| Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission Subjects: Language in missionary work -- Australia -- Groote Eylandt (N.T.); Missions -- Linguistic work -- Australia -- Groote Eylandt (N.T.); Aboriginal Australians -- Missions -- Australia -- Groote Eylandt (N.T.); Church Missionary Society -- Australia -- Groot; Found in Translation is a rich account of language and shifting cross-cultural relations on a Christian mission in northern Australia during the mid-twentieth century. It explores how translation shaped interactions between missionaries and the Anindilyakwa-speaking people of the Groote Eylandt archipelago and how each group used language to influence, evade, or engage with the other in a series of selective "mistranslations." In particular, this work traces the Angurugu mission from its establishment by the Church Missionary Society in 1943, through Australia's era of assimilation policy in the 1950s and 1960s, to the introduction of a self-determination policy and bilingual education in 1973. While translation has typically been an instrument of colonization, this book shows that the ambiguities it creates have given Indigenous people opportunities to reinterpret colonization's position in their lives. Laura Rademaker is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University. |