For Us Everything Is Life

Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra was an Australian aboriginal pastor, theologian, and church leader, and the author of Father, You Gave Us the Dreaming (Bethel Presbytery, 1988) when this article appeared. He was also the chair of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, an organization working to strengthen and support the aboriginal church and peoples in Australia.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners interviewed Djiniyini Gondarra during a Conference on Aboriginal Theology and the Gospel in Pilawuk, South Australia. The two excerpts are from a sermon delivered by Gondarra, titled "Aboriginal Culture and Christianity." - The Editors

Jim Wallis: What does developing an Australian aboriginal theology mean for you?

Djiniyini Gondarra: It means doing theology by looking at the very important values within our own aboriginal culture and spiritualities. These values are fundamental to our people and to their faith journey.

For a long time now, aboriginal Christian theologians and lay people have been converts to Western Christianity in both its theology and context. It is time that aboriginal theologians see that we have a rich spirituality and that it is into this cultural context that the gospel can bring about some wonderful things.

As such, an aboriginal theology is a protest to Western theology and its use of terms such as "paganism" or "animalistic" to dismiss our culture and spirituality. We need to examine and reflect on our cultural environment: the land, spirituality, ceremonies, customs, arts, and people's stories. Stories are especially important, because storytelling is where one would start to create theology that speaks for the aboriginal people.

Wallis: Land also seems to be a very important component or even a foundation of aboriginal spirituality.

Gondarra: There needs to be a theology of the land that reflects the aboriginal story, our ownership of the land and our spiritual relationship with the land and God. We are people who belong to the land.

Another aspect of the land component of our theology is that many of our people became victims of the European invasion, captives in our own land, as well as being captives of European ideologies. We need to talk about theology of liberation in context of the treatment that we received when the European people came with different values and spirituality from our own.

Wallis: How would aboriginal liberation theology be similar to other liberation theologies in different parts of the world, and how would it be unique?

Gondarra: It depends on how one uses the word "liberation." When you talk about theology of liberation, you are talking about different situations that are being challenged. Such theology may be striving for women's liberation, students' liberation, political liberation, and so on. As soon as one speaks about theology of liberation, people generally put up a barrier, because they think liberation is a terrible word--they associate it with violence.

When I was on a visit to Korea, I met a person working on the theology called Minjung. I asked him the meaning of Minjung and he replied, "It is a people theology." The content of Minjung theology is nothing other than theology of liberation, but by using the term "Minjung theology" (people theology), it is welcomed by the people.

This is the sort of liberation theology that the aboriginal church is developing--a nonviolent theology of the people. It must come from the grassroots, not from the top, despite the leaders' big dreams for revivals or political reformation. It should be developed from and by the people in camps, settlements, and reserves, because they know the struggle, and the pain of drug abuse, alcoholism, and violence. That's where the church should be to find the real liberation our theology should be addressing.

Wallis: How will this theology be different from that which came from Europe?

Gondarra: Aboriginal theology will be more holistic in its approach. The Europeans introduced a type of evangelism to our community that we call "hit and run." We don't need that anymore--it's not the type of evangelism that is effective in our context. I believe the holistic approach was Christ's approach, in that he both cared for people and also empowered people.

Wallis: What is the significance of this kind of conference? What are your hopes for this process here?

Gondarra: I think this conference is going to help people across our continent attain unity, so that we may speak one voice and struggle together. Denominational and ideological barriers exist among aboriginal people. We are going to transcend those barriers to come together as one people struggling for the spirituality that rightly belongs to us.

Some may have lost the common aboriginal spirituality, but there is going to be rebirth. We are striving for a new era where more and more aboriginal people come together from the political and the religious spheres to struggle for justice and for our identity, both in the government and in the church.

Wallis: You are chair of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, a new church organization in Australia. What is the Congress trying to do?

Gondarra: The goal of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress is to break down systems that have victimized our people both in the church and in the government. The Congress is doing that by bringing aboriginal people together. We call ourselves "Uniting" instead of "United" because it is an open, long journey to bring people together from different places, backgrounds, and walks of life. The Congress is a building up of a place where aboriginal people, whether they live in a settlement, urban area, or rural area, will find a home and see that people are concerned.

We also want to empower people, to show the Australian church that this is what the gospel is all about. The gospel goes beyond tapping somebody's shoulder and saying, "Be of good cheer, sleep well, have plenty to eat"; we must get involved in the struggle of our people, in their suffering and pain.

Wallis: What in your own life story has brought you to this role that you now have in the Congress?

Gondarra: I am a traditional aboriginal person, but brought up in a Christian mission. My father was a first convert who was both the leader of a church and a traditional man, one who strongly believed in aboriginal spirituality. Through my upbringing in the mission, I saw the system that can be a threat to our people.

I felt a call to ministry, and God led me overseas to Papua, New Guinea, for my training. There I both could reflect on the situation of my own people and struggle with other Third World people to find theology on a common ground. It was an experience that pulled me on to my current thinking and work with aboriginal spirituality.

