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Social Sciences and
Missions 30 (2017) 325–345 Social Sciences and Missions
Sciences sociales et missions
brill.com/ssm
Transporting Concepts of ‘Native’ Land as
Birthright between Fiji and Australia’s North
Kirstie Close-Barry*
Deakin University, Victoria, Australia
kirstie.close@deakin.edu.au
Abstract
This article focuses on the experiences at two Methodist communities in the Pacific
and their assertions of sovereignty from the 1920s to the 1960s. It explores the con-
nections between two nodes of the Methodist Mission – Fiji and Australia’s Northern
Territory – through one missionary, Kolinio Saukuru. While there were moments of
great political mobilisation at each site, efforts to assert Indigenous land ownership
and autonomy were hampered by persistent racialized views of the ‘native’ amongst
missionaries and the colonial state. This article engages with questions emerging from
the histories of colonial missions, particularly whether missions aligned with colonial
administrations on strategies of governance. However, it also points to the need to think
beyond national boundaries when studying mission histories. An examination of the
Methodist Overseas Mission using a transnational framework illuminates a network of
Indigenous people who worked to protect what some missionaries and anthropologists
considered an Indigenous ‘birthright’: the land. This study therefore expands on the
existing historiography of colonial missions, of Indigenous labour, and of land rights
activism in Fiji and Australia’s north.
* I would like to thank all of the supportive colleagues I have had at Deakin University, as well as
the friends I made at the University of Copenhagen, at the conference where I first presented
this paper. I am most grateful to Dr Claire McLisky for her assistance in reworking this paper,
as well as input from Professor Alan Lester.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18748945-03003001
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Résumé
Cet article analyse les expériences de deux communautés méthodistes dans le Paci-
fique et leur affirmation de souveraineté entre les années 1920 et 1960. Il explore
les connections entre deux lieux de la Mission Méthodiste, Fidji et les Territoires
du Nord australien, à travers le missionnaire Kolinio Saukuru. Ces deux lieux ont
connu des moments de grande mobilisation politique, mais les efforts pour affir-
mer l’autonomie de ces communautés et la propriété autochtone de la terre ont été
entravés par les conceptions raciales de l’«indigène» qu’avaient les missionnaires
et l’état colonial. L’article examine des questions qui émergent de l’histoire des
missions coloniales, en particulier dans quelle mesure les missions s’alignèrent sur
les stratégies de gouvernance de l’administration coloniale. Mais l’article montre
aussi la nécessité de penser au-delà des frontières nationales quand on étudie
l’histoire des missions. Une analyse de la Methodist Overseas Mission adoptant une
approche transnationale met en évidence un réseau d’individus autochtones qui
se sont efforcés de protéger ce que certains missionnaires et anthropologues con-
sidéraient comme «un droit inné» des autochtones: la terre. Notre étude apporte
donc une contribution à l’historiographie des missions coloniales, du travail autoch-
tone, et du militantisme pour le droit de la terre à Fidji et dans le nord austra-
lien.
Keywords
aboriginal – Fijian – Methodist – Northern Territory – agriculture
Mots-clés
aborigène – Fidji – Méthodiste – Territoire du Nord – agriculture
Throughout the twentieth century Methodist mission communities in the west
of Viti Levu in Fiji and Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory artic-
ulated their desire to secure indigenous land rights. These movements were
responses, partly, to colonial constructions of ‘the native’, and were strength-
ened through the Methodist institution of agricultural training programs. This
article reveals some of the inter-indigenous interaction that occurred within
Australia throughout the twentieth century, reflecting the complexity of colo-
nial spaces. By examining the connections within a multi-national or multi-
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colonial mission, we can see that the broader concepts that were utilised to
define categories and pursue the project of an ordered colonial society were
applied across colonial or state boundaries to encompass peoples throughout
Australasia. Though in some ways the experiences of colonialism were distinct
in Australia’s north and Fiji, there were points of connection that illustrate com-
monalities.
The first section of this article focuses on the need to reconsider the origins
of the Yirrkala petitions (presented by the Yolngu peoples of Arnhem Land pre-
sented to the Australian government in 1963) in the context of Fijian involve-
ment in the Methodist mission there. It also focuses on Mahmood Mamdani’s
work on the effects of colonial categorisation in Rwanda, suggesting that his
approach can be used as a model for investigations of other colonial and post-
colonial contexts such as Fiji and Australia. The next section moves backwards
in time to focus on the early history of the Fijian missionary Kolinio Saukuru,
who worked in Arnhem Land from 1933–1950. Growing up on a Methodist mis-
sion, Saukuru was exposed to the industrial mission system from a young age,
and through his story, this section explores the importance of missionary cat-
egorisations of ‘native’ Fijians and their connections to land on the Fijian land
rights movements of the 1920s and early 1930s. Building on this background,
the third section considers Saukuru’s role at Yirrkala, a role that was limited
by the same racialised discourses of indigeneity that were used to argue for
indigenous land rights in Fiji and Australia. The fourth section follows the
Fijian land rights movement into the 1930s and 40s, outlining the effects of the
Second World War on both Fijian efforts to reclaim land, and on the career
of Kolinio Saukuru in Arnhem Land. There are hints that his ideas and the
way that he was treated influenced the ways in which the land rights move-
ment and efforts to exert autonomy formed at Yirrkala. Finally, the conclusion
reflects on the importance of exploring allegiances and influences both within
and between indigenous groups such as those of western Fiji and Arnhem
Land.
Place-ing the Yirrkala Petitions
In 1963, the Methodist community from Yirrkala submitted two bark petitions –
petitions painted on to bark from local trees – to the Australian government,
writing on behalf of nearly 500 Yolngu peoples from 17 communities that had
been living at the reserve. These petitions challenged the government’s deci-
sion to give land designated as a ‘native reserve’ to the Australian aluminium
mining company Comalco, stating that there had been a lack of consultation
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with the community about the land deal.1 They further suggested that the gov-
ernment had neglected its duty to the Yirrkala residents.2 The petitions are
prominent in the historiography of the Indigenous land rights movement in
Australian history. The suggestion made in the petitions – that the communi-
ties at Yirrkala had been on that land from time immemorial were central to the
petitions, and were connected to Biblical stories – particularly the story of Esau
and Jacob, that Methodists (among others) had used to explain and understand
colonial encounters and the impact of colonialism.
