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This article takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding Aboriginal rock art artists, drawing together insights from the disciplines of archaeology and biography, as well as from Indigenous knowledge-holders, in order to explore the life and work of a relatively unknown rock painter from western Arnhem Land in Australia: Narlim (born c. 1909). His rock art at Warlkarr (Hawk Dreaming) in Kakadu National Park stands as subtle but powerful testament to his life, his family and unbroken connections to Country. Narlim's art reveals the ways he creatively engaged with new knowledges and skills introduced by the newcomers to his Country, even as he asserted the enduring traditions and ongoing sovereignty of his people. By reading rock art as a historical source alongside other biographical material, in partnership with Traditional Owners of today, we offer a fresh and holistic approach to better understanding rock art.

Polygamy was a vexed question for missionaries in the Northern Territory ofAustralia. In the mid twentieth century, Christian missions of various denomina-tions worked with the Australian Commonwealth Government to achieve a policyof assimilating Aboriginal people into white Australian culture. Yet there was littleconsensus as to how this assimilation policy could or should be applied to Aborigi-nal marriages. This article demonstrates that the issue of polygamy exposed divi-sions between church and state as well as among Christian denominations overtheir understandings of marriage. These differences stemmed from differing spiri-tual visions of assimilation in Australia. The conflicts over marriage in the North-ern Territory, therefore, reveal that assimilation, and settler-colonialism morebroadly, operated on a religious plane as Aboriginal people, missionaries, andbureaucrats engaged in a spiritual contest over what represented a legitimate andacceptable marriage in that land.

Historians and anthropologists have increasingly argued that the conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity occurred as they wove the new faith into their traditions. Yet this finding risks overshadowing how Indigenous peoples themselves understood the history of Christianity in their societies. This article, a case study of the Tiwi of North Australia, is illustrative in that it uses Tiwi oral histories of the ‘conversion’ of a priest in order to invert assumptions about inculturation and conversion. They insist that they did not accommodate the new faith but that the Catholic Church itself converted in embracing them. Their history suggests that conversion can occur as communities change in the act of incorporating new peoples.

The survival of the Anindilyakwa language of Groote Eylandt on its encounter with English is a story of Aboriginal people’s adaptability and perseverance in the face of alternate visions for their island. When the Church Missionary Society arrived and, with Anindilyakwa people, established the Angurugu mission, an ongoing tension began over which language would be the language of the land: English or Anindilyakwa? This article argues that, since that time, Anindilyakwa people have used strategies of both accommodation and strategic resistance to maintain the strength of their language, compelling even missionaries and government to adapt to Anindilyakwa interests. Australia’s language histories such as this have implications for historians as they consider whose languages they listen to and remember. For historians, part of the ongoing process of reconciliation will be using Aboriginal languages as well as acknowledging and incorporating the stories of Australia’s languages in their work.

This article will consider how single missionary women of the Church Missionary Society in Arnhem Land in the early twentieth century established themselves as mothers of Aboriginal people. It opens with a discussion of how fears of imperial decline shaped expectations of motherhood. British women were to ensure the future of 'the race' through motherhood. It then discusses the evangelical belief in children's need for special attention with regards to the widespread understanding of Australian Aborigines as a 'child race'. Finally, the article looks at contemporary discourses of adoption. The article concludes that missionary work presented single women with an opportunity to express maternal care according to white, evangelical values. In their attempts to fulfil the role of the caring, Christian mother, however, the single women delegitimised Aboriginal motherhood. Despite good intentions, missionaries established their alternative family at the expense of Aboriginal families.