorporating them into their own cultures in diverse ways. Missionaries, likewise, found themselves unexpectedly transformed as they were increasingly immersed in Anindilyakwa language, culture and society. The thesis concludes that translation was simultaneously a site of colonisation and an opportunity for indigenous agency and challenges to colonisation. Aboriginal agency was not limited to collaboration or resistance. Rather, Anindilyakwa people engaged with missionaries and their Word in diverse ways, some supporting missionaries, others reacting, resisting or disengaging, and still others translating and reinterpreting missionary imports for themselves. The thesis explores themes of translation of language and culture; texts and literacies; missionary linguistic projects; and of songs in translation across cultures. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on insights from anthropology, linguistics, missiology and musicology. It uses language as a lens to engage with broader histories of assimilation, indigenous modernities, cultural engagement and survival, of race and identity in twentieth-century Australia. It also sheds light on a broader story of colonisation, revealing the struggle to speak Aboriginal languages as a pivotal part of the struggle for Aboriginal land and identities.