Vital Signs

Shepherdson, Charles

doi:10.4324/9780203902059

Cited by 4 publications

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“…The Methodist Overseas Mission (MOM) began at Galiwin'ku in 1942 (Shepherdson and Shepherdson, 1981; Dewar, 1995; Riseman, 2008). Yolŋu clans of North East Arnhem Land had effectively succeeded in stopping pastoral expansion through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and dealt with regular incursions by trepangers, buffalo shooters and others (Dewar, 1995).…”

Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MOM did not attempt radical cultural shifts through dormitory living, banning Yolŋu ceremonies or through strictly enforcing English, as was common across many religious missions in Australia (Haebich, 2000; Keen, 1994). Instead they focused on slower shifts through transforming local marriage practices and enforcing monogamy and the nuclear family and governing work life (Shepherdson and Shepherdson, 1981; Schwarz, 2007). Elcho Island was primarily an industrial mission, and schooling was focused on how to build a local workforce to sustain it (Kadiba, 1998).…”

Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The private missionary Elcho Island Missionary School was set up in 1944 as a plank of MOM's goals for assimilation. Methodist missionary Ella Shepherdson, along with her teaching assistant David Burrumarra (later famous advocate of reconciliation), first taught a handful of children under a “narrani” (bush apple) tree (Shepherdson and Shepherdson, 1981; Williams, 1994; Hall, 2017). The College grew in the 1950s and 1960s, as buildings, personnel and enrolment expanded.…”

Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bilingual education, Aboriginal self-determination and Yolŋu control at Shepherdson College, 1972–1983

Thomas

2020

HER

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PurposeSelf-determination policies and the expansion of bilingual schooling across Australia's Northern Territory (NT) in the 1970s and 1980s provided opportunities for Aboriginal educators and communities to take control over schooling. This paper demonstrates how this occurred at Shepherdson College, a mission school turned government bilingual school, at Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island in North East, Arnhem Land, in the early years of the policies between 1972 and 1983. Yolŋu staff developed a syncretic vision for a Yolŋu-controlled space of education that prioritised Yolŋu knowledges and aimed to sustain Yolŋu existence.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses archival data as well as oral histories, focusing on those with a close involvement with Shepherdson College, to elucidate the development of a Yolŋu vision for schooling.FindingsMany Yolŋu school staff and their supporters, encouraged by promises of the era, pushed for greater Yolŋu control over staffing, curriculum, school spaces and governance. The budgetary and administrative control of the NT and federal governments acted to hinder possibilities. Yet despite these bureaucratic challenges, by the time of the shift towards neoliberal constraints in the early 1980s, Yolŋu educators and their supporters had envisioned and achieved, in a nascent way, a Yolŋu schooling system.Originality/valuePrevious scholarship on bilingual schooling has not closely examined the potent link between self-determination and bilingual schooling, largely focusing on pedagogical debates. Instead, this paper argues that Yolŋu embraced the “way in” offered by bilingual schooling to develop a new vision for community control through control of schooling.

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Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Missionary Beginningsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bilingual education, Aboriginal self-determination and Yolŋu control at Shepherdson College, 1972–1983

Thomas

2020

HER

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“…104 Gender and queer theorists often shy away from theorizing how sexual differentiation is something man has no final control over yet is constantly reinforced by supposedly conscious subjects of all sexes and genders. Do we not remain committed to a familiar theory of ''man'', to the same conception of the ''subject'' in which sexual difference has always been foreclosed?''…”

Section: The Power Of Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

One, Two, Many

Saldanha

2012

Angelaki

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“…Yolngu people further inland and to mill native cypress pine growing in the vicinity (Shepherdson 1981). Shortly before Lake Evella was set up, a mining survey party constructed a rough road connecting Katherine, south-west of Arnhem Land, to the Gove Peninsula, in the north-east.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A history of Donydji outstation, north-east Arnhem Land

White¹

2016

Experiments in Self-Determination: Histories of the Outstation Movement in Australia

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The first official exploration of Yolngu country was by David Lindsay, who, in 1883, travelled the western edge of Wagilak land, following the Goyder River into the Arafura Swamp, where he first encountered Yolngu people and in large numbers. Soon after, in 1885, the Florida cattle station was established when a herd of cattle driven from Queensland arrived (Berndt and Berndt 1954). This was a short-lived but violent frontier, with memories of conflict and atrocities persisting today. Soon after the closure of Florida, a Methodist Overseas Mission was founded, in 1923, on Milingimbi Island, off the northwestern coast of northeast Arnhem Land (Berndt and Berndt 1954). This mission settlement attracted Yolngu people from a wide area, many of whom settled on the mission. Others, like the families who set up the Donydji outstation, visited periodically for supplies such as tobacco and sugar-commodities that were also occasionally obtained from the Mainoru cattle station and Roper River Mission Station to the south. These journeys often took many months. During World War II, Milingimbi came under air attack by the Japanese, and the Reverend Harold Shepherdson moved to a new Methodist mission site on Elcho Island, a little to the east. Shepherdson later transported, in his own single-engine plane, some food supplies and clothes to the newly created Mirrngadja outstation, using an airstrip he had helped construct in 1959 (Shepherdson 1981). In 1969, the Reverend started Lake Evella (now known as Gapuwiyak) as an outpost of the Elcho Island Mission, so as to engage with This text is taken from Experiments in self-determination: Histories of the outstation movement in Australia, edited by

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Vital Signs

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Bilingual education, Aboriginal self-determination and Yolŋu control at Shepherdson College, 1972–1983

Bilingual education, Aboriginal self-determination and Yolŋu control at Shepherdson College, 1972–1983

One, Two, Many

A history of Donydji outstation, north-east Arnhem Land

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