posted on Jul, 13 2010 @ 07:14 PM
For this post I am firstly reminded of George Robinson, the English missionary who gathered the apparent last "full-blooded" 300 Tasmanians on the
Flinders Island.
Please see
www.youtube.com...
Although he earned a fat salary and survived his charges, were his intentions really genocidal? Culturally perhaps; he subjected them to a harsh
Christian regime. But did he really want them to die?
Recently I read a book called "Fate of free people" (Henry Reynolds, 1995), which documents a petition from the Tasmanian aborigines on the Flinders
Island to the British Crown. Not only were they literate, but they begged to be released from the essentially "mad missionary".
Are there cases where indigenous people survived because of missionaries?
Judging by sites like Crusade Watch
www.crusadewatch.org... and official history, the romantic notions of the Jesuits in the famous movie "The
Mission" seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
The current opinion seems to be that missionaries are bad, and people should be protected from them before all tribal cultures disappear.
I reiterate a question however - if uncontacted tribes are found (usually in Amazonia or New Guinea) who should inform them of their global poverty
status, or their "citizenship"? Surely an ATS member is just as worthy to inform them on current events as a missionary, TV anthropologist or
government/industry minder. Who decides?
[edit on 13-7-2010 by halfoldman]