After several years of ministry and teaching in New Guinea and Australia, I began to work in the early 1980s with Rev. Charles Harris to form the vision of a Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Congress into a reality. In 1985 I was selected as the first aboriginal moderator of a synod of the Uniting Church in Australia, a breakthrough for aboriginals in the church.

Since the Congress was still young, there were many questions being raised at this same time--questions about whether the Congress would create a sort of apartheid or segregation in the church. Because I was a synod moderator, caring for both black and white congregations, I was able to help a lot of the non-aboriginal congregations in the synod to understand that the Congress was not working for segregation. Rather, the aboriginal churches need the right to control our own ministry and mission, but the non-aboriginal sector of the church also needs to be a part of this.

Wallis: You've spoken about how a peoples' liberation theology is what the aboriginal people need to find their own faith, their own vision, their own destiny. But it is also true that the theology that comes from a given community always has something to say to others. What are the particular gifts that the aboriginal people can share with the rest of Australia and the world?

Gondarra: It is difficult when people say, "We want to learn from you." Aboriginal people have not really had a chance to discover the things that we want to do. The white majority has to give the aboriginal people a chance to find our place within Australian society. We need freedom in the church, government, and society in general.

When we have that freedom, we can turn around and try to help the rest of Australia survive. We know much about the environment within the context of our own spirituality. There are edible things that only aboriginal people know about. We understand the damage that can be done to the environment and natural resources through their technology and science.

There has to be a treaty or an agreement where we have the right to determine our own destiny and the way to go about doing things. I do believe there will be a time when there will be a very strong relationship between aboriginal people and the rest of Australian society.

The gift that we can give the world is the relationship between us and everything in nature. It is something that the white society does not feel and does not understand. For us everything is life, everything is part of us. Everything is nature, every object speaks to us as to who we really are and directs us to the kind of life we really mean to lead.

When an aboriginal person walks around in a city, sometimes they feel lost, because they are walking on top of something which has already been taken away. Walking on concrete is walking on an abstract object that is no longer a part of our spirituality of land and nature.

Wallis: So aboriginal spirituality can help us all be aware of our relationship with Earth and with everything that surrounds us?

Gondarra: Yes. I particularly challenge the people from Third World countries who come to settle in Australia not to get caught up in this industrialization and modernization. Retain your spirituality--it is a part of you, it is your pride.

Holy Living

Now let me share with you a story of Djankawu, a great spirit and the father-mother figure for the Eastern Arnhem Land people. They say that in the dreamtimes Djankawu lived in the flesh with our people. He shared with them the sacred knowledge of ceremonies, songs, dances, and the sacred stories about how things began to form in the universe and in the Earth. He gave the tribes names, a kinship system, and taught them many things. He revealed himself to men as one of them. To the women she revealed herself as a mother figure.

Djankawu taught our people how to live in a life of harmony and in humility. He taught them that all living creatures are their friends and that they must look after them and care for them. Djankawu gave them special knowledge to communicate to these creatures. He gave each individual clan sacred sites. He taught the tribes how to look after the land and the seas. He taught them about holy living and their relationship to the mother Earth.

When Djankawu finished his work in Eastern Arnhem Land, then he took his long journey to the West to continue singing the sacred songs; naming places and the different plants, trees, animals, and the people of different clan groups; and giving them sacred stories, ceremonies, and sacred sites. This is one story of the great ancestral figure. There are many stories of such great spirit beings among our people across Australia.

--Djiniyini Gondarra

Sacred Stories

Australian aborigines have a primal religion, a religion that is prior to those we call the universal religions (such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam). Primal religion is the religion of one tribe or people who realize that other peoples have their own gods and systems.

Aboriginal religion includes a realistic view of life, a humble view of human nature, and a sense of depending on the spirit world. Many churches have looked down on aboriginal religion or many other tribal religions, because the outward forms are different--we do not have church buildings, hymn books, or creeds.

Primal religions like ours depend on sacred stories, rather than scripture and creeds, to teach us about the spirit powers. Such stories relate the great things the spirit powers did in making the world and in giving people the various natural resources and skills needed to sustain life--hunting, fishing, growing crops, and making fire and houses.

These sacred stories that our tribal leaders or our religious leaders told are not fairy tales, but long and often complicated stories containing a people's theology and life story. In them we can find a deep understanding of human nature and of basic human problems.

We know that there are evil things which exist in our ceremonies and religion, but only we who have been born into this culture and religion can judge that properly. We don't like others calling our religion animistic, preliterate, traditional, ethnic, heathen, or savage. This is a kind of spiritual genocide. It is preventing aboriginal Christian leaders from creating our own aboriginal theology.

As Deacon Boniface, an aboriginal Catholic leader said, "When I read the gospels, I read them as an aboriginal. There are many things in the gospel that make me happy to be an aboriginal, because I think we have a good start. We find it easy to see in Christ the great dreaming figure, who more than all others gave us law and ceremony and life centers, and marked out the way we must follow to reach our true country."

--Djiniyini Gondarra