Historians have increasingly explored the modes used by indigenous peoples
to challenge central points of power in colonial contexts, and petitions have
been of particular interest.3 Whether it was to the Queen in England or to Chief
Protectors based in the nearest capital city, indigenous peoples – either on
missions or reserves – found different ways to petition.4 Often this was not by
paper alone but by some form of symbolic gesture: where possible, a delegation
was sent on behalf of the petitioners to put forward a case to the highest
possible authority. Indigenous leaders utilised political manoeuvres such as
petitions and requests for autonomy, rights and recognition to challenge the
construction of colonial categories: recognising that they had been categorised
in a certain way by colonial authorities and institutions, they sought to take
control of those categories to progress their own objectives.
This article discusses Indigenous political agency in western Fiji and Arn-
hem Land within the context of highly stratified colonial contexts. It is influ-
enced by Mahmood Mamdani’s writing on politicised Indigeneities.5 Mamdani
1 Yirrkala Bark Petition, transcript, Founding Documents, http://foundingdocs.gov.au/
resources/transcripts/cth15_doc_1963.pdf, accessed 20 May 2015.
2 M. Mulligan and S. Hill, Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought
and Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 222.
3 Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority, and the moral worlds of indigenous petitions’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, vol. 48, no. 3, 2006, pp. 669–698; Andrew Markus, ‘William
Cooper and the 1937 petition to the King’, Aboriginal History, vol. 7, no. ½, 1983, pp. 46–60.
4 Peggy van Toorn, ‘Authors, scribes and owners: the sociology of nineteenth century Aboriginal
writing on Coranderrk and Lake Condah Reserves’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural
Studies, vol. 13, issue 3, 1999, pp. 333–343; Jessica Horton, ‘Rewriting political history: Letters
from Aboriginal people in Victoria, 1886–1919’, History Australia, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 157–181;
Tiffany Shellam, ‘ “On my ground”: Indigenous farmers at New Norcia 1860s–1900s’, ed. Zoe
Laidlaw and Alan Lester, Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land holding, loss
and survival in an interconnected world, Palgrave, 2015, pp. 62–85.
5 M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwan-
da, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s7027
.html, accessed 26 May 2015.
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has written about interactions between the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and
tensions between these two groups, contextualising conflict within the lega-
cies of colonial projects of categorisation and organisation according to race
and ethnicity. His method is relevant to many colonies including Australia
where, through their categorisation by mission and government, Indigeneity
was also politicised. Mamdani has argued that, in part, tensions arose between
the Tutsi and Hutu around issues of race, as well as perceptions of belong-
ing and connection to place. Hutu and Tutsi identities were constructed in
part around ideas of who was foreign.6 The same processes of identity con-
struction around inclusion and exclusion based on foreignness were relevant
in other colonies. Despite acknowledging ‘alien’ identities, in Australia and Fiji,
missionaries and government officials categorised all Islanders and Indigenous
peoples as ‘natives’, flattening the linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity
between foreigners and those who were indigenous to the place.7 Using this
homogenising terminology, which carried a long list of embedded assump-
tions,8 all indigenous peoples from the region were encompassed within Aus-
tralian labour policies. Fijians in Arnhem Land were therefore caught within
multiple systems of positioning and racialized methods of categorisation and
organisation, and once in the Northern Territory, were governed by the Depart-
ment of Native Affairs. Their identities were layered, as Kirsten McGavin has
noted in more recent examples of Pacific Islander communities in Australia.9
Considering these systems of categorisation, this article reveals new perspec-
tives of the mission’s history at Arnhem Land, with insights into the intercon-
nectedness between regional mission nodes.
In Australia’s public remembering of the petitions, the Methodist history at
Yirrkala is obfuscated. Despite the work on the mission’s history by scholars
such as Howard Morphy who refers to the vast archives missionaries created
at the site, the mission has not been extensively inserted into the collective
national remembering of the petitions, despite the petitions referring to prayer
and God in the document proper.10 The narrative available on the government
6 Ibid.
7 Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority and the moral world of Indigenous petitions’, p. 670.
8 Jane Mulcock, ‘Dreaming the circle: indigeneity and the longing for belonging in white
Australia’, ed. Ingereth Macfarlane and Mark Hannah, Transgressions: Critical Australian
Indigenous Histories, Canberra, anu Press, 2007, pp. 64–65.
9 K. McGavin, ‘Being “Nesian”: Pacific Islander identity in Australia’, The Contemporary
Pacific, Vol. 26 (1), 2014, pp. 126–154, p. 127.
10 Howard Morphy, ‘Mutual conversion?: The Methodist Church and the Yolnu, with partic-
ular reference to Yirrkala’, Humanities Research, vol. 12 (1), 2005, pp. 41–53, p. 41; Jennifer
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website and an online exhibition by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies (aiatsis) commemorating the fifty year
anniversary of the petitions’ creation makes only fleeting reference to the
mission, with no mention of denomination. This reflects the fractious nature of
remembering: Indigenous activism has not been linked readily to the history of
Indigenous Christianity in Australia.11 The Methodists often collaborated with
people from other denominations, particularly in ecumenical bodies such as
the Australian Board of Missions and, internationally, with the World Council
of Churches. Inhabiting these spaces prompted Methodist leaders to progress
their policies along with global expectations around decolonisation and equity.
With shared protestant roots many missions may not seem too distinctive, but
denomination was significant to many who belonged to a particular church,
and thus the particular workings of each mission are worth considering.
Howard Morphy is just one amongst a growing number of scholars who
have paid greater attention to the role of the Methodist mission in Arnhem
Land. In Jennifer Clark’s version of events, Edgar Wells, a white missionary,
has been depicted as instrumental to the protest. Wells’ role was significant:
he contested the Comalco Aluminium mine’s establishment from the outset,
challenging the mission’s leadership at a great personal cost and losing his job
for his efforts.12 We can extend in critical ways on the work of Jennifer Clark
and Ravi de Costas, who both situated the petitions within global campaigns
for the recognition of Indigenous identities. As de Costa argued, the Yolgnu
community had always used humanitarian networks to engage in politics.13
Clark, ‘Facing the “wind of change” at Yirrkala in 1963’, in Aborigines and Activism: Race,
Aborigines and the Coming of the Sixties to Australia, Crawley, Western Australia: Univer-
sity of Western Australia Publishing, 2008, pp. 93–121.
