LEARNING FROM YAPA
(Paper prepared by Ivan Jordan in association with Ed Kingston ABMS February 2000)
Amongst the expressions of appreciation for the Warlpiri presentation of the One Family Purlapa
at the Baptist World Alliance in Melbourne in January 2000 was a letter containing the following; “To my sisters and brothers of the Warlpiri people, I want to thank you for your moving gift of love to white Australians and a beautiful depiction of God’s word to us that we are one in Christ Jesus regardless of our differences. Bless you for ministering to us in this open, giving and vulnerable way.”
Baptists have been committed to giving to Indigenous Australians. It may well be said however that we, non-indigenous Baptists, have not been as ready to receive. I believe that they have much to give us and consequently outline some of my thoughts on this.
Various people have written concerning the proposed advantages of the wider Australian community in general, and the Australian community of faith in particular, experiencing considerable benefit from learning from indigenous Australians. The Catholic writer, Eugene Stockton, has done this quite well in his book “The Aboriginal Gift - Spirituality For a Nation.” He uses the Pauline metaphor of branches being grafted into the old stock(Romans 11). Stockton suggests that there is much to be gained from incorporating aspects of indigenous life, but in particular he emphasises the attitude of dadirri, the attitude eloquently explained to an International Liturgy Assembly in Hobart, January 1988 by Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr from Daly River. “Many Australians understand that aboriginal people have a special respect for nature. The identity we have with the land is sacred and unique. Many people are beginning to understand this more. Also there are many Australians who appreciate that Aboriginal people have a very strong sense of community. All persons matter. All of us belong. And there are many more Australians now who understand that we are people who celebrate together. What I want to talk about today is another special quality of my people. I believe that it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called dadirri.” She defines dadirri as ‘an inner deep listening and quiet awareness’, and ‘the quiet stillness and waiting.’ 1 In close association with dadirri, Stanner underlines what he terms the ‘metaphysical gift’ of the Aboriginal. He defines this as “the ability to transcend oneself, to make acts of imagination so that one can stand ‘outside’ or ‘away from’ oneself, and turn the universe, oneself and one’s fellows into objects of contemplation.”2 “With the metaphysic goes a mood and spirit, which I can only call a spirit of ‘ascent’; neither despair nor resignation, optimism nor pessimism, quietism nor indifference.” 3
Strehlow comments “In my own view, the great and specifically Australian contribution to religious thought has been the unquestioning conviction that there is no division between Time and Eternity.”4
My experience has almost exclusively been with the Warlpiri people, and although at times I may make references to the wider indigenous scene, the validity of my observations must primarily rest on my several years association with the Warlpiri people, and my ability to correctly assess these matters. This is made more difficult as it is not usually possible to simply ask Aboriginal people to describe their attitudes to particular matters, in that they do not naturally analyse things as do Westerners . Mostly one must just quietly observe. As Miriam Rose Ungunmerr says “In our Aboriginal way, we learn to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good useful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn - not by asking questions. We learn by watching and listening, waiting and then acting.”5
1. There are other valid ways of understanding our relationship with God
Soon after commencing ministry with the Warlpiri people, I was invited to attend a traditional corroboree. With some measure of discomfort, I sat cross legged on the hard, gravelly ground, envious of Maurice Jupurrula and the ease with which he and the ground came together. From time to time Jupurrula explained what the various dancers were and something of the meaning of what was happening. After watching and listening for a while, I asked Maurice what were the words of the song currently being sung. He explained the basic meaning of the song, but when I asked him about the exact words and what each meant I was totally unprepared for his answer and the implications. He replied that the words were "really old Warlpiri", no longer used. I began to understand that my white fella thinking which wanted to analyse, understand and define by means of words, didn't really fit here. That was the way that I had done most of my learning, particularly in Bible and Theological College. This was different. As different and as awkward for me as the difference between sitting on a chair and sitting cross-legged on the hard gravelly ground. Here, with little thought about words and theories and arguments, people were involved in an event. This was about the world as the people saw and understood it, and about accepting it and relating to it in a meaningful way. I began to see that learning in this culture was very different from the learning which had been my experience. I observed people who obviously had a strong, life-encompassing relationship with God. Yet they were people who had not been able to experience many of the ‘normal’ means of experiencing and better understanding God.
