The Methodist Church and the Yolŋu, with Particular Reference to Yirrkala Howard Morphy Introduction: Beginnings and Biases

Ahistory of the Methodist Overseas Mission in Arnhem Land has yet to be written. The resources for such a task are immensely rich, including archival sources and the writings of the missionaries themselves. While not possessing its own historian, as the Anglican missions do in the person of Reverend Keith Cole, 1 the Methodist Church produced a number of educated and passionate superintendents who wrote detailed accounts of their times and experiences. Yirrkala alone had at least three, in Wilbur Chaseling, 2 Harold Thornell 3 and Edgar Wells 4 . This paper is very much a preliminary excursion into the arena; it is not a history or a case study but rather a proposition, supported by evidence from different sources and periods; an argument that comes, perhaps a little too intuitively, out of my own sense of the history of north east Arnhem Land. It is an argument that develops in a complementay manner to other, received, viewpoints that are in themselves undoubtedly oversimplified and open to challenge—the sense that the neighbouring Anglican and Catholic missions were less positive in their view of Aboriginal religion and culture, and were more likely than the Methodist Church to introduce potentially destructive institutions such as the dormitory system and the banning of traditional ceremonial practices (see Mickey Dewar, this issue). Yet in most respects the Anglican and Catholic Churches have been equally strong in their advocacy of Aboriginal rights. The title of my paper, 'mutual conversion', exaggerates the case but perhaps only a little. There were some intolerant Methodists, who viewed Aboriginal practices simply as heathen forms. There were missionary linguists who refused to translate Indigenous songs or document bark paintings — the sanctity of written Yolŋu had to be preserved for the production of biblical texts. Religious tolerance applies more to some times and some individuals than others, but as encounters between Aborigines and missionaries go, that between the Yolŋu and the Methodist Overseas Mission was a relatively fortunate one. If bigotry can be defined by its resistance to argument, by its failure to see the other point of view, by its antipathy to choice, then the Methodist Church in Arnhem Land provides a poor example. Indeed the case is not so much