Catholic Mission Phase 2: Towards Assimilation at Arltunga

After seven years at Charles Creek, in 1942 the Little Flower Mission was forced to move to Arltunga, 100 kilometres to the east of Alice Springs. Now, as originally planned by Gsell, the Mission was to be protected from the contagion of proximity to white settlement. The reasons for the move, however, had more to do with politics than theology.

On February 19, 1942 the Japanese attack on Darwin, and later on other locations in the Top End of Australia, led to a second wave of the European occupation of Central Australia. The Civil Administration of the Northern Territory relocated from Darwin to Alice Springs, while the Australian Army established a transport supply depot to equip the defence effort from the town. A contingent of the United States Defence Force was also stationed in Alice. The town, with a combined population of Indigenous and non-Indigenous of less than 1,000 in 1939,551

was swamped by an influx of military personnel during the war so that the population of Alice Springs was swollen by the addition of 8,000 Australian and American troops.552 _The

Alice would never be the same again and the lives of Aboriginal people would be impacted in

549 _{Harmsen, “You gave us the Dreaming”, 78. This is a considerable number considering that there were}

probably about 400 Arrernte living in the vicinity of Alice Springs at the time.

550 _{Anna Kenny, The Aranda’s Pepa, 88. The comparison is 171 over 3 years at Charles Creek compared to 41}

over 26 years at Hermannsburg.

551 _{Northern Territory Government Official Website, http://northernterritory.com/articles/alice-springs,}

(accessed August 15, 2017).

552 _{Northern Territory Government Official Website, http://northernterritory.com/articles/alice-springs,}

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many ways.553 _{Immediately the Army had designs on the Little Flower Mission site at Charles}

Creek554 _{as suitable camp grounds and training areas for the troops. Soon after the arrival of}

the troops there was an outbreak of meningitis at Little Flower. The Army, fearing contagion of the troops, found the excuse to quickly advise of the need for the transfer of the Mission and its residents.

In September 1942 the Administrator of the Northern Territory offered to relocate the Mission to the abandoned mining settlement at Arltunga. Despite the fact that this was not MparntweArrernte country and had been deserted 50 years previously, because it was barren and arid, lacking secure and safe water supplies,555 _{the Catholic diocese responded with}

alacrity. Bishop Gsell of the Northern Territory diocese was delighted: “Times are certainly not propitious for forming new stations, but this is so extraordinary and providential an occasion, never perhaps to occur again, that it would be suicidal to refuse.”556 _{Gsell’s swift and grateful}

response supports the general conclusion that the Catholic Church in the Northern Territory had adopted a collaborative relationship with the government,557 _{as deputy Prime Minister McEwan}

had hoped for in his New Deal for Aborigines. Gsell understood that the government was offering to financially support the Mission in ways never before considered possible. Hearn reports, “This is eminently just and fair, accepting a principle of subsidising social services which has not yet found acceptance in the Australian community at large.”558 _{The Mission}

required adequate and just funding in order to meet the needs of the Arrernte living under its care and Gsell had every right to be pleased with this change of heart.

Through 1942 and into 1943 there was much travelling on the rutted roads between Alice Springs and Arltunga. The Army provided the dwellings and did all the heavy lifting of the Army huts which were to make up most of the early buildings, although housing for Arrernte families was not included. Having originally been evicted from their own country in Alice

553 _{One of these impacts was receipt of equal wages for Aboriginal men employed with the Army and respect}

offered to the working Indigenous men by non-Indigenous Australians from the South who did not share the prejudices of Centralians of the time.

554 _{This site is now occupied by the Anthelke Ulpaye Aboriginal Town Camp, affiliated with Tangentyere}

Council

555 _{Heffernan, Gathering Sticks, 47. Heffernan reports: “When the army tested the creeks and wells they found the}

water full of cyanide left over from the gold mining days.”

556 _{Harmsen, “You Gave Us the Dreaming”, 90.}

557 _{This can be contrasted with the Lutherans at Hermannsburg, who were being treated as suspicious enemy}

aliens at the same time.