I began to realise that the God who becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ is the God who wants to encounter different people in different ways. In fact incarnation demands this. The early church, after much angst, determined that it was not necessary for Gentiles to encounter God as did the Jews. In recent times many Aussie Christians have been enthralled by discovering some of the unique ways Warlpiri Christians encounter God. There is however no requirement for non-indigenous Christians to encounter God in the same ways. But together, as God’s family in this land, we can learn from each other and together develop authentic Australian expressions of our Christian faith. Stockton suggests that “Aboriginal influence on mainstream spirituality will be in the form of a challenge to reexamine and reemphasise our own traditions, so as to make them come alive in forms fitting to our time and place.”
2. Faith enables a perpetual union with The Eternal in time
Closely associated with this participatory approach to life is what we might call an existential approach to life. T.G.H. Strehlow comments,
“before the invasion of his home country by the Europeans, the Central Australian totemite certainly believed that he “possessed the eternal” in his own lifetime. If, as has been stated by theologians, it is the Christian ideal that “we are to think, will and act like Him”, then the aboriginal totemite believed that he could readily achieve this ideal relationship with his personal totemic ancestor. The second soul that gave him his true personality was a part of the living supernatural being whose totemic appellation he bore. Throughout his life he regarded himself as being in perpetual union with the world of Eternity, and hence felt no need of waiting for a future union with a supernatural being in a life after death. Somewhat paradoxically to our European way of thinking, but perfectly naturally in the Central Australian world view, it was in the present, in the limitations of evanescent Time, that a man lived in union with Eternity.”
There is little doubt that much of this existential approach continues, particularly in the Christian corroborees, but also in other aspects of faith. God’s people are involved with God in what God is doing, in much the same way as traditional Warlpiris have always understood themselves as continually cooperating with the dream time beings in sustaining the order. From our Aboriginal brothers and sisters we can realise afresh that as we are involved in incarnation, reconciliation and love we are not simply doing what is expected of us and obeying God’s rules, but we are in fact participating with God as he continues to give himself to his creation. If we could begin to understand our encounter with God in this world today as a continual encounter with the eternal, maybe we would have far less problems and disputations about such matters as baptism and conversion, the Lord’s Supper etc. It can well be argued that many of these misunderstandings result from our understanding everything from our linear time perspective.
Living in union with the Eternal, results in a quiet confidence in God. I don’t think that I have ever heard my Warlpiri friends, in difficult times, question either God’s existence or his dealings with them. As one of the key Christians at Yuendumu, Uni Nampijinpa, often says at such times, “Wapirra (God)is Wapirra!”
3. Faith is doing and participating
For the Warlpiri people, faith is not primarily something to be systematised, formulated, explained, or even sung about. This is so in spite of the fact that singing plays a very important part in church life and Christian expression. The correctness or otherwise of the theology of songs sung does not appear to be of great concern. Nor is faith something about which Christians have disputes. Because of their world view and spirituality, they do not attempt to systematise and formulate their beliefs. This changes the Christian’s approach to their faith. Faith is what you do.
In traditional Warlpiri ceremonial and religious life virtually every person is involved. It has been said that for Aboriginal people the Western adage ‘I think, therefore I am,’ is replaced by the adage ‘I participate, therefore I am.’ This compares starkly with the form of Christianity initially introduced to Aboriginal people, mostly a form which determined that the majority of those involved be involved passively rather than actively. However the traditional attitude to religion remains, and as the form of Christianity has gradually become more indigenous, the degree of passivity has rapidly decreased. This is seen in Christian corroborees, in the use of the kinship structure as the basis of ministry, and in the very popular singalongs which are a feature of church life on most Aboriginal communities. The Aboriginal attitude here is the same as has characterised most oral communication peoples, and particularly people for whom story telling is a vital element in communication, as it clearly was for Jesus of Nazareth. In his book Thinking in Story - Preaching In a Post-literate Age Richard Jensen, in detailing the value of story-telling today, in what he terms a ‘post-literate age, says, ‘ The ancient listener or reader encountered the text, not by having it explained, but by entering its world. The goal of the storyteller is that the listener participates in the world of the story.’
