DrBronwyn Shepherd

This project investigates the key involvement of two Aboriginal women—Rosie and Guritjaluk—who were among the first missionaries at the Milingimbi Methodist Mission, established in 1923 in northeast Arnhem Land. While their names and experiences feature in an ad hoc way in mission archives, their contributions remain largely overlooked in historical narratives of Australian religious life. This project seeks to contextualise their contributions by tracing their earlier associations with other Missions —specifically the Moravian-Presbyterian Mapoon Mission and the Goulburn Island Methodist Mission— and examining how their experiences may have shaped the early years of the Milingimbi Mission. In undertaking this research, I will also contribute to new methodological approaches in making visible the archived Indigenous experiences which have been developed by historians working on Indigenous biography, by re-focusing these new approaches in the missionary archive. This project was prompted by conversations with Yolŋu families during my doctoral fieldwork, where questions were raised about these two women —questions that reflected Australian Religious History Fellowship Page 4 of 20 a deeper community interest in their lives and legacies, yet could not be adequately answered by a reading alone of the records produced at the Milingimbi Mission. These unresolved questions have formed the basis for this new project.