Christianity in Australia - Indigenous Australians and Christianity

Indigenous Australians and Christianity

The Christian denominations and European culture have had a significant impact on Indigenous Australians, their religion and their culture. As in many colonial situations the churches both facilitated the loss of Indigenous Australian culture and religion and also facilitated its maintenance. The involvement of Christians in Aboriginal affairs has evolved singnificantly since 1788. Around the year 2000, many Churches and Church organisations officially apologised for past failures to adequately respect indigenous cultures and address the injustices of the dispossession of indigenous people.

Christian missionaries often witnessed to Indigenous people in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. The Presbyterian Church of Australia’s Australian Inland Mission and the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg, Northern Territory being examples. Many missionaries often studied Aboriginal society from an Anthropological perspective. Missionaries have made significant contributions to anthropological and linguistic understanding of Indigenous Australians and aspects of Christian services have been adapted when there is Aboriginal involvement - even masses during Papal visits to Australia will include traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremonies. It was the practice of some Missions to enforce a 'forgetting' of Aboriginal culture. Others, like Fr Kevin McKelson of Broome encouraged aboriginal culture and language while also promoting the merits of western style education in the 1960s.

Prominent Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson, himself raised at a Lutheran mission in Cape York, has written that missions throughout Australia's colonial history "provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation".

In the Torres Strait Islands, the Coming of the Light Festival marks the day the Christian missionaries first arrived on the islands on 1 July 1871 and introduced Christianity to the region. This is a significant festival for Torres Strait Islanders, who are predominantly Christian. Religious and cultural ceremonies are held across Torres Strait and mainland Australia.

Prominent Aboriginal Christians have included Pastor David Unaipon, the first Aboriginal author; Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls, athlete, activist and former Governor of South Australia; Mum (Shirl) Smith, a celebrated Redfern community worker who, assisted by the Sisters of Charity, worked in the courts and organised prison visitations, medical and social assistance for Aborigines, and former Senator Aden Ridgeway, the first Chairman of the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry. The Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, associated with the Uniting Church of Australia, is an organisation developed and managed by Indigenous people to "provide spiritual, social and economic pathways for Australia's First People".

In recent times, Christians like Fr Ted Kennedy of Redfern, Jesuit human rights lawyer Fr Frank Brennan and the Josephite Sisters have been prominent in working for Aboriginal rights and improvements to standards of living.

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council is the peak body representing Indigenous Catholics in Australia and was formed in Cairns in January 1989 at the first National Conference of the Aboriginal and Islander Catholic Councils. In 1992 the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference officially recognised and welcomed it as the national representative and consultative body to the Church on Issues concerning Indigenous Catholics.

The members of the council stand down every three years and a new council is appointed. NATSICC's funding comes in the form of Voluntary contributions from Schools, Parishes and Religious Orders. In addition, Caritas Australia provides ongoing funding.

Encouraged by Pope John Paul II’s words in the Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Oceania NATSICC is determined to continue, as the peak Indigenous Catholic representative body, to actively support and promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in the Catholic Church in Australia.