That is the Warlpiri approach to story, and we can well learn from it, particularly as we engage God’s story.
4. The bottom line is relationships
Fundamentally, according to Jesus, Christian knowledge is only of value if it contributes to our love for God and love for other people. Relationships are the bottom line for Warlpiri people. So much of what happens and the decisions that are made are intended to ensure that right relationships continue - with people and with the world around them. Consequently this is carried over into matters of Christian faith. Not infrequently before a person takes part in a church meeting, they first ensure that their relationship with the others is right by apologising for some misdemeanour which has recently occurred.
This relational approach is further seen in that their approach to spirituality is one of
maintaining, deepening or extending relationships rather than an acquisitive goal orientated, or
quantitative approach. We who have been involved in assisting the church in training, and in ministry in the church in general, have had to come to grips with the reality that people attend meetings, not primarily to learn, but to participate. In deciding whether to attend a combined churches training camp, people often ask, ‘Who will be coming from .. ?’ Who you learn with can be as important as what you learn, or can make what you learn of far greater value. Stockton comments, “Knowledge itself is relational: confronting the Western ideal of objective public knowledge is the Aboriginal question, ‘Who has the right to know this?’ ‘Who owns the story?’
Consequently it is very apparent that in teaching and interpreting scripture, it is vitally important that this be in relational rather than propositional terms. Jesus, in the culture in which he taught, also used mostly relational terminology. Paul, in writing to people whose outlook was determined by Greek philosophy and thinking, used mostly propositional terminology which must be reinterpreted to make sense for Warlpiri people, and probably so for most other Australians.
In our many years of working with the Warlpiris, I have not experienced divisions and splits in our Aboriginal Baptist Churches, and I think that this is because the bottom line is being right relationally rather than being right legally, or doctrinally (Mark 12:28-31, Romans 13:8ff).
5. People are part of the created universe
Aboriginal people know nothing of religion that is purely spiritual. Traditionally it is in and through the world around them that they interact with ultimate reality. Although this has not always been adequately emphasised, the basic Christian story also stresses that people are fundamentally related to and part of the rest of creation and that it is through the created world that much of God’s interaction with people takes place. Further our relationship to the created world around us is a key ingredient in our relationship with God, and the future of people and that of the created world are indivisibly bound up together.
Clearly the Aboriginal members of God’s family can help us to better understand that to adequately relate to God we must learn to relate in a better way to the land in which we live, whether this be in the outback or the city and suburbia. We don’t need to travel to Israel to encounter God, nor do we need to go on pretending that we are in Europe or America. We need to learn to encounter God and cooperate with him in our land of Australia.
6. Faith encompasses all of life
Most missionaries in the early days of encounter with Indigenous Australians, took it on themselves to make judgments concerning what aspects, if any, of traditional aboriginal society were acceptable and what aspects should be rejected. In most cases the forbidden list included all traditional ceremonies or all but what has sometimes been called the ‘fun corroborees.’ At Hermannsburg it appeared that this approach worked, until, after many years, it was discovered that the important ceremonies had continued ‘away from white presence.’ Probably at the back of the white thinking here was the all too common idea of separation of the sacred and the secular. This approach naturally failed because for the indigenous people life is a whole. There was no aspect of everyday life which the sacred didn’t impinge upon in some way or other, and indeed the ordinary everyday life could never continue without the sacred or religious. There is nothing physical that doesn’t have vital spiritual connections.
Fortunately this traditional thinking continues today in the outlook of the indigenous people of Central Australia. There is nothing of ordinary everyday life that they consider too mundane or ordinary to be of concern to God.
7. People are simultaneously autonomous and dependent
Although from time to time there are heartwarming exceptions, our Western society is increasingly displaying less of an ability to accept or honour obligations to others. Individualism abounds. Advertisements continually remind us that we as individuals are what really matter. Reluctantly we are forced to agree that these attitudes often prevail in the thinking of many Christians and in many of the expressions of their Christianity.
