AustLit

'This paper focuses on three women in Protestant missions from the later decades of the nineteenth century to the 1920s, examining the circumstances that made cross-cultural exchanges of faith, learning, family and work on Australian missions distinctive. On sites where missionaries, Indigenous residents, government bureaucrats and neighbouring settlers were all stakeholders with competing interests, the white mission women held out the promise to Indigenous Christian women of creative new life opportunities. They believed, mistakenly, that they could deliver on their promises, despite living in the midst of a society and working within settler governmental regimes that were thriving on Indigenous dispossession. The paper considers fragmentary glimpses of these concerns as they emerged within the writings of white and Indigenous Christian women in Manunka (South Australia), Mapoon on Cape York (Queensland) and East Gippsland (Victoria).' (Author's abstract)