Contributor: Laura Rademaker Laura Rademaker is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University. --- Contributor: Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua is professor of political science at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. --- Contributor: April K. Henderson April K. Henderson is senior lecturer and director of the Va‘aomanū Pasifika—Programme in Pacific Studies and Samoan Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

Rademaker’s poignant and sometimes unsettling account of cross-cultural exchange reflects her ability and willingness to go beyond binary descriptions of the missionary-Indigenous encounter. . . . This book provides insight into Australian history, colonialism, mission history, translation, and religion. . . . Rademaker has produced a detailed and nuanced ethnographic account of the Anindilyakwa and missionary encounter. She not only interviewed and interacted with the Anindilyakwa people, but also gathered ethnographic data from current and former missionaries and government representatives. --- Throughout her account, Rademaker shows that Anindilyakwa people—whether they identified as Christian or not—repeatedly refused to allow their language and law to be reduced by translation to the categories that the missionaries introduced. Through this refusal, Anindilyakwa people asserted the ontological primacy of their ways of knowing. In this sense—although Rademaker does not use precisely these terms—this book is a powerful account of Anindilyakwa sovereignty. --- Rademaker’s mature and very well researched analysis of the history of mission in nineteenth-century colonial Australia is both insightful and comprehensive. She is right to position this history within the broader context of missions to the Pacific Islands as Sydney became the hub for these networks. . . . Rademaker has brought this history to life with a sure and confident touch rare in such a young scholar. . . . [She] brings her wide reading and deep knowledge to produce a significant contribution to Aboriginal history and the analysis of mission. This is an important book and a true crosscultural study. --- In this account, Rademaker moves beyond the narrative of the colonizer and the colonized, beyond the idea of victimhood, by highlighting the complexities of real relationships between people and how these relationships shifted during the last century. Despite the book’s Australian focus, its themes are likely to resonate with experiences of mission and colonization in the Pacific Islands more broadly. --- Functioning both as a metaphor and a focus for concrete historical investigation, Rademaker’s interest in translation proves an inspired choice. While delving into the specifics of intercultural contact on Groote Eylandt, this generous interdisciplinary work thoughtfully illuminates wider themes. Readers will learn about the history of missions, midcentury assimilation policy, the phenomenon of settler colonialism and an Indigenous people’s efforts to negotiate its impact – all while appreciating Rademaker’s dazzling use of oral history and glowing prose. --- Laura Rademaker presents here an impressive piece of scholarship—an insightful and nuanced analysis grounded in meticulous research and extensive contextual literature. Clearly a sympathetic interviewer, Rademaker elicited invaluable narratives from mission residents, both Anindilyakwa and ex-missionary, to form the core of this original study. This book makes a substantial interdisciplinary contribution to the history of encounters of Anglican missionaries and Aboriginal people in Australia. --- Grounded in a deep appreciation of the local landscape, social organization, and cultural persistence of the Anindilyakwa people, this work offers a sensitive treatment of the relationships between language, power, and identity. It is a fascinating read, offering a deep history of a particular set of cultural struggles, while simultaneously illuminating a broad range of intellectual questions about language, indigeneity, and colonialism across the Pacific.