Chapter 8. Interpreters of mission

Abstract

Focusing on the histories of interpretation in mission contexts across Australia and the Pacific, this chapter reveals that wherever they operated, missionaries depended on the cooperation of local intermediaries. Interpreters were vital. While this has long been noted in Pacific histories, scholars are only recently discovering similarities in Australia. Recent scholarship is also considering what Indigenous people themselves sought to achieve for their communities through interpreting, beyond resistance to or management of colonisers on their lands. The chapter concludes with three examples of Aboriginal interpreters who shaped the establishment of missions on their Country in various parts of North Australia in the twentieth century. It finds that interpreters upheld their cultural obligations to Country through their linguistic work.