"Who Do You Say I Am?"
In Search of an Australian Indigenous Theology

Graeme Mundine¹

I would like to acknowledge that we are on Aboriginal Land. I even say that I am a visitor to this place. Hence, I beg permission to speak.

It is the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Ecumenical Commission's mandate to "provide a forum for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to speak and take action on issues of faith, mission and evangelism; of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander spirituality and theology; of social justice and land rights."

We are gathered here to continue the journey in discovering more about our unique theology.

For some 40,000 years or more the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been living in this land now called Australia. They have developed a special connection with the country and a way of life, which is still the longest living culture in the world today.

There are some six hundred different Tribal groups, all with unique languages and ways of living. Therefore it is difficult to look at one indigenous theology for Australia. It involves all these groups looking at their situation and then developing their own theology. There are common themes that do cut across these groups and I'm sure covers other Indigenous groups throughout the world.

Three works have been produced which would help us understand what we are looking for. They are "Aboriginal Spirituality Past, Present and Future" by Anne Pattel-Gray, former executive secretary of the Aboriginal and Islander Commission, our predecessor. This work is based on a gathering like this one, which took place in Victor Harbour, South Australia, in 1990. This work is now out of print but still holds some powerful understandings of our past and our future.

The second is a work done for the World Council of Churches entitled "Indigenous Australia, a Dialogue about the Word becoming Flesh in Aboriginal Churches". This is pamphlet 18 in the Gospel and Cultures collection for the 1996 World Conference on Mission and Evangelism. This booklet is a dialogue, which took place as a contribution to this conference. The participants were all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Christian leaders from around Australia and the Conference was a search for how the Word became flesh in Aboriginal Culture.

The third is a very good publication called "Rainbow Serpent Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology" by the Rainbow Spirit Elders. This work actually puts a process before us on how we can weave our traditions of Aboriginal cultures with the traditions of Christianity. It has been criticised for being just syncretism but is a landmark in at least giving us a process.

The basis for all these works, and I'm positive of others, is the connection to land and the understanding that the Creator God was with us from the beginning of time. Our relationships to each other, to the country, and to the cosmos were put in place at the beginning of time by our Ancient dreaming figures. These figures created the places and then moulded our Law. These figures were the messengers. They were the action figures of something that was bigger than us. Therefore they were the manifestations of Gods' presence in the world prior to 1788. A Covenant was put in place. We were to care for the land that was given to us at the beginning of time. We were to carry out special acts to continue this Covenant with our Creator. These acts were to regenerate life and remind us of our responsibilities to each other and the cosmos.

Let us look at one of the Stories. The Story of the Rainbow Serpent is probably one of the most widely known story throughout the land. Here I use the story as told By Oodgeroo (Kath Walker) of the Stradbroke people.

The Beginning of Life

In the Dreaming all the Earth lay asleep.

Nothing grew. Nothing moved. Everything was quiet and still. The Animals, birds and reptiles lay sleeping under the earth's crust.

Then one day the Rainbow Serpent awoke from her slumber and pushed her way through the earth's crust, moving the stones that lay in her way. When she emerged, she looked about her and traveled over the land going in all directions. She traveled far and wide, and when she grew tired she curled herself into a heap and slept.

Upon the earth the Rainbow Serpent left her winding tracks and the imprint of her sleeping body. When she had traveled all the earth, she returned to the place where she first appeared and called the frogs, 'Come out!' The frogs were very slow to come from below the earth's crust, for their bellies were heavy with water, which they had stored in their sleep. The Rainbow Serpent tickled, and when the frogs laughed, the water ran all over the earth to fill the tracks of the Rainbow Serpent's wanderings - and this is how the lakes and rivers were formed.

Then the grass began to grow, and the trees sprang up, and life began on earth.

All the Animals, birds and reptiles awoke and followed the Rainbow Serpent, the mother of life, across the land. They were happy on earth, and each lived and hunted for food with his own tribe. The Kangaroo, Wallaby and Emu tribes lived on the plains. The reptile tribes lived among the rocks and stones, and the bird tribes flew through the air and lived in the trees.

The Rainbow Serpent made laws that all were asked to obey. 'Those who keep my laws I will reward well. I shall give them a human form. They and their children and their children's children shall roam this earth forever. This shall be their land. Those who kept her laws she turned into human form, and gave each of them his own Totems of the animal, bird or reptile whence they came. Some others were turned to stone, and became mountains and hills, to stand forever and watch over the tribes hunting for food at their feet. So the tribes knew themselves by their own Totems: the kangaroo, the emu, the carpet snake, and many, many more. And in order that none should starve, she ruled that no man should eat of his own Totem, but only of the other Totems. In this way there was food for all.

