Corporal Punishment and Moral Reform at Hermannsburg Mission

Abstract

This paper investigates the image of the ‘beating missionary’ in the context of Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia during the Strehlow era (1894–1922). The Lutherans’ practice of corporal punishment in response to the perceived misbehaviours of Aboriginal men, women and children at the station offers important insights into the mission’s patriarchal system of governance and its associated pedagogical philosophy. As a gendered practice, it highlights the importance of sexuality to the Lutherans’ aim of proselytisation and raises questions about the effects of mission life on Aboriginal women and girls, who became special targets of the missionaries’ beatings. At times, this seems to have reinforced indigenous male violence towards women and thus perpetuated the subordination of Aboriginal women in the cross-cultural setting of the mission.This article has been peer-reviewed.

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