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Springs by government edict in 1928, the Arrernte were now to be exiled to another people’s country.559 _{By late 1943 the entire Mission had been relocated and settled in Arltunga.}

At Arltunga “in 1945, a dormitory system for girls was introduced, partly as the result of working adults leaving their children behind at the mission and partly due to the advent of assimilation policies”.560 _{Now with a community of approximately 200 Arrernte Catholics at}

Arltunga, it appears that the Religious superiors of the MSCs and the OLSH Sisters respectively made an ongoing commitment to appoint an increasing number of missionaries to Central Australia. Pye provides a list of twenty-two MSC priests and twelve MSC brothers, along with fifty-three OLSH Sisters, who staffed the three phases of the Mission between 1935 and 1988.561

In the final tally it was a significant commitment. The Mission nurtured its flock within a fold. There were two coincidental consequences resulting from this approach: assimilation prospered and the OLSH Sisters were in a strong position to introduce the young people to Catholicism.

While the policy of Protection had been in place when the removal of mixed-descent children began, the emerging policy of assimilation continued the awful policy of removing children of mixed descent from their parents. At Arltunga six to eight children were removed.562 _According

to Harmsen’s clerical informants, the missionaries, while not supporting the policy, did little to stand in its way. She reports the response from one of the priests at the time, that “‘we’ did not approve of the abduction of the part-coloured kids but that ‘we’ could do nothing about it and also said that he had told the Arrernte people that he personally had nothing to do with the operation.”563 _{This official Mission account is questioned by Veronica Perrurle Dobson who}

says she saw children being loaded onto Army trucks and many years later reported her view that “the Sisters were helping to load the children on the truck, poor things”.564 _{The Mission,}

now responsible to Bishop O’Loughlin, who succeeded Gsell in 1949, appears to have become an agent of the government policy.

559 _{This was specifically Eastern Arrernte country and foreign to many Mparntwe Arrernte people.}

560 _{Harmsen, “You Gave Us the Dreaming”, 101. Hearn, “A Theology of Mission,” 23, argues that this practice}

of leaving the children in the dormitory while the parents worked on nearby stations was the principle aim of the Arltunga Mission. He says that this was the continuing understanding in the operation of the dormitory at Santa Teresa.

561 _{Pye, Santa Teresa and East Aranda History, 11–18.}

562 _{Harmsen, “You Gave Us the Dreaming”, 97. Eight is a significant number out of 200 total Arrernte residents.}

563 _{Harmsen, “You Gave Us the Dreaming”, 98.}

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The Arrernte women who had been in the dormitory described how they learned to be Catholic by living a Catholic routine: “they learnt to behave in a proper Catholic way, which implied sitting quietly, listening to the priest, memorizing the liturgy,565 _{prayers and hymns, etc. This is}

the ritual … just as songs, stories and dances formed ceremonial aspects of Arrernte Law.”566

The legacy of this instruction remains firmly entrenched in the Catholic devotional attitude of many older Arrernte women even in 2018.

It appears that the missionaries at Arltunga were disinclined to engage in serious religious Catholic education with the Arrernte adults or dialogue with Altyerre. One MSC said “There wasn’t any effort to teach them anything deep in spirituality. But they had very great faith. Up to a quarter of them did not have any religious beliefs apart from their own superstitions. We did not interfere with them.”567 _{The missionaries appeared to operate on the assumption that the}

Arrernte would become Catholic by osmosis, a slow inexorable drift into Catholicism by virtue of association. However, by concentrating on the external elements of Catholic ritual, the priests, brothers and sisters encouraged the Arrernte to select those elements of Catholicism that fitted their existing world-view. Not knowing Arrernte, not being able to preach in Arrernte, not being able to understand the essentials of Altyerre that guided their flock, the priests and religious sisters were unaware of the continuing commitment to Altyerre by the Arrernte Catholics.568

In a reflection that speaks to a refrain common among both non-Indigenous members of OLSH Parish and female members of Ngkarte Mikwekenhe Catholic Community569 _{as to why}

there are so few Arrernte men engaged in modern Catholic practice, Heffernan remarks:

