Tiwi Islands, Catholic Church and King Joe of Melville Island

Lush mangroves, emerald water splashes from the Timor Sea, an intact sense: the trip to the Tiwi Islands, about 80 kilometers north of Darwin, was roughly presented as one of the things to to do in the Northern Territory. "Take the opportunity to spend a truly fantastic day. Visit Bathurst Island for this special day and an opportunity to see and buy works of art from Tiwi Island and to attend the grand football final. "

The ferry service seemed a botched operation. Locals traveling to the Tiwi Islands have nothing to do again: do not bother to pre-purchase tickets. Do them the same day and avoid the queue. Arriving at Bathurst Island, the elegant wooden structure of Sainte-Thérèse Church is full of worshipers and guests: a wedding is about to take place.

The background reading on the Tiwi Islands lends itself to discomfort. They are brilliantly advertised as singular in their native quality. But this count is not long in disappearing. The population of both islands, Bathurst and Melville, bears witness to both the Catholic Church and the intrusive efforts of the brutal pioneers of the British Empire.

One of these people was Robert Joel Cooper, a person who looks like a man who killed everything. Anyone qualified as a pioneer in this particularly difficult environment should have some tendency to acquire. What was seen, observed and met must be possessed. His tombstone in Darwin's poorly maintained garden cemetery suggests its flavor, recalling his well-known title of "King Joe of Melville Island", "a man of courage and love for all".

He had all the attributes of a ruthless frontier worker: patriarchy, a tendency to sow his not so royal oats, an ability for a certain work regime, a firm discipline. He established the buffalo industry on Melville Island, extracting a few thousand skins a year. He took an Aboriginal wife, Alice, in what appeared to be a primordial gesture. One of his sons, Rueben, has become a figure of sporting reputation, adept and talented in many codes and has ended up becoming a formidable player in the Australian Rules Football, nicknamed "footy".

The curriculum vitae of Cooper reads like that of any conquest considered important afterwards. His entry into the Australian Biographical Dictionary Wild watch, with notes of admiration from the authors. With his brother George Henry (Harry) Cooper and pastoral tenant E. O. Robinson, he ventured to Melville Island "despite hostile Aborigines." He did not seem discouraged to be stung in the shoulder; if anything, it encouraged him to "kidnap four Tiwi Aborigines". Although such acts may have been seen as those of a traditional plunderer of specimens and property, the authors of the entry deign to suggest that he "treated his captives kindly and that he learned their language". In 1905, Cooper became the first "colonizer" since the demise of Ford Dundas in 1828, using twenty aborigines from Port Essington to dispel the fears of his inhabitants as to the nature of his intentions. The trick worked; he has established his name.

Cooper's profile reflected attitudes towards the Aboriginal population. They were there to be used, abused and infantilized, their autonomy relegated to the level of the exotic trinket. Aboriginal parenthood was in fact ignored: the Chief Protector of the Northern Territory, under the 1910 Northern Territory Indigenous Act, became the "legal guardian of all Aboriginal children and all Métis groups until the age of 18" whether or not the child has a parent or family member. It had the power to confine "any aboriginal or Métis" to an aboriginal reserve or institution. In the 1918 Indigenous Peoples Ordinance, the Chief Protector 's claws were extended to Aboriginal women from birth to death, unless they are married and live with a husband "who is essentially d & # 39; European origin '.

Cooper the hunter was also Cooper the connected figure. The Catholic Church, through the figure of Father Francis Xavier Gsell, was convinced by him to focus on the nearby island of Bathurst to set up a Catholic mission. The good father started working on the island of Bathurst in 1911 and bought the rights to marry tiwi girls. The fiancees and fathers were seduced (again, the message of seduction and appropriation is never far away) with the cloth, flour and tobacco. With his wacky extravagance, Gsell would remember his stay on the island in his memoirs. Bishop with 150 women.

The influence of Gsell and the church is now part of a formidable public relations exercise by the Vatican, masking the effects of what has been called inculturation. Praise publications such as Australia: Indigenous Collection of Vatican Museums, gives the impression of the tutelage of the church and the preservation of the tiwi tradition. No tincture of irony is present in the work. The collection itself has an old set of Pukamani sticks (tutini) islands, graves fallen in the church.

