Aurukun Mission and Its People: Clashing Traditions, Clashing Values

Abstract

Drawing on own field materials and a range of archival sources, such as diaries of Christian missionaries who worked among the aboriginal people of Australia, and various biographical accounts, I attempt to explore the ethos of native people living in the area of the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland, as reflected in the patterns of their individual behavior. The interest of social anthropologists towards all things historical has been on the rise in the recent years. Undoubtedly, reassessing those and revisiting ethnographic studies of the previous generations of explorers lets us better understand the historical context of social circumstances that led to the realities that contemporary anthropologists observe today. Before Christian missionaries appeared in Australia, the local people lived the life of mobile hunters, fishermen, and gatherers “in the bush”. Their resettlement to the Aurukun mission, which was established in the early 20th century, was an event that had an enormous impact on their destinies, yet it still remains a mystery for social anthropologists in many aspects. This article is an attempt at throwing light again on the situation in the hope of deepening our interpretations both of the past and the present.