Mapoon Council Chairman Peter Guivarra

Community Council Chairman Peter Guivarra talks about Mapoon country and people

I have a great deal of pride in the achievements of our community. Though only a small community we have responsibility for over 183,000 hectares of DOGIT (Deed Of Grant In Trust) land.

We have a beautiful piece of land, rich in natural and cultural resources. Many visitors come to enjoy this piece of paradise and we are pleased that we can open our country and our culture to these people.

I commend and continue to support all the members of our community. We have a strong commitment to living on our traditional lands and making a future for our children and grandchildren. Our history has been hard at times, but the strength and vision of our elders has ensured that we never lost sight of our connection to this country. I would like to thank them for this.

Our community is fortunate to have a team of dedicated, committed and enthusiastic staff who have listened carefully to the Council and work very hard to bring our dreams to fruition.

The history of the people of Mapoon since contact with European culture, like most other indigenous people in this country, has not been a happy one. We have struggled hard to maintain association with our traditional lands and culture. Now we can see the possibilities of a better life for ourselves, our children and their children. It is important to remember the struggles of those who came before that have enabled us to live here in this beautiful place now.

The original Mapoon Mission Church dismantled after the forced removal of Mapoon people in 1963

The Mapoon community is situated on the traditional lands of the Tjungundji people. Mapoon was established as the Batavia River Mission on Cullen Point in 1891 by Moravian Missionaries on behalf of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. Within a few years the mission became known as Mapoon, a Tjungdundji word meaning 'place where people fight on the sand-hills'.

In 1901, the Mission had been designated an industrial school under the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act and children of 'mixed-descent' were removed from their families in places such as Burketown, Croydon and Normanton to be raised in dormitories in Mapoon. Many of those removed people were also 'adopted' by the traditional owners to give them a safe home in traditional country which was foreign to them.

To assist the missionaries to train the Aboriginal people, South Sea Island people were brought in to the mission from Samoa, the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) and the Solomon Islands. Some of their descendants, along with descendants of Aboriginal people removed from the Gulf region, live in Mapoon today.

Over the 72 years that Mapoon mission operated, the people were involved in a variety of industries including: beche-de-mer fishing, sandalwood-getting, copra production, beef cattle production and crocodile shooting. Some of the men worked in the Torres Strait pearling industry while others were employed on Peninsula cattle stations.

During the Second World War some of the men served in the defence forces while Mapoon people also helped in the rescue of allied aircrews and supported the war effort through fund-raising and work with the Civil Constructional Corps.

Tjungundji elder Alma Day

At a conference of Presbyterian Church and Queensland Government officials held at Mapoon in April 1954 a policy decision was made to close Mapoon and evacuate the people to Weipa or other stations, or to 'assimilate those ready for exemption [from the Protection Act] into the Australian way of life elsewhere'. The residents were not consulted about the decision but merely told that the closure had been decided. The population of Mapoon in 1954 was 285.

By 1954 the Mapoon Aboriginal reserve extended from the Jardine River in the north to the Mission River in the south, but this was soon to change with the discovery of bauxite in the region. The Comalco special bauxite mining lease was granted over large areas of the Mapoon Reserve in 1958. Later, the Alcan mining lease was granted over other sections of the Mapoon Reserve in 1965. The Director of Native Affairs continued to push for Mapoon's closure as he argued it was costing too much money to support.

The government commenced building a replacement community at Hidden Valley near Bamaga in 1961 and by mid-1962 nearly 100 people had moved to the community which became known as New Mapoon. During this time many traditional owners said they did not want to move to New Mapoon and kept lobbying Presbyterian and government officials to allow them to remain in their homeland.

On 14 November 1963, the Officer-in-Charge of Police at Thursday Island received official instructions from the Director of Native Affairs, Pat Killoran, to remove twenty-three Aboriginal residents from Mapoon to Bamaga.

Last house standing from the early days

The following day the Island Industries Board launch M.V. Gelam sailed into Port Musgrave with two Queensland Police Force officers, Noel Hughes and Jim O'Shea and several Saibai Islander police. Their instructions were to 'effect the transfer of the families' listed in the removal order and to 'commence demolition of the vacated shanties on the Reserve'. The leaders of the traditional owners were removed and taken to Red Island Point (now Seisia) to be settled at New Mapoon.

Some of the houses at Mapoon were burnt to the ground to prevent their return.

Within six months all of the remaining seventy-one residents had left Mapoon. Many of the mission buildings, including the church, were demolished during 1964 by an Islander work party sent down by the Director of Native Affairs.

After the 1964 closure, former residents led by traditional people such as Jean Jimmy and Hazel Miller continued to lobby for the reopening of their community. In 1974 several families led by Jerry and Ina Hudson returned and ten years later the Marpuna Community Aboriginal Corporation was established. In April 1989 a Deed Of Grant In Trust (DOGIT) for 'Aboriginal Reserve Purposes' under the Land Act was handed over to the Mapoon people by the Queensland Government.

It took another 11 years before the Mapoon community received recognition when Mapoon received their formal Council status. The election on 25 March 2000 reflected a commitment by the residents not to give up hope in the face of adversity. It showed how a people's spiritual and cultural connection to a particular area of land is stronger than political decree.

*Historical facts are based on Geoff Wharton's BA Honours thesis: "The Day they burned Mapoon: a study of the closure of a Queensland Presbyterian Mission", University of Queensland, 1996