Isobel Schenk
Australian missionary (1898-1980)
Isobel May "Mysie" Schenk, BEM (née Johnston; 10 January 1898 – 6 October 1980) was a Christian missionary who worked for many years alongside her husband, Rev. Rodolphe Samuel Schenk (1888–1969), at the Mount Margaret Mission in Western Australia. Rev. Schenk established the mission in 1921, under the auspices of the Aboriginal Inland Mission (later the United Aborigines Mission (UAM)).
She was born in Prahran, Victoria in 1898 to William Johnston and Mary Marcella McKay Johnston. She was a typist when she met Rodolphe Schenk in Melbourne, where they married. She later "taught crafts to the women" on the mission. The mission was made a central 'rationing station' and was visited by anthropologists and researchers including A. P. Elkin, Phyllis Kaberry, Joseph Birdsell and Norman Tindale.
Along with the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, these researchers engaged in the assimilation debates of the day. Rev.
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This entry incorporates text from “Isobel Schenk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.