Subordination, invisibility and chosen work: Missionary nuns and Australian Aborigines, c.1900-1949

It can be said, with some degree of accuracy, that the conversion of the na tive peoples of Australia was one of the last missionary projects to engage any of the Christian churches in the age of imperial and colonial expansio n. Yet the Catholic church in particular was slow to establish or fund ongo ing missions to the Australian Aborigines. Native mission work was perceive d by the local hierarchy to be a worthwhile but demanding activity which di verted attention from the central business of ministering to the European p opulation which burgeoned in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Ne vertheless, individual women and men continued to be drawn into religious l ife to pursue a mission vocation which, in the first half of the twentieth century, was relegated to continental European orders, lay people and congr egations of religious women, commonly referred to as 'nuns'.(1) These women included the Kimberley Sisters of St John of God (SJD) in the north-west, the Daughters of Our Lady of die Sacred Heart (OLSH) in the Northern Territ ory, Torres Strait and adjoining islands, and, in Queensland, the Francisca n Missionaries of Mary (FMM)(2) and the small group which is the focus of t his study, the Sisters of Our Lady Help of Christians (OLHC).(3) This article seeks to ascribe the historical instability which characterise d female missionary congregations to their financial, administrative, and r eligious subordination. Such groups were often poor and small in numbers an d depended on local bishops, who burdened them with non-missionary work, fo r their continued existence. Because they were constrained within multiple layers of church and state authority, the social welfare work undertaken by missionary Sisters was rendered both invisible and dispensable. This refle cts the low status of religious women engaged as missionaries, and, ultimat ely, the Aboriginal people among whom they worked.