Anthropologists are not left out, and the German anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch, the first anthropologist to have successfully traveled to Melville Island on September 20, 1906, recounted several exploits of the Pukamani mast flight, deploring this. "Because of the smallness of my boat, I could not carry more examples. "The penny, he was relieved, never fell. "Fortunately, we have remained unnoticed by blacks in our company's serious violation."

The account could have been a little different. One Harry Cooper, no less than Joe's brother, might have distracted the islanders by shooting them over the head while Klaatsch performed his action. "There, it sounds more like that," writes Marie Munkara with acidity.

The persistent Catholic presence, by immersion with the Tiwi custom as imposition and adaptation, left its own trauma. The missionaries used "psychological warfare," insists Munkara, a process that "corroded our old beliefs." And much more.

Having badumed the role of converters and educators, the mission of the church on Bathurst Island would eventually be shown in its appalling manifestations. The protectors, whether religious or lay, became ready to abuse. In 1993, allegations that some 40 children who had been to St. Xavier's Boys' School on Bathurst Island had been badually badaulted by Brother John Hallett were reported. Two years later, he was sentenced to five years in prison, one of which was annulled five months later by the Northern Territory Criminal Court.

Cooper's circle of partners provides a direct link to the theft of the Tiwi Islands, but more generally the Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory. Professor W. Baldwin Spencer, an anthropologist who became Chief Protector in 1912, stayed with the Isle of Melville in stages in 1911 and 1912 while conducting his own investigations. There was a convergence of views: from one user to another.

Spencer's 1912 report provided aboriginal people with a terrifying vision, executed with impudent cruelty to children who had been officially entrusted to him by law. "No child of Métis should be allowed to stay in an aboriginal camp, but all should be removed and placed in stations." The mother should, of necessity, accompany the child "but in other cases even though it may seem cruel to separate the mother and the child, it is best to do so when the mother lives, as is usually the case, in an aboriginal camp ". Unsurprisingly, Cooper, having gained Spencer's confidence, would himself be a substitute in this less than protective role.

Visiting the Tiwi Islands has the embarrbading effect of traveling to a historic zoo. Church, the Coopers and predations of civilization haunt the islands. While the idea of ​​the reserve is now considered a remnant of administrative barbarism, Tiwi's message and publicity is one of false purity and falsely preserved. This has the effect of giving museums an impression of damaged artifacts. Marveling tourists carrying heavy wallets, backpacks, hats and sunscreen look like the old pioneers. This time, instead of abducting native residents and committing an act of looting graves, they prefer to buy art.

Idealization becomes difficult to ignore; the viewer and the viewer actually participate in an unjustified exercise of elevation and Klaatsch's words in his Ergebnisse meiner australischen Reise (1907) come to mind. "When you see the black man walking through, with his upright posture, his head decorated with feathers, with the spear in his right hand, then that can not help but think that you have a" wild gentleman "in front of your eyes, a king in the realm of the surrounding nature, to which he is so well adapted. "

The language of the pamphlet does little to improve Klaatsch's observation. In fact, he reproduces it as a timeless seed, a gallery legend. Instead of "Island of Smiles", you are greeted by dazed vagabonds of wounded walking play a cultural game distorted. In 1999, attention was drawn to the fact that the Tiwi Islands were facing an epidemic of suicide. Chris Harrison, then resident physician at the time, cited an example: 100 attempts, meaning that 1 in 16 or 1 in 20 people in the islands had attempted suicide. Nothing to smile, let alone encourage.

When it was suggested that such rates could be attributed to the influences, among others, of the Church and her predatory practices, the official was fulminating. As Bishop Ted Collins enthusiastically explained, "I think they are trying to blame people rather than recognize that it is happening at home." How ungenerous of them to think otherwise.

Near the Bathurst Island cemetery, two men, apparently hypnotized, find shelter under a solitary eucalyptus. They gaze aimlessly at a billy boiling over a fire roughly done. There is no fragrant smell of cooking, no sense of culinary wonder. Instead, there is a distinct sound of eggs slamming against the ledge, no doubt hard cooked until forgotten. On the island, there are no food markets or fresh produce stalls. Food products, canned and frozen, are imported. It is the afternoon and the islanders migrate from their homes to different shady spots under suitable vegetation. Fires lit across the island send their bluish plumes to the sea. The church, in its majesty of wood, is silent but reserved for enthusiastic fans. The guests are gone, the song finished. We leave Bathurst Island with a sense of loss and without a smile.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge. He teaches at RMIT University in Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]