Riot or revolution: the Eureka Stockade 1854

The story of the Eureka stockade told through re-enactment style monologues.

"Na miña terra": granxeiros indíxenas en Nova Nursia entre as décadas de 1860 e 1900

These words were penned in 1867 by Father Venancio Garrido, a Benedictine monk at New Norcia Aboriginal mission in Western Australia (see Map 4.1). They form part of his lengthy report on the mission which was requested by the Colonial Secretary to be forwarded to the Aborigines Protection Society in London. In 1871 Father Garrido’s report was collated alongside other ‘information’ about Aborigines in Western Australia that had been collected by missionaries and government agents, and was printed by the government printer. The above statement suggests two issues which I will draw out in this chapter: the Aboriginal residents at New Norcia had a strong sense of right and wrong; and the Benedictine community at New Norcia considered them to be the original owners of the land which was, in 1867, increasingly occupied by pastoralists.

Aboriginal cottages, transactional encounters and mission lifestyles at New Norcia, 1860-1900s

Several photos of Aboriginal people outside their cottages exist in the New Norcia Archives. These images could be read in different ways but have commonly been viewed as powerfully symbolic stories of successful mission life and converted Aboriginal people. While historians of colonial photography have persuasively linked the photographs of ‘settled’ Aboriginal residents with evidence of missionary success, we might add that they could also be compelling proof of Aboriginal families’ own success in adapting their land use and way of life in the context of dispossession. Reading this photograph of Aboriginal houses alongside Aboriginal voices in New Norcia’s archive it is possible to suggest Aboriginal people’s own desires for houses and settlement aligned with their ideas about respectability, as well as Aboriginal families’ own complicity in mission propaganda through such images.