Place and Displacement: Reading Scriptures with Indigenous Australians

Abstract

Iam a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia in a teaching placement at Nungalinya College, Darwin, which will soon celebrate 40 years of ecumenical ministry with Australia’s Indigenous people. Trained and ordained overseas almost 30 years ago, I am a “displaced” person. My ancestors were boat people of mixed European stock who sought religious freedom in the American Midwest. One migrant ancestor married an American Stolen Generations woman, but we know nothing of her ancestral culture or tribe. In Australia I have married into a borrowed culture and made it my own. That borrowed culture is itself a vital mix in Australia’s fastest growing and most multicultural city; but my recent thinking is most influenced by interactions with the Aboriginal adults who study with me.