11 For the Australian government’s online exhibition of the petitions, see Founding Docu-
ments, http://foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-104.html, accessed 20 May 2015; the aiatsis
exhibition is ‘Still standing strong: Fifty years of the bark petitions’, http://aiatsis.gov.au/
archive_digitised_collections/Yirrkala/stillstanding.html, accessed 27 May 2015; For aca-
demic narratives about the petitions, see for example Henry Reynolds, The Law of the
Land, Ringwood: Penguin, 1987, p. 164; Morgan Brigg and Sarah Maddison, “Unsettling
Governance: From Bark Petition to YouTube,” in Unsettling the Settler State: Creativity and
Resistance in Indigenous Settler-State Governance, Annandale, nsw: Federation Press, 2011.;
Karen O’Brien, ‘Boots, blankets, and bomb tests: First Australian petitioning and resistance
to colonialism’, Griffith Journal of Law and Human Dignity, Vol. 2 (2), 2014, pp. 357–267,
p. 360.
12 J. Clark, Aborigines and Activism …, p. 95.
13 Ravi de Costa, ‘Identity, authority and the moral world of Indigenous petitions’, Compar-
ative Studies of Society and History, Vol. 48 (3), 2006, pp. 669–698, p. 689.
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Ann Wells’ accounts suggest that missionaries played a central role in creating
the bark petitions and in their presentation to the Australian government.14
There is a larger story to be told that acknowledges the role of Pacific Is-
landers at Yirrkala.15 Fijian missionaries have been absent in narratives of the
Yirrkala bark petitions and of land matters in Arnhem Land. Clark and De
Costa’s work is typical of Australian scholarly explorations of racial dynamics
on Australian colonial missions, examining the relationships between Euro-
peans and Aboriginal people at the mission site as if they existed in a binary.
Other histories of the Methodist mission sites in Arnhem Land, such as work
done by missionary-turned-historian Gwenda Baker, have done the same. She
has recorded histories of agricultural labour at the mission in the 1960s, for
example, but does not discuss the presence of Pacific Islanders at the site.16
Howard Morphy’s work on syncretism and its role in securing conversions, and
the influence of syncretic policies on the formulation of the Yirrkala church
panels is written in the same fashion: Pacific Islander missionaries are absent
from the discussion.17
This ‘streamlining’ of Australia’s racial history into a binary form continues,
though perhaps unwittingly, the central conceit of the White Australia Policy –
that it was possible to limit non-‘white’ immigration to Australia. The Immigra-
tion Restriction Act in 1901 and remained until 1958, and limited the number of
non-European settlers who entered the country. However, Julia Martinez has
demonstrated that efforts towards creating a ‘White Australia’ were not wholly
successful, particularly in the north.18 The lens of study on the mission at Arn-
hem Land should be expanded to carefully consider the position of Pacific
Islanders, contributing to the existing empirical research on the mission com-
piled by Maisie McKenzie, John Kadiba and Ian Breward.19 The spheres that
14 Ann Wells, This Their Dreaming: Legends of the Panels of Aboriginal Art in the Yirrkala
Church, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1971, p. xii.
15 Edgar Wells, Reward and Punishment in Arnhem Land, Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies, 1984.
16 Baker considered John Kadiba’s work on Fijians in Arnhem Land as missiology, and did not
engage with it beyond the literature review in her PhD. Gwenda Baker, ‘Chaos and control:
Aborigines, mission and government in Arnhem Land, 1945–1975’, PhD, Monash University,
2000, p. 18.
17 Howard Morphy, “Mutual Conversion”.
18 Julia Martinez, ‘Plural Australia: Aboriginal and Asian labour in tropical white Australia,
Darwin 1911–1940’, PhD, University of Wollongong, 1999, p. 4.
19 M. McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land, Adelaide: Rigby, 1976; I. Breward, ‘Manuscript
xxiv’, Journal of Pacific History, vol. 47 (3), 2012, pp. 405–420; J. Kadiba, ‘The Methodist
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Pacific Islanders inhabited, primarily preaching and agriculture, were spaces
where inter-indigenous encounter occurred daily. Within the Methodist mis-
sion, organisational structures and systems tended to reinforce racial hierar-
chies, displaying stratification symbolically and physically through discourse;
the exclusion of non-European peoples from positions of authority or privi-
lege; and the organisation of space. Having noted that, the points of interac-
tion are worth considering as much as the social structures that surrounded
them.20
Kolonio Saukuru and the Methodist Mission to Fiji
Kolinio Saukuru was a Fijian who worked in Arnhem Land from 1933 to 1950
primarily as an agriculturalist, but also worked as a lay preacher, and cap-
tain of the Methodist mission boat. Saukuru’s writing appears sporadically
in the Methodist mission records, particularly letters to the chairman of the
mission and the General Secretary. John W. Burton filled the latter position
between 1925 and 1945. Under his leadership, missionaries throughout Aus-
tralasia promoted indigenous engagement in agriculture, increasingly influ-
enced by anthropological theories that suggested that agricultural work was
a stepping-stone that would assist ‘primitive’ peoples in their transition to a
‘civilised’ state.21 Industrial mission was seen to complement assimilationist
policies of the Australian government.22 In Fiji, with John Burton’s support, the
industrial mission strategy had been used to defend Fijians from the intrusion
of foreigners onto their lands. If Fijians could demonstrate their ability to make
the land productive, they would theoretically be better placed to claim own-
ership within the colonial context. The same idea of land development as a
Mission and the Emerging Aboriginal Church in Arnhem Land, 1916–1977’, PhD, Northern
Territory University, 1998; J. Kadiba, An Account of the Fijian Missionaries in Arnhem
Land 1916–1988, Nakara nt: John Kadiba, 1994; J. Kadiba, Methodist mission policies and
Aboriginal church leadership in Arnhem Land, Darwin: John Kadiba, 1996; J. Kadiba, Fijian
Missionaries in North Australia, Alawa, nt: John Kadiba, 2014.