So the tribes lived together in the land given to them by the Mother of Life, the Rainbow Serpent; and they knew that the land would always be theirs, and that no one should ever take it from them and them from the Land.

The story talks about the beginning of time and how things came into being. It is a story of something bigger than us, which moved over the land and brought life and the Law to our people. It definitely is a story of God the Creator working amongst us. It shows us how we should live and what responsibilities we have to take on.

There are many stories like this which we should share with each other as these stories would continually remind us of our responsibilities to each other, our Creator and the cosmos.

The Coming of Christianity

In 1788, with the coming of the Europeans, things changed. The Europeans did not understand that there were a people here who actually had ownership and responsibilities to this country. They saw things that didn't line up to their western cultural thinking and straight away they labeled them as heathen and something that needed to be destroyed. It also allowed them to feel that these people were not advanced like them and they could treat them as animals or little children. They began to train us in the ways of the white man. This included the Churches, although most recognised that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were human.

The early Christians preached what we already knew, but they could not put into practice their beliefs because of their sense of cultural superiority. However, it must be said that in some areas if it were not for the early missionaries some groups would have disappeared all together because of the evils placed upon them. Their stories have been written down on paper, the Bible. It carried their stories from long ago where God had interacted with their peoples. In fact the story of Abraham roaming in the desert was some 4,000 years old and they couldn't understand that God could be active and alive in this land, way before their own-recorded history.

They tried to enforce on us their culture, which they thought was the only way to the Creator. They began to tell the story of the person named Jesus and showed us pictures of this person who was also so foreign. His message though was not something new and re-affirmed what we already knew from our own experience. It is still amazing that thousands of kilometres away in another part of the world, people of a different culture also knew about "this thing greater than themselves". They called it God; we had other names for it.

The churches knew what they should have been doing yet neglected this because they were caught up in their own culture. Some stood up for us in the early days but couldn't change the mindset of the others for many years to come.

Their story of creation, Genesis, is a good point of connection for us, as we both believe that there is something bigger than ourselves out there which we have relationships with. Following is an adapted version of their story:

In the beginning the Earth was empty and darkness covered everything

God's Spirit hovered over the waters and then God said, 'Let there be light' and light appeared and God was pleased and called it 'Day' and the darkness was called 'Night'.

Then God said, 'Let there be a sky above, and water below. And let the water come together in hollow places, so there be dry ground.' And it was done, and God named the land 'Earth' and the water 'Sea'.

God formed the mountains and the deserts, the islands and the beaches. And God saw this and said, 'This is good.'

God was very pleased. Then God said, 'Let there be green plants and tall trees and swaying grasses and beautiful flowers. And let them all make seeds so there can be new plants when the old ones die.'

Next, God put lights in the sky; the fiery sun for daytime, the sparkling moon and dancing stars for night. Then God filled the water with fish of all shapes and sizes, and made a bright coloured birds to fly in the air and said, 'Let the fish have baby fish and the birds have baby birds, so there can always be new birds and fish when the old ones die.' And so they were and God was pleased.

Now let there be animals, all kind of animals that run and crawl and gallop. And God said, "This is good".

'Let there be people in the world, and let the people be so they are like me.' So God created people. Women and men. And God said to the people, 'Let there be new babies born so there will always be new people in my world when the old people die'. Then God said to the people, 'Take care of my world. It's yours to use. But please be kind to my world'.

God looked at the world, and all the beautiful things in it and said, 'This is very good!'

The Future

The future for ourselves is to find where the Creator has touched our lives like those of the new comers and of course how Christ has transformed our life and brought us to become Christian.

The Church has always known about Inculturation. It may be a fairly new word to its vocabulary but it is like Jesus Christ coming into the world. Jesus became incarnate to the social and cultural conditions with which he lived and Christ must also become incarnate in the social and cultural conditions of those humans he comes in contact with. It is the mission of the Church to bring Christ in a culturally appropriate way.

One of the first big questions in the early Church would have been in the area of Inculturation. Paul, in his outreach to the gentiles, raised the question of circumcision. Was it really needed to be a follower of Christ? Their conclusion of course was no but that showed that the culture of the Jew need not be followed to receive the Good News. It showed that there are things that are basic to the Church and others that are not. It calls us to look at what are the basic things that are needed to be Christian. Surely this has been the one big ecumenical question throughout time. When we find the answer the rest are cultural expressions of this basic belief.