Dream-Phantasy of a Utopia: the making of the Methodist Overseas Half-Caste Mission of Croker Island: a personal history

Abstract

This thesis presents the combination of my lived experience as a child of the Stolen Generations, and an analysis of the relationships between church, state, and anthropologist A.P. Elkin and the roles they played across the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s in laying the foundations for assimilation and mission endeavour around half-castes which shaped my experience. Interrogation of archival documents reveals a multi-layered history beginning in the late 1920s which led to the setting up in 1941 of the Methodist Overseas Mission of Croker Island the purpose of which was assimilation of Northern Territory half-caste children. Working from the Aboriginal knowledge position, the thesis is written through feminist standpoint theory. Through employing the methodology of bricolage, and incorporating a range of mediums including spoken word personal reflection primary source documents are interrogated through my personal story. The thesis undertakes an in-depth analysis of the ways ‘science’, both national and international, was applied to early to mid-twentieth century constructions of full-blood and half-caste Aboriginal people as a ‘race’. This analysis is then applied to the broad national discourse on prospective mission, policy and anthropological solutions to what had become known as the ‘half-caste problem’. Demonstrating the impacts of these solutions, the discussion focuses on the development of the Methodist Overseas Mission of Croker Island. This is followed by the presentation of a personal case-study which details the actions, reports and decisions taken by Northern Territory Welfare Department agents and members of the State Children’s Council leading to the removal of six half-caste children from their family. The analysis concludes with a discussion on the current state of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and the prevailing levels of intergenerational trauma identified as arising from Aboriginal child removal in the twentieth century.