These Western attitudes are certainly having an influence even in traditional Aboriginal society, but there are still considerable differences and much we can learn, particularly in a stronger sense of obligation. Concerning this Paul Albrecht comments;
“Some people are of the mistaken opinion that Aborigines share everything with each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. What Aborigines give and receive from each other is determined by the kinship system, not by personal choice. That is why no Aboriginal language that I know has a word for “please” or “thank you”. No one gave by choice, so there was no need to say a thank you, because no one was doing a favour. Nor did you ask for a favour, so there was no need for please.”
It may well be said that we need to replace our individualism and selfishness with generosity, but a better ability to see the world around us, and others of the community of faith, in terms of our obligations would certainly be a step in the right direction.
In terms of autonomy and dependence, I believe there is also much to learn. The traditional thinking of autonomy is very evident in the indigenous Baptist Churches. For several years Jerry Jangala was Church Advisor the Aboriginal Baptist Churches in Central Australia. Although having exceptionally high church and community approval, and having been enthusiastically appointed to this position by the churches, when Jerry visited the churches he presumed nothing. He was always happy to sit quietly and wait until asked to minister. Weather permitting, the churches meet at Easter each year at one of the communities to celebrate. Great care is taken to ensure that the local church is ‘running the show’, although visitors may well be asked to assist, and visitors are certainly expected to participate in various forms of ministry. The Baptist Churches of Central Australia belong together in a loosely structured organisation called the Yapaku Association. This body is also part of the Aboriginal and Islander Baptist Council which links together all Baptist Aboriginal groups. The Yapaku people are most happy to participate in AIBCA, but in their minds there are, within AIBCA, boundaries of autonomy. In all the above examples given, autonomy is based on relationships and not a result of constitutions and legalism.
The other side of the coin is that dependence, again because it is viewed relationally, is endorsed enthusiastically. Churches go to extraordinary lengths, driving hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, often on wet roads, to meet with other Christians, such as at Easter time. Over seventy people (probably the highest per capita number per church) from the Yuendumu Church attended the Baptist World Alliance Congress in Melbourne, and others were unable to attend due to transport not being available. I believe that the attitude of obligation is central here.
Associated with this dynamic balance between autonomy and dependence is a great capacity to compromise, or to reach a consensus, without losing face. Further, although there may today be rare exceptions, when the compromise is reached that is the end of the matter. Coming from a relational approach the good of the whole is what matters and the compromise is supported. This does not mean that there is no place for individuals in the group, for within the group there is considerable variety and at times striking individualism. But this is an individualism that is supported by, and in turn supports, the group
In the traditional society of the indigenous people of Central Australia, there is a balance between autonomy and dependence, which seems to work extremely well. There is autonomy in regard to various groupings, including the tribe, sub groupings within the tribe, the clan and the totemic group, men and women, and clearly defined boundaries of country. At the same time there is a very definite sense of dependence and obligation which results in varying levels of support which are expected to be expressed across these boundaries. This sense of dependence is very strong because it is approached from a sense of relationship rather than a sense of what is right and wrong. To look at this slightly differently, the thinking here is said to be pattern thinking rather than triangle thinking.
8. All Believers participate
My personal thinking is that there is another area in which we Baptists, as distinct from the wider Australian Christian community, can learn from the indigenous Baptists of Central Australia. Firstly, we can learn or realise afresh, the importance of what we have often emphasised as the ‘priesthood of all believers.’ When visiting The Centre in 1999, the then President of the Baptists of Australia, John Edmondstone, participated in a church service at Yuendumu which included an infant dedication and baptisms. A considerable number of the congregation ministered in different ways in that service because the basis for ministry was kinship rather than appointed ministers. John commented that what he had seen was a great example of the priesthood of all believers and that many of our non-indigenous Baptist churches could learn from it.
1 M.-R Ungunmerr-Baumann Compass Theology Review, no. 1-