Deakin University
Browse

File(s) under permanent embargo

Land, labour and ambivalence: Lutheran missionaries managing land disputes at Cape Bedford mission

Version 2 2024-06-18, 02:42
Version 1 2019-02-18, 12:48
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-18, 02:42 authored by K Barry
This article provides a close reading of a land dispute between Lutheran missionaries at Cape Bedford mission during the 1920s and 1930s in order to extrapolate understandings of missionary ambivalence, power, and privilege within colonial processes of dispossession. The main contention is that missionaries felt compelled to promote Aboriginal engagement in agricultural labour in order to ensure that they could visibly demonstrate the land's productivity, and then maintain access to it. It also contributes to understandings about missionary power and privilege within the colonial context and how at times the authority of missionaries was undermined by bureaucracy. It points to the discrepancies between settler and humanitarian discourses around Indigenous land use in Queensland's north during this period, and the relationships between missions and the state.

History

Journal

Journal of religious history

Volume

41

Pagination

197-214

Location

Chichester, Eng.

ISSN

0022-4227

eISSN

1467-9809

Indigenous content

This research output may contain the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now deceased. We apologise for any distress that may occur.

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2016, Religious History Association

Issue

2

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons