Deborah Lee-Talbot exposes the political agency of Indigenous women in British New Guinea, through a photograph of the Papuan Geua, taken in the 1880s.
In her European 'Mother Hubbard' dress, and necklace made of local shells, Geua's status as a powerful, 'Big Woman' of Papua New Guinea is without question. A politically motivated Indigenous intermediary, she collaborated with the British missionaries and explorers that visited Port Moresby during the late nineteenth century, when the island was known as British New Guinea in the British Empire. Geua' prominence is evidenced by her repeated presence throughout the London Missionary Society's (LMS) archives, photographed by the likes of George Lawes. Her images serve in part as mission propaganda for European audiences, revealing what it was like for religious missionaries in the tropical Pacific region. Yet rereading Geua’s photograph from her perspective challenges the idea of Papuans' evolution as Christians, exposing Geua’s own agency as an Indigenous woman, and her critical role in bridging two distinctive cultures - as well as the unique role colonial photographs play today.
PRESENTER: Deborah Lee-Talbot, doctoral candidate in Australian-Pacific and archival history at Deakin University, Australia.
ART: Indigenous Intermediary Geua in ‘Photographs Mainly of Port Moresby’, George Lawes, (1880s).
IMAGE: 'Geua'.
SOUNDS: Blue Dot Sessions.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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