Pearson’s Mission: Revisiting Noel Pearson’s Revisionist History of Hope Vale

In 2000, Noel Pearson drew on his experiences of growing up on the Hope Vale, the Guugu Yimidhirr–speaking community that emerged from the Cape Bedford mission in the south east of Cape York, to write a revisionist history of the region. Indigenous communities were “strong, if bruised” in the wake of colonisation, he argued, but had descended into chaos since the 1970s because alcohol and welfare benefits had undermined the formerly resilient Aboriginal norms of “responsibility”. This paper offers a critical review of this politically potent account of the past, drawing on alternative oral histories, ethnographies and ethnohistories of Hope Vale, including Pearson’s own honours thesis (1986). Without challenging this sketch of his own experience, nor the sincerity of his nostalgia for the mission of his youth, I argue that Pearson’s more recent retellings are selective. In particular, his revisionist history overlooks evidence of drug abuse in the early colonial period and overstates both Guugu Yimidhirr agency in the process of missionisation and the uniformity and representativeness of the community that developed at Cape Bedford. Finally, I offer some possible personal, philosophical and political explanations for Pearson’s shifting approach to the past.     

零和世界、合作世界,抑或杂乱世界?——全球性挑战、供选择的未来,以及中美两国的关系

应邀参加这次美国研究所成立30周年的纪念仪式并发表讲话,我感到非常荣幸。31年前,我曾经和李慎之先生聊到过他想要创建美国研究所的想法,因此对这个由他发起创办的重要机构,我有着一种格外的亲切感。更巧的是,我得以在1981年美国研究所成立的时候最先访问中国。所以,30周年纪念对我个人而言,意义尤