3 Missionary violence
Marie Christensen’s brutal treatment of a child of Aboriginal descent exposed the iniquities of Australia’s policies towards Indigenous people
In 1896, a girl called Cassey was sent to the reformatory school at Myora Mission in Moreton Bay, Queensland. Cassey – who was described as being about five years old and “half caste” – was a weak child, suffering ill health as well as, in the words of the mission superintendent, being “dull and not in as good spirits as the others”.
She was far from the only child to make such a journey. In late 19th-century Australia, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were forced to live on reserves and missions, where they were segregated from white settler communities. Policies of assimilation enabled the authorities to remove children of Aboriginal descent from their parents and send them to reformatory schools where they were trained to enter white society as domestic servants and farm labourers. All this was done under the guise of ‘protection’. But for Cassey, protection was in short supply.
On 14 September, the mission matron, Marie Christensen, took Cassey to the tidal springs at the bottom of the hill to bathe. When the child refused, Christensen forced her into the water. Budlo Lefu, a First Nations woman who lived on the mission, watched the matron “ducking the child up and down in the sea”. When the matron dragged the child back up the hill, beating her with a stick and kicking her, Budlo “came to stop her and she told me I had nothing to do with it [so] I went away”. Christensen hurried Cassey into the dormitory where she continued the beating. Five days later, Cassey died.
Recording Indigenous voices
The refusal of the attending doctor to issue a medical certificate triggered an inquest – at that time a rare event on the death of an Indigenous person. In another unusual twist, the local justice of the peace, William North, collected testimony from Indigenous women who lived on the mission, committing their voices to the historical record.
Christensen was charged with manslaughter. In return for a guilty plea, the prosecution spoke on her behalf, claiming she was “of imperfect brain development”. She received a suspended sentence, and the Myora Mission (indeed, the whole system) escaped serious scrutiny. The reformatory school was quickly shut down, and Cassey’s peers were moved on. The Myora Mission continued until 1942.
Marie hurried Cassey into the dormitory where she continued the beating. Five days later, Cassey died