islander

In 1891, the Presbyterian Church established a mission station on the western side of Cape York Peninsula. They named the station Mapoon. Over the next 72 years, hundreds of children of mixed descent and Aboriginal families came to the mission by force or by choice. One of the reasons Aboriginal people chose to come to Mapoon was the decreasing availability of bush food and the conflict with pastoralists when they tried to hunt, gather and fish on their country. The first missionaries at Mapoon used food as an assimilation strategy. Through the distribution of rations, the establishment of gardens maintained by Aboriginal people, and the introduction of set meal times, they radically altered the traditional Aboriginal diet and way of life. Food was the fuel that made the Mapoon mission run. It provided work for the Aboriginal ‘inmates’ and the missionaries sold surplus crops, cattle and seafoods to raise funds for the mission. One of the other ways the Presbyterian Church supported the Mapoon mission was through the sale of its ever-popular Women’s Missionary Union cookery book. A poem on the title page encouraged cooks ‘as they work its dainties up, [to] remember far Mapoon’. Christianising and ‘civilising’ Aboriginal people involved curtailing their mobility, revolutionising their diet and teaching them European ways to produce, prepare, distribute and consume food. Source; www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue9/Wishart.pdf

he Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People have lived in the wider Camooweal area since their Dreaming ancestors formed the landscape and imbued it with its natural and cultural features. Contemporary archaeological evidence confirms that Aboriginal people have occupied this area for an extended period—estimated by scientists as many tens of thousands of years—prior to the first contact with Europeans in the early 1860s. Prior to European settlement of the region, the Georgina River and its tributaries and waterholes in the vicinity of Camooweal, including the adjacent park area, were favoured locations for long-term camping, and bases for hunting and gathering activities by Aboriginal groups from throughout the surrounding desert and semi-desert areas. The Georgina River formed part of a major Aboriginal trade route— running north-south across the country—in which the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu people and their tribal neighbours participated. Along this route, materials and resources were exchanged as part of the regional Aboriginal economy, and ceremonies to sustain the society’s socio-political and religious life were conducted. The Indjalandji-Dhidhanu people today continue to observe and uphold their traditional laws and customs. According to their traditional law, Wiliyan-ngurru National Park is associated with and traversed by a number of Dreamings (routes travelled by the ancestral spirits who shaped, and now inhabit, the landscape at key locations). The Dreamings within the park form part of a complex array of sites of significance to the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu people. These sites include the caves and waterholes, a number of burial sites, numerous camping and ceremony sites and many quarry sites for the manufacture of stone tools. Source: parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/wiliyan-ngurru-camooweal-caves...

According to the research, these children were most likely belonging to the Indjalandji-Dhidhanu people who lived in the wider Camooweal area/district since their Dreaming ancestors formed the landscape and enriched it with natural and cultural features.

Hi Vesna verencevic. What year was this taken ? Cos I'm going to ask other people about this picture and will get a different response. One person already said this picture not ever taken in camooweal. And those children are not from indjilandji dhidhanu.😃 Someone said it's a stolen picture and copy as and for indjilandji people. I will probably found this picture in other history. Website and books.

Christine Dunne Christine, The image location and estimated date was identified by the State Library of Queensland, not Vesna. Unfortunately we have over several thousand First Nations photographs that have limited and incorrect information, which is why we are opening them up for clients to view. If you can tell me more information on this and other images, I would greatly appreciate it and add your updates to our One Search library catalogue .

Stealing a generation of Aboriginal children from their families might have been legal but it was also immoral. Some of the white Australians involved in the theft might have believed that they were acting in the best interests of the children — the “good intentions” defense — but the policy itself was not concerned with the interests of the children. It was concerned with “breeding out” a race, that is, eliminating it. Source: publicintegrity.org/accountability/longtime-australian-po...