20 For similar discussions see J. Lydon, ‘ “Our sense of beauty”: Visuality, space and gender on
Victoria’s Aboriginal reserves, south-eastern Australia’, History and Anthropology, vol. 16,
no. 2, 2005, pp. 211–233, p. 212.
21 A.P. Elkin, ‘Missionary policy for primitive peoples’, Morpeth, nsw: St Johns College Press,
1934.
22 Russell McGregor, ‘Intelligent parasitism: A.P. Elkin and the rhetoric of assimilation’,
Journal of Australian Studies, 20: 50–51, 1996, pp. 118–130.
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means of safeguarding against dispossession was translated to Australia. Euro-
pean missionaries had tended to consider Fijians more effective in agricultural
labour than Australian Aboriginal communities. In fact, in his book The Call of
the Pacific, Burton made his thoughts on the superiority and inferiority of the
different races he identified in the Pacific. He said that Aboriginal people were
‘the most primitive of whom we have any knowledge.’23 Based on this logic,
Fijians were identified as being a sort of a ‘bridge’ between the perceived prim-
itivism of the Arnhem Land peoples, and European society.
Despite the temptation to think of Fiji’s colonial experience as distinct
from the settler colonialism that occurred in Australia, by the turn of the
twentieth century there were significant numbers of foreigners settling in Fiji,
but there was nowhere near the same extent of dispossession as there had
been, and continued to be, in some parts of Australia. Having said that, Arn-
hem Land – and the Northern Territory generally – were reasonably remote
from commercial centres. Macassans had traded along that northern coast-
line for generations, but long-term intensive foreign settlement had not been
achieved. Despite the differences between these two colonial contexts, there
were ways in which Pacific Islander missionaries and Indigenous Australians
of Arnhem Land could share insight into how to navigate the politics of mis-
sion and the state. In addition, while racial hierarchies were embedded within
the Mission’s agricultural structure and the government bodies it answered to,
Saukuru both operated within and outside of these boundaries in complex
ways.
Kolonio Saukuru was born on 6 January 1907 to a chiefly family in the north-
west of Fiji, a part of Fiji where industrial mission strategy would assume an
anti-colonial or anti-foreign form. His father, Ratu Apisalomi Saukuru, had
taken part in the industrial work overseen by the Methodist missionary Rev-
erend Charles Oswald Lelean. Charles Lelean prophesised when Saukuru was
born that he would become a missionary.24 Lelean’s words were repeated to
Saukuru throughout his childhood. Lelean, a supporter of industrial mission at
Nailaga, influenced Saukuru’s approach to mission.25 Saukuru saw the rapid
settlement of Indo-Fijians in Viti Levu during his early life: a demographic
shift that colonial administrators tried to manage. The Colonial Sugar Refining
23 J.W. Burton, The Call of the Pacific, London: Charles H. Kelly, 1912, p. 238, see also p. 39,
p. 80.
24 K. Saukuru, ‘My life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’, Journal of Northern Territory history,
1991; no. 2, pp. 51–59, p. 53.
25 A.J. Small to A.W. Amos, 6 December 1921, f/1/1921, National Archives of Fiji (hereafter
naf); A.W. Amos to A.J. Small, 15 December 1921, f/1/1921, naf, pp. 1–2.
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Company leased 10-acre blocks to Indo-Fijians as the indenture system ended
between 1916 and 1920. There was increasing concern that Indo-Fijian settle-
ment would lead to Fijian dispossession.26
The mission’s leadership debated the impact of the growing Indo-Fijian
access to land. In 1912, missionary Henry Worrall, who had worked in Fiji’s
Rewa circuit wrote a pamphlet named ‘A Racial Riddle’. In it, he described the
Fijians as people of the past.27 He used the biblical story of Jacob and Esau
to describe the relationship as he saw it between Indo-Fijians and Fijians. In
the Old Testament’s book of Genesis, Jacob and Esau were twins, and before
they were born God had said to their mother Rebekah: ‘You have two nations
in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated’, one to
be stronger than the other, and the older to serve the younger. The Indo-
Fijians were likened to Jacob, who was plain but strong. Worrall used Esau as
a metaphor for the Fijians. The reason why this biblical passage was so readily
applied in Fiji in the early twentieth century was due to the increasing number
of Indian lease holders in Fiji. On Esau’s deathbed, Jacob had bought his land:
his birthright.28 Worrall saw one race as stronger than the other, and considered
them innately separate, with the Indo-Fijians purchasing the birthright of the
indigenous population of Fiji as their numbers declined. The story of Jacob and
Esau would resonate with missionaries working in Fiji for years to come. The
metaphor of twins – of two entities that were at once the same yet different –
would also have resonance in Australia, presenting a way in which to try and
comprehend colonial orderings of people who were considered ‘natives’ yet
distinct from one another.
By the 1920s, the apprenticeship-style training provided by the mission had
developed a different edge, prompted partly by anti-colonial agitation around
Nailaga. In 1917, when Saukuru was 10 years old, a man named Apolosi Ranawai
led a resistance movement against the encroaching foreign settlement, encour-
aging Fijians at nearby Tavua not to lease their land and to ignore chiefs who
had been courted by colonial authorities.29 Ranawai was declared an enemy
26 ‘Task for church after war: New Methodist president’s concern’, The Argus, 1 March 1945,
p. 2; M. Moynagh, ‘Land tenure in Fiji’s sugar cane districts since the 1920s’, Journal of
Pacific History, vol. 13 (1), 1978, pp. 53–73, p. 54.
27 H. Worrall, ‘A racial riddle: The clash of alien races in the Pacific’, Life, 1 August 1912, pp. 137–
142, p. 141.
28 I refer to both the New International Version (niv) and King James Version of the Bible.
Genesis 25: 19–34.
