By Odhran O’Brien
S Girola & R Pizzini (eds), Nagoyo: The Life of Don Angelo Confalonieri among the Aborigines of Australia, 1846-1848, Trentino Historical Museum Foundation, Trento: Italy, 2013 (in English).
Between 1846 and 1848, Don Angelo Confalonieri undertook a mission to Aboriginal people at Port Essington, now part of Australia’s Northern Territory, where Britain established the Victoria settlement in 1838. Rome made the Victoria settlement a vicariate in 1845 and placed it under the Diocese of Perth led by Bishop John Brady. In 2016, a commemoration will mark the 170 years that have passed since Confalonieri arrived in Port Essington.
While in Rome during 1845, Brady had convinced Gregory XVI and Vatican officials to make Western Australia a diocese and appoint him its bishop. The proposal was based on Brady’s claim that there were 8,000 European settlers and 2,500,000 Aboriginal people who required his ministry. These figures were fanciful. In January 1846, Bishop Brady returned to Perth from Europe with 28 missionaries, including Sisters of Mercy, Benedictine monks and Holy Ghost Fathers. The missionaries faced difficult circumstances as there were, in reality, only a few hundred Catholics to support them. They nonetheless made a noteworthy contribution to Australia’s religious landscape. The Sisters of Mercy founded schools and the Benedictines established a monastery, both continuing to this day.
The lesser known of Brady’s missionaries is Don Angelo Confalonieri, whose mission to Port Essington was one of a series which Brady planned to establish as an outreach to Indigenous communities. Port Essington had a military garrison and little else. Lord Edward Stanley, British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, had promised financial support to Brady and his missionaries but the bishop had to wait years for it.
While Confalonieri lived there only briefly, these studies by experts in history, anthropology and linguistics demonstrate that his work was far-reaching. In the preface, eminent Catholic historian, Rev Dr Edmund Campion, notes that the 19th century was :an era of great personal generosity” (p 9). The work of Confalonieri with the Aboriginal people is one example of such generosity; New Norcia’s Rosendo Salvado is another.
In the first chapter, Maurizio Dalla Serra provides an overview of Confalonieri’s early life in the Italian province of Trent. The young priest suffered poor health and yet remained determined to overcome these setbacks. Eventually, he was admitted into the missionary college of Propaganda Fide. Pope Gregory XVI and Pius IX encouraged a surge in missionary activity in the 19th century by creating new missionary orders, colleges and territories.
Rolando Pizzini follows, discussing the challenges of Confalonieri’s time in Australia. Access to resources and interaction between colonial authorities decided the fate of many missions. Pizzini emphasises that individual personalities were equally important and he shows that Confalonieri gained both the respect of the Port Essington military officers and an intimate understanding of the Aboriginal people.
Elena Franchi describes how the Victoria settlement was a hybrid between a ‘military colony’ and ‘trade outpost’. Franchi also looks to the broader history of the locality’s Aboriginal people, taking in earlier exploration by Dutch mariners and ongoing visits by Macassar fishermen from Indonesia. Port Essington was abandoned in 1849.
Leading on from Franchi, Stefano Girola provides an insightful study of the Catholic Church’s ministry to Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Girola contends that such missions were complex undertakings with both empowering and disenfranchising outcomes. The aim was to bring the faith to Indigenous peoples but, in the process, the Church also adopted an advocacy role, publicly questioning their treatment by colonial authorities and settlers.
Bruce Birch explores the tangible reminders of Confalonieri’s time at the Victoria settlement. The priest produced phrase books translating into English the language of two local groups (the Iwaidja and Garig people). Nagoyo (Father) is included among the phrases as the name the tribes adopted for Confalonieri. The manuscripts contain important information on matrimonial and other rituals associated with the groups.
The final chapter, also by Elena Franchi, studies Confalonieri’s exchange with the Aboriginal groups from an anthropological point of view. The relationship was by no means one-directional. Confalonieri fulfilled the roles of “catechist, educator, physician and arbitrator in disputes”, becoming a key player in their society. In recent times, such missions have regained the attention of anthropologists. They provide unrepeatable examples of relations between those on the margins of society – missionaries and Indigenous peoples.
The economic, political and social aspects of the British Empire during the 19th century have been thoroughly investigated. However, as Professor Hilary Carey articulates in God’s Empire, Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c1801-1908 (Cambridge, 2011), the British Empire was as much a Christian spiritual empire as it was a political realm. The centrality of religious belief and identity to the empire continues to be revealed through studies such as Nagoyo.
The English edition of Nagoyo can be purchased at the following link.