Not sure wot I done, Joe, or wot you are saying like. What's this "mission" stuff, is that good or bad and why?

Hi Nick,

Missions: at least here in South Australia, mission societies set up missions to the Aboriginal people, providing schooling for their kids, cottages for families, medical attention, rations, etc. (all funded by the state government) and salaries for staff (provided by parish contributions), around the Province/State.

The major ones, Pt McLeay and Pt Pearce, were taken over by the government at the beginning of 1917 (i.e. their centenaries have just passed) and renamed settlements. Other missions continued but eventually were all taken over by governments and eventually handed over to community councils in the seventies. In SA, between them, the southern settlements now cover around fifty thousand acres, mostly unutilised.

Most of us, even myself, assumed that the great bulk of the Aboriginal population, at least up until about 1950, was based, even physically confined, to Missions and settlements. Total Aboriginal population in SA back then would have been around eight or nine thousand. But a further analysis of total population on those settlements in about 1950 would have noticed a population of barely fifteen hundred. i.e. the great majority of Aboriginal people lived, and had always lived, way from settlements. Certainly they may have come and gone for brief visits to relatives, as they pleased, but most Aboriginal people didn't live, and hadn't lived, in church or government settlements. They made do on their own around the state.

My point is that we can 'know' one thing - 'that most Aboriginal people lived in settlements' - AND be vaguely aware of something else - that, looking at the figures, the great majority didn't. And we can hold those two conflicting ideas in our heads at once, as long as we don't reflect on or analyse the subject. We don't put two and two together. And so we go on, working with the dominant, conventional assumption, and ignoring that background reality.

[TBC]

[continued]

So it is with some of the major planks of the Conventional Narrative - that Aboriginal people were driven off the land, and that they were herded onto Missions, minus any evidence.

Evidence to the contrary, that there were ration depots all over the State (there goes 'driving people off their land'), and that there has never been a fence around any Mission (there goes 'herding people onto Missions'), plus the legal recognition of people's rights to use the land as traditionally from earliest days, tend to destabilise those planks somewhat.

Plus the facts that the 'Department' consisted of one employee, and that Mission staff seldom numbered more than four or five, all flat out as farm supervisors, builders, teachers, store-keepers, administrators, doing the medical work and Sunday preaching, etc.

One employee in the Aborigines Department ?! Well, yes. Then, you may say, how come so many ration depots all over the State ? Good question: they were provided, build and maintained without cost to the Department by pastoralists, missions and the Police Department. One bloke up past Oodnadatta issued rations to the local people for thirty seven years.

Conventional assumptions can be so strong that they override common sense, and even knowledge of actual data. Sorry, Nick.

Joe

sorry for what. The "missions" , rural properties, whatever, gave rations..towns didn't . People eat so the lack of fenced missions doesn't mean a lot , they would climb over a fence to reach the food.
Yes land was promised and written into nice declarations . Boats. Guns. Lovely.

South Aust was taken over 50 years after NSW at no cost to George, George & Sons. Not even tobacco with health warnings on the packet.
George didn't even pay for Parliament's SA Colonisation Act so the NSW cannons are the last offer . Brass weight 1200lbs, price $1.50-$2.50kg so two cannon are say $1000.

Hi Nick,

No, actually many ration depots were in towns, i.e. where there were towns, and usually in the yard of the local police trooper. On Missions, rations were given out at the store, along with other goods that people might like to buy.

On that point: in the Superintendent's Letters from Pt McLeay, around 1896 from memory, he writes to the agent in Adelaide [see below * ] asking for the price of fruit and veg at the central markets in town, because that's what he sells them for at the Mission store. Another time, he asks the agent not to send any more oranges for a while, to send cherries instead, because the people are tired of oranges [see: www.firstsources.info on the Taplin and Pt McLeay Page].

* Missions and pastoral stations usually had agents in Adelaide, and used the very efficient mail system (one day inwards, one day outwards) to ask for goods or items to be sent out, and the cost put on their account. One time at Pt McLeay for example, a complex part for the flour mill was needed, and it was there within a week. The Mission agents knew their Missions well, sometimes over many decades. Again, that function was over and above their day jobs, i.e. they did it free.

Guns ? I'm glad you mentioned that. In SA, Aboriginal people have always had the right to buy, use and carry guns of all sorts. One time in 1864, according to Taplin in his Journal at Pt McLeay, one young bloke, Nipper, had a row with his father and set fire to his wurley, destroying or damaging a rifle and a shotgun, among many other things. Against the father's wishes, Taplin got the police to come over by boat from Goolwa and charge the boy. I think he did three months.

The Protector paid half the costs of repairing guns for able-bodied people, but paid all costs for those who couldn't work.

Bastards !

Joe

Selling goods at the mission for which Aboriginals had the right to pay? Further, the right to give Victoria's currency to buy a gun?
Joe, I'm speechless.

( By the way, that's $1000 each cannon , not the pair). Unless some Ngarindjeri need them for duck-shooting with buck-shot but obviously Cadigal of Sydney Cove get first option from Charles .