29 K. Gravelle, Fiji Times: A History of Fiji, Fiji Times and Herald Ltd, 1979, p. 182; T. Macnaught,
The Fijian Colonial Experience: A Study of the Neotraditional Order Under British Colonial
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of the colonial administration, subsequently arrested and exiled to the distant
island of Rotuma until 1924.30 During his absence, Ranawai’s ideas contin-
ued to inspire both Fijian and European Methodists in Ra who continued to
verbalise desires for economic autonomy. Missionaries working in the circuit,
who believed Fijians needed new ways to demonstrate they owned the land
through making it financially productive, responded by organising support
from the Colonial Sugar Refining Company to engage Fijians in sugar cane pro-
duction. While much of Ranawai’s rhetoric was anti-European, his words were a
response to the developing bifurcated land-lease system emerging throughout
the colony between Indigenous and Indo-Fijians, which as observed above was
premised on racial categorisation. This colony, where chiefly power and Indige-
nous land ownership had been somewhat cloistered through indirect rule, was
marked by fears that Fijian land was under threat.31
While Fiji’s landscape changed, Saukuru trained as a carpenter at the mis-
sion’s school at Richmond, Kadavu.32 Saukuru wrote later that during this time,
Charles Lelean became his ‘spiritual father’.33 Saukuru corresponded with his
uncle Ratu Kolinio L. Naulago while working at Richmond, and it is highly likely
that he heard updates about Ranawai’s movement and the anxieties over Fijian
land ownership.34 A.W. Amos, Lelean’s successor at Nailaga, sought to prove
that Fijians could be financially autonomous.35 Government systems had tried
to maintain subsistence, village-based lifestyles, but Amos encouraged Fijians
to abandon the strictures of the government-prescribed daily labour tasks, con-
verting the mission station and surrounds into ‘laboratories of modernity’.36
Rule Prior to World War ii, Canberra: Australian National University Press, Pacific Research
Monograph Number 7, 1982, p. 85.
30 R. Nicole, Disturbing History: Resistance in Early Colonial Fiji, Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2011, p. 70, 96; T. Macnaught, The Fijian Colonial Experience …, p. 91.
31 This sentiment has endured, visible more recently. See M. Tomlinson, ‘Sacred soil in
Kadavu, Fiji’, Oceania, vol. 72, no. 4, 2002, pp. 237–257, p. 240.
32 Saukuru, ‘My life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’ …, p. 53.
33 H. Chambers, ‘A brown knight of the cross’, The Missionary Review, June 1950, pp. 7–8.
34 A.W. Amos was also involved with the National Missionary Council of Australia which
was formed in 1926. He became Chairman of the Council in 1949. ‘Personal’, The Argus,
Melbourne, 6 August 1949, p. 12.
35 ‘Commission re: native church: information collected for the consideration of the com-
mission’, The Methodist society of Australasia, Melbourne: Spectator publishing company,
1923, p. 9.
36 F. Cooper and A.L. Stoler, ‘Introduction’, in F. Cooper and A.L. Stoler, eds., Tensions of
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997, p. 5.
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Based on racialized concepts about Indigenous peoples’ capacity for ‘progress’,
agricultural training continued to be seen as an important trigger for the devel-
opment of peoples towards a civilised state.37
Keen to promote indigenous agriculture, Amos worked with local chief, Ratu
Nacanieli Rawaidranu. Together they relocated Fijian villagers to farming plots
where they could grow sugar cane and generate income. He passed the respon-
sibility for these projects onto his replacement in 1923: Arthur Lelean, the
nephew of Charles. Arthur was more progressive in his belief of the capacity
for Fijians to work within a capitalist economy. By 1924, the farmers held 48
acres of land leased from the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (based in Syd-
ney, hereafter the csr), securing seven-year leases at 3/- per acre with no right
of renewal, unless csr decided to renew again or they bought the land from the
owners.38 On 29 September 1929, Rawaidranu, with the highest-ranking Fijian
in the colonial administration, Ratu Lala Sukuna, and representatives from the
Colonial Sugar Refining Company signed an agreement recognising the farm-
ers as galala (independent of the colonial labour requirements to remain in
one’s village).39 Four farmers settled on leases at the Toko Estate at Tavua one
month later,40 with formal support from the colonial administration and the
csr Company.41 Missionaries oversaw the project, with a council established
at that year’s Synod to deliberate industrial education and independent sugar
settlements where they could ‘make farmers out of the boys.’42 This agricul-
tural movement was designed to address both anti-European and anti-Indian
sentiment in indigenous Fijian communities.
By 1931, 75 farmers worked at Toko, and another 30 men at Varoka on ten-acre
plots.43 Lelean leased 48 acres of farmland from the csr for rice, maize and
sugar cane crops. Approximately 600 Fijian families entered the sugar indus-
try through the scheme44 The mission’s Chairman, Richard McDonald, toured
37 A Lester, ‘Humanism, race, and the colonial frontier’, Transactions of the Institute of British
geographers, Vol. 37 (1), 2012, pp. 132–148, pp. 132–133.
38 J.W. Burton, diary, 15 August 1924, mss 3267/2, Mitchell Library (hereafter ml).
39 K. Close, Talanoa, Yaladro, Fieldnotes, 2010.
40 V. Clark to R.L. McDonald, 7 May 1930, f/1/1930, naf, pp. 1–2.
41 Ibid, p. 3; Macnaught, The Fijian Colonial Experience …, p. 140.
42 W. Stebbins to R.L. McDonald, 5 May 1930, f/1/1930, naf.
43 A.W. Amos to R.L. McDonald, 10 November 1931, f/1/1931, naf.
44 Ibid; A.W. Amos, ‘Fiji Revisited’, continued from 20 November 1935, The Spectator, 27 No-
vember 1935, p. 975; R. Eves, ‘Colonialism, corporeality and character: Methodist missions
and the refashioning of bodies in the pacific’, History and Anthropology, vol. 10 (1), 1996,
pp. 85–138.
