Abstract

The idea 'moral economy' resonates in more than one way in current discussions of Indigenous development: in anthropological considerations of Indigenous regimes of exchange and value, and in Noel Pearson's critique of 'passive welfare, for example. It will also inform this paper's narrative of the formation of Christian missions to remote Aborigines in the period 1890-1940. Drawing on writings by and about missionaries, I will sketch the context in which missionaries saw themselves as working. With a sense of urgency, they were aware that certain kinds of colonial economic activity had already begun to change Aborigines for the worse, or (in some regions) were about to inflict such changes. The salient 'industries' included: pearl-shell, trochus shell and trepang harvesting; dingo-scalp collecting; the buffalo hide industry; and beef- and wool-raising. The social relations of these introduced economic activities were understood as corrupting Aborigines by: introducing them to harmful commodities; decreasing the incentive to maintain hunting and gathering skills; giving new and harmful significance to female sexuality. The mission antidote was to construct segregated local economies in which the routines of production and exchange were morally and physically wholesome, and not necessarily oriented to assimilation to the wider Australian economy. I will describe some examples of these enclave economies. The paper concludes by looking ahead to the challenge that 'assimilation' would soon present to these church-sponsored local economies, in the period 1940-70, and to the response that one version of missionary ideology made to that challenge: land rights.    

Professor Tim Rowse is in the Dean's Unit, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, at the University of Western Sydney.