The Catholic priests thought our belief system was a poor thing for savage pagans that needed to be forgotten. They thought our families needed to be swallowed up in the rich tradition of their own Catholic faith. They believed they could save our children’s souls by converting them. This was very sad for the men and over time some of the men drifted away. But because our families needed the protection of the Catholics and the practical help they offered the old men kept their families close to the safety of the

565 _{Liturgy which was in Latin, personal communication, Therese Ryder, January 18, 2018.}

566 _{Harmsen, “You gave us the Dreaming”, 104.}

567 _{Harmsen, “You gave us the Dreaming”, 105.}

568 _{This approach can be compared to the Lutheran approach of F.W. Albrecht, who learnt fluent Arrernte within}

two years and preached in Arrernte soon after he arrived. He also trained Arrernte men as evangelists and eventually as ordained pastors.

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church. There were fewer conversations between the priests and the Arrernte leadership though and the Arrernte Advisory Committee seemed to fade away.570

Note the similarity between the situations at Hermannsburg and Alice Springs for the Western Arrernte and the Mparntwe Arrernte in the face of the Lutheran and the Catholic Missions. Both Arrernte groups had limited options. Surrounded by dangerous foes –

rampant pastoralism in the Western MacDonnells/Tyuretye and acquisitive commercialism in the township of Alice Springs/Mparntwe – both groups needed protection and stayed

connected to the Mission. But the possibility of a productive religious interchange between the Arrernte men and the missionaries was damaged and Altyerre was forced underground. The fact that today the visible face of Eastern and Mparntwe Arrernte Catholicism and to a degree Western Arrernte Lutheranism is predominantly female lends support to this

conclusion.571

Harmsen argues that “By the late 1940s, such Catholic momenta as first and Holy Communion and the sacraments of baptism and marriage had taken firm root within the Arrernte

community.”572 _{M.K. Turner and Kathleen Kemarre Wallace, having grown up in Arltunga and}

Santa Teresa, were later both married at the Mission. In fact, in their day there were multiple marriages at Santa Teresa.573 _{Today, however, it is extremely rare for any Arrernte person to be}

married in the Ngkarte MikwekenheCatholicCommunity (NMCC) in Alice Springs, although baptisms, requiem masses, reconciliation and the sacrament of anointing are still frequently conducted.

In summarising the Arltunga Mission experience Harmsen writes:

570 _{Heffernan, Gathering Sticks, 40.}

571 _{There are distinct differences between Western Arrernte Lutheranism and Mparntwe Arrernte Catholicism.}

Of course, the most significant is the ordination of Western Arrernte pastors commencing with Moses Tjalkabota. Wenten Rubuntja’s brother Eli Rubuntja was another. In this manner the Lutherans privileged the Western Arrernte men and the Catholics denied the Mparntwe Arrernte men a meaningful role, leading to the emergence of a predominantly female-led NMCC in modern days.

572 _{Harmsen, “You Gave Us the Dreaming”, 104.}

573 _{Recently old film footage taken by Fr Tom Dixon in 1953–54 has been rediscovered and converted to DVD.}

Footage from this film show young Arrernte women at Santa Teresa dressed in white wedding frocks standing outside the Church. The Stone Houses, Maya Newell and Mary Flynn, (Funded by the Australian Government with ‘Atyenhenge Atherre’ Aboriginal Corporation).

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The missionaries had expected that conversion to the Catholic belief would

automatically render traditional Arrernte beliefs (‘superstitions’) redundant. But they had not properly understood the fact that Arrernte Law and Catholicism, on a profound spiritual level, can be perceived – and in fact were thus perceived by the Arrerntes – as additional, not mutually excluding belief systems.574

By 1953, the Eastern and MparntweArrernte had experienced colonialism firsthand, including assimilation mitigated by the softer, more charitable hand of the priests, brothers and sisters and many lay missionary workers. The lack of consideration by the missionaries that Altyerre Law offered any competition to the Catholic truth, and indeed that it should be relinquished, did not, however, prevent the Arrernte from moulding a Catholic faith that was inclusive of their

Altyerre beliefs.