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the sites and ‘felt convinced that, with training, the Fijian will prove a first rate
agriculturalist and a real asset to his country.’45 Missionaries sought to create
an ‘industrial man’, but rather than being ‘detribalised’, the so-called ‘Fijian
Methodist industrial man’ still had an avenue into ‘traditional’ Fijian society
through his continued deference to the chiefly system and familial ties. As Fred-
erick Cooper has argued of colonialism in Africa, the systems established in
Fiji were underpinned by desires to mould a more ‘productive and predictable’
society, but not ones that demanded absolute transformation.46
John Burton visited the Fijian farming sites in 1933, and then coordinated a
meeting between Lelean and F. Oswald Barnett, a Methodist renowned for his
Melbourne campaign to improve the conditions for people living in the slums
in Collingwood and Fitzroy throughout the 1920s.47 Barnett, an accountant by
trade, and Lelean organised a board of businessmen to assist the Fijian farmers.
The minutes kept at a meeting held on 28 April 1933 at Barnett’s office clearly
state that the aim was ‘to aid the Fijian to acquire his own native land,’ which
was described as the Fijians’ ‘birthright’, in the face of encroaching Indo-Fijian
settlements.48
A ‘Native’ Missionary in Arnhem Land, Australia
Methodist mission was constructed in a way that saw connections form be-
tween Fijians and other First Nations peoples throughout Australasia. Fijians
had been involved in the Arnhem Land mission since its establishment, with
the first Fijian missionary, Mosesi Mausio arriving to work there in 1916.49 In
45 ‘Across Viti Levu: rebuilding towns: successful Fijian farmers’, The Spectator, 30 September
1931.
46 F. Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British
Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 2.
47 E.W. Russell, ‘Barnett, Frederick Oswald (1883–1972)’, Australian Dictionary of Biogra-
phy, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu
.au/biography/barnett-frederick-oswald-5138/text8599, accessed 26 June 2013; T. Birch,
‘ “These children have been born in an abyss”: slum photography in a Melbourne suburb’,
Australian Historical Studies, vol. 123, 2004, pp. 1–15, p. 2.
48 Those present at the meeting were W.A. Towler, E.H. Moad, H.A. Hedley, A.E. Allan, H.H.
Murray, sc Brittingham, J.F. Wilkinson, F.O. Barnett, E.A. Thompson, W.B. McCutcheon,
E.L. Gault and A.D. Lelean. Minutes, enclosed in letter 15 May 1933, f/1/1933, naf.
49 James Watson to J.G.. Wheen, 9 June 1916, Methodist Church of Overseas Missions North-
ern Australia Correspondence 1916–1926, 450, cy3161, Methodist Church Overseas Mis-
sions, Mitchell Library, slnsw, p. 3; McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land, p. 12.
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1933, Saukuru and his wife, Finau, became important leaders in mission work –
including training Aboriginal peoples in agriculture – at Arnhem Land.50 Sau-
kuru wrote years later that he saw his life as an effort to ‘play my part in paying
our debt on behalf of the Fijian to your noble men and women who came to
our land over a hundred years ago, bringing to us the Gospel of Christ.’51 He
had no formal theological training but considerable practical skills, particularly
in tropical agriculture.52 Charged with promoting Indigenous involvement in
agriculture, Saukuru’s first posting was to Goulburn Island. The mission’s lead-
ership placed Saukuru within the existing hierarchy, where Fijians were some-
where in the middle between Europeans who were seated in all positions of
authority, and the peoples of Arnhem Land, and government systems were still
constructed in a way that reflected earlier beliefs that Aboriginal peoples were
the most primitive form of society, even though missionaries and anthropolo-
gists – or missionary anthropologists such as Lorimer Fison – had long refuted
that idea.53
Saukuru worked first at Goulburn Island as an agricultural teacher, but
arguably his most influential years were spent at Yirrkala. It was during his time
there that he was ordained and then worked as superintendent, obtaining a
greater leadership role and autonomy. Industrial mission had been established
at Yirrkala with full support of Burton and the district chairman in Arnhem
Land, Theodor Webb. Webb oversaw the Arnhem Land sites and published his
thoughts around industrial missions in From Spears to Spades, published in
1938. He reflected on the changes in Aboriginal economic life since European
colonisation, and the ways in which Christianity was bound to ‘materialist eco-
nomics and restless industrialism’.54 Under Webb’s leadership and direction,
Wilbur Chaseling – superintendent at Yirrkala during the 1930s – paid people
in flour, tobacco, vegetables and fruit grown onsite.55 Burton and Webb, and
seemingly Chaseling, subscribed to the idea that the next stage of ‘economic
racial development must be a movement into pastoral or agricultural life, or a
combination of both’.56
50 McKenzie p. 59; K. Saukuru, ‘My life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’, p. 53.
51 K. Saukuru, ‘My life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’, p. 54.
52 Kadiba, Fijian missionaries in North Australia …, pp. 25–26.
53 Helen Gardner, ‘ “By the facts we add to our store”: Lorimer Fison, Lewis Henry Morgan,
and the spread of kinship studies in Australia’, Oceania, vol. 78, no. 2, 2008, pp. 137–150,
p. 281.
54 T.T. Webb, Spears to Spades, Sydney, Department of Overseas Mission, 1938, p. 55.
55 McKenzie, p. 80.
56 T.T. Webb, From Spears to Spades, p. 57.
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Missionaries from many denominations throughout Australasia engaged
with writings of leading Australian anthropologists Donald Thomson and Adol-
phus P. Elkin, who wrote about indigenous relationships to land and were thus
interested in mission work in agriculture. A.R. Radcliffe Brown, then Chair of
Anthropology under the Rockefeller scheme,57 had written about indigenous
territorial organisation models and influenced Thomson.58 Theodore Webb,
the chairman of the North Australian Methodist mission district took partic-
ular interest in his work, following Thomson’s fieldwork at Yirrkala during 1936
and 1937, and described land as an indigenous ‘birthright’.59 A missionary work-
ing at Yirrkala at the time, Harold Thornell, picked up on some of these anthro-
pological discussions about land, suggesting that agricultural schemes required
change and adaptation ‘to the ways of the European – ways they must learn if
they were to survive in the hard realities of the twentieth century. Cultivation,
of course, was a new way of life to them.’60 Yet Elkin did not endorse the idea
that Aboriginal people should completely abandon their cosmologies. Elkin
instructed many European missionaries in anthropology prior to their entering
the field, and engaged with Thomson’s ideas that were at times quite opposed
to his own. Despite their differences, particularly their different modes of polit-
ical activism – Thomson supported segregation and protectionism while Elkin
pushed for assimilation – both tended to concur on the need to better compre-
hend indigenous connections to land.61
57 Adolphus P. Elkin, ‘Anthroplogical research in Australia and the Western Pacific, Oceania,
Vol. 8 (3), 1938, pp. 306–327, p. 311.
58 Nicolas Peterson, “ ‘I Can’t Follow You on This Horde-Clan Business at All’: Donald Thom-
son, Radcliffe-Brown and a Final Note on the Horde,” Oceania, Vol. 76 (1), March 2006,
pp. 16–26, p. 16.
59 A later General Secretary of the Methodist Missions, Gardner, rejected Thomson’s charges
that the missions were neglectful. Gardner to the editor of The Sun, Sydney, 16 January
1947, mlmss Meth Ch om, Box 451, slnsw; ‘Anthropologist’s concern’, The West Australian,
Perth, 15 May 1936, p. 27.
60 H. Thornell, A bridge over time: Living in Arnhem Land with the Aborigines, 1938–1944,
Melbourne, J.M. Dent, 1986, pp. 35–36.
61 Howard Morphy, ‘Thomson, Donald Finlay Fergusson (1901–1970)’, Australian Dictionary of
Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomson-donald-finlay-fergusson-11851, ac-
cessed 24 November 2015; Peter Sutton and David McKnight, ‘Review: Australian anthro-
pologists and political action 1925–1960’, Oceania, vol. 79, no. 2, 2009, pp. 202–217, p. 203,
207–208; Gillian Cowlishaw, ‘Studying Aborigines: Changing canons in anthropology and
history’, Special Issue: Power, Knowledge and Aborigines: Journal of Australian Studies,
Vol. 16 (35), 1992, pp. 20–31, p. 22.
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Change in the Time of War
Indigenous relationships to land proved a point through which indigenous peo-
ples could unite through anti-colonial protest. This occurred through separate
incidents in both the Australian and Fijian contexts. As with the better-known
protest that resulted in the Yirrkala bark petitions, the Toko farmers – men-
tioned earlier – collaborated with diverse communities from across the Fijian
colony in order to give greater weight to their claims for self-governance and
recognition. In 1936, the Toko farmers pledged to contribute part of their wages
to this ideal.62 The farmers had learnt that the Mission had acquired a debt of
£4, 658. The farmers could not pay the full amount, but had an idea to fundraise
in Australia and Fiji to secure funds to pay it off and to ‘achieve our goal.’63
They wanted an autonomous church, ‘for it is a sign of weakness to be lean-
ing on others and not making decisions for ourselves.’64 The farmers believed
the church provided an avenue through which to display the strength of the
vanua – this was a term that encompassed almost the whole world of Fijians,
from people, land, and all things on it. As Jacqueline Ryle has outlined, ‘to talk
of vanua is to talk not only of land in its material form, but land as Place of
Being, as Place of Belonging, as spiritual quality.’ Vanua is a ‘relational concept
that encompasses all this, paths of relationship, nurture and mutual obliga-
tions connecting place and people with the past, the present and the future.’65
During the Fijian session of the 104th annual Methodist Fiji District Synod
which opened on 13 October 1941, the Toko farmers approached the Fiji Dis-
trict Mission Chairman, William Green, with 118 tabua (whales’ teeth) collected
from chiefs throughout the islands, and £500.66 This was the highest possible
exchange in Fijian culture. They made a lengthy speech, in which they asked
William Green to fulfil the promise of self-government and self-support.67
62 K. Close, Fieldnotes, Yaladro, 2010; Talanoa, Senivalati Toroki and Emosi Tabumasi, neph-
ews of N. Rawaidranu, June 2013; Kirstie Close-Barry, A Mission Divided: Race, Culture and
Colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission, Canberra: anu Press, 2015.
63 M.G. Wilmshurst to C.F. Gribble, 12 Sept 1949, File 1949, Movement for independent
conference in Fiji, mom Correspondence and papers, Fiji 1905–1953, ml
64 Ibid.
65 Jacqueline Ryle, My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji,
Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, p. xii.
66 ‘Methodist Mission 104th Annual Synod’, Fiji Times and Herald, 15 October 1941, p. 5.
67 M. Tomlinson, ‘Passports to eternity: whale’s teeth and transcendence in Fijian Method-
ism’, in eds. L. Manderson, W. Smith, M. Tomlinson, Flows of Faith: Religious Reach and
Community in Asia and the Pacific, Melbourne: Springer, 2012, pp. 215–231, p. 223.
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The decision to take tabua to the 1941 Synod was carefully considered, and
represented the shared desire of a large number of Fijian communities across
the islands.68 The Toko farmers had collected the tabua through the vakat-
uraga practice, by following chiefly protocols of respect and reciprocity. This
suggested that there was widespread support from chiefs for this movement.69
The tabua also represented connections to the vanua, and the connectivity
between people, places and materials.70 The tabua symbolised the farmers’
desires for autonomy and recognition: they hoped that missionaries would
enact their plan for self-governance.71 The farmers had enacted a Fijian move-
ment for a Fijian church in addition to their assertions of land ownership
through the farming schemes, a unified effort to use their new-found wealth to
exert influence and secure what they wanted. The written petition that accom-
panied the tabua was an important addition to the gesture. Combined, these
actions reinforced the existing segregated structure of the mission in the way it
reflected ethno-nationalist values. Yet, they also signalled Fijian desires to shun
the restrictions placed on them by European missionaries by pushing towards
self-governance, and their control of the church as a distinctly Fijian space.
The missionaries decided, however, to prolong the transition to self-governance
until after the Second World War.
While in Fiji plans for self-governance stalled, the mission’s leadership did
more readily accommodate Fijian leadership during and after the war. The War
impacted the Arnhem Land mission sites as well, with extensive evacuations.
One of the missionaries who had worked there, Len Kentish, was captured after
the boat he was in was wrecked off the Arnhem Land coastline, and taken to
Dobo in Indonesia where he was killed by Japanese soldiers. Saukuru’s fam-
ily was evacuated, but he remained, and he ministered to a new congregation:
members of the Royal Australian Air Force. Due – in part – to his wartime
ministerial work, Saukuru secured greater authority, prestige and responsibil-
ity.72 The mission’s synod officially moved Saukuru from Goulburn Island to
Yirrkala on 3 August 1944,73 and he was finally ordained in 1945 at a synod
68 Ibid.
69 A.D. Ravuvu, The Fijian Ethos, p. 324.
70 C. Gosden and Y. Marshall, ‘The cultural biography of objects’, World Archaeology: The
cultural biography of objects, vol. 31 (2), 1999, pp. 169–178, p. 170.
71 V. Cretton, ‘Traditional Fijian apology as a political strategy’, Oceania, vol. 75 (4), 2005,
pp. 403–417, pp. 406–407.
72 M. McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land …, p. 148.
73 K. Saukuru, ‘My life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’, p. 55.
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meeting at Croker Island.74 Government administrators in the Department of
Native Affairs baulked at Saukuru’s being in charge of the lives of Australian
Indigenous peoples: they considered a European superintendent a ‘require-
ment’.75 Authorities discussed who was most appropriate to lead the mission.
The Methodists had appointed Saukuru to the role of superintendent at Yir-
rkala after the war, telling authorities that ‘it was impossible to obtain suit-
able staff.’76 In a letter to the Secretary for the Department of Territories, the
Minister for Lands and Agriculture F.J.S. Wise wrote ‘whilst Fijians prove good
workers under direction, the responsibility of alone controlling a large group
of aborigines is too great.’77 European missionaries were seen as essential ele-
ments in pushing the progression from nomadic to ‘civilised’ society. Saukuru’s
ordination and appointment to the role of superintendent reflected enhanced
status, but missionaries and members of the Department of Native Affairs still
did not consider Saukuru equally capable or qualified, no matter his experi-
ence. He was still not a European and therefore not qualified enough in the
eyes of the government. In 1949, Saukuru spoke to a congregation in Launces-
ton, Tasmania, where he said that his main objective was to teach, clothe and
feed the Arnhem Land community. Far from depicting himself as dependent
on the European missionaries, he told them that his ‘only assistant is his wife,
whom attends to the station hospital.’78 Agriculture was the predominant sub-
ject taught to the Aboriginal people there, with instruction on how to cultivate
sweet potatoes, tapioca, pawpaws and tropical fruits.79 Saukuru had dreams
for Yirrkala: he wanted to see it grow beyond the few cottages and dormitory to
become a town.80
Though he was able to make some decisions about what would occur at
Yirrkala and how, Saukuru’s autonomy was limited, and European missionaries
maintained hegemony within the higher echelons of the mission structure.
74 M. McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land …, p. 148.
75 F.H. Moy, Director of Native Affairs, ‘Review report: Yirrkala Mission, North Australia
District, Methodist Overseas Missions, from establishment to 31 December 1949’, p. 9, in
Methodist Overseas Missions, Yirrkala Mission, 1933–1952, National Archives of Australia
(hereafter naa) 1949/459.
76 F.J.S. Wise, Minister for Lands and Agriculture to Secretary, Department of Territories,
29 October 1951, naa, 51/532, ‘Methodist Overseas Mission, Yirrkala Mission’, 1933–1952,
naa 1949/459.
77 Ibid.
78 ‘Many troops knew him as “Kol” ’, The Mercury, Tasmania, 10 Sept 1949, p. 7.
79 Ibid.
80 Kolinio Saukuru, ‘What I really believe should be done’, ml mss, Meth Ch o M 451, u.d.
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Still, as Frances Morphy has argued, settler colonialism was uneven through
Australia and at Yirrkala the European reach was limited.81 There are hints –
from the correspondence that he refers to from his father, and from his allotting
land to farmers – that Saukuru’s background in the hyper-political west of
Fiji, where indigenous hegemony and land rights politics were often discussed,
shaped the work that he did in Arnhem Land. In 1947, Saukuru’s right hand
man – who I will refrain from naming here out of respect for cultural protocol –
asked him for ‘some ground to do his own farm’. Saukuru gave him two acres
that over the first three months he cleared, prepared for the wet season, and
planted pawpaws, mangos, custard apples and bananas. He also built a cottage
at the top end of the garden.82 Saukuru thus facilitated the organisation and
acquisition of land for at least one individual at the mission station, acting
as a land broker in this specific context, as many missionaries did through
multifarious means.
There are tantalising hints that Saukuru’s influence extended beyond his
time in situ at Yirrkala and other Arnhem Land stations. While still at Goulburn
Island, Saukuru trained the young Lazarus Lamilami in carpentry.83 Lamil-
ami, born in 1908 was, in 1967, the first Yolngu man to be ordained.84 When
he wrote his memoirs, however, Lamilami did not refer to Saukuru when dis-
cussing his education, mentioning that at the time he was learning carpentry:
‘I didn’t think I wanted to be a Christian, because I thought when you were
a Christian there were some things you couldn’t do.’ His mind changed after
time spent in Darwin, where he believed the absence of Christianity had led
to increased conflict in the township.85 Further details about the relationship
between Lamilami and Saukuru have been difficult to source, partly because
their time together was so limited. Similarly, while the archives reveal that
Saukuru encouraged the construction of a church at Yirrkala during his time
there as superintendent, evidence of his role in influencing ideas of artworks
81 Frances Morphy, ‘Enacting sovereignty in a colonized space: The Yolngu of Blue Mud Bay
meet the native title process’, eds D. Fay and Deborah James, The rights and wrongs of
land restitution: “Restoring what was ours”, London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2008, pp. 99–
122, pp. 99–100.
82 Name excluded so as not to transgress cultural protocols. Kolinio Saukuru, Yirrala Annual
Report for year ending 31 November 1947, Northern Australia District Reports 1946–1951,
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
83 John W. Dixon, ‘Lazarus Lamilami’, The Methodist, Sydney: nsw, 6 June 1953, p. 5.
84 Lazarus Lamilami, Lamilami Speaks: The cry went up, a story of the people of Goulburn
Islands, North Australia, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1974, p. 256.
85 Ibid, p. 202.
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