| Summary: | Although the silence of Australia’s Aboriginal history has been well and truly broken in the past three decades of Australian historiography, this cannot be said of the writings on Australian missions. Nevertheless in the general context of Aboriginal historiography mission histories receive some (albeit scant) attention even if only to provide grist for the mill of social /cultural and anthropological ethnographic studies. Studies of missions on their own terms however have been few and far between. Missions historiography as a sub-set of Aboriginal historiography has run the gamut from the ‘Christianise-and-civilise’ motif through to oppression, domination, resistance and agency. The common theme in scholarly analysis of Australian missions is that of failure and cultural destruction. However, although Western Desert missions, in particular, found little ‘success’ in the period up to the self-determination era, the 1996 census figures show a higher percentage of Western Desert Aborigines per capita claim the Christian faith than do nonAboriginal Australians. This essay will not attempt to explain this phenomenon, but will examine contemporary European evaluations of one mission (Mt Margaret) that did receive occasional accolades in its early period of formation. Specifically the essay will endeavour to develop an empathetic contextual understanding of the missionary discourse, while at the same time taking cognisance of the often very different understandings portrayed in government and anthropological discourses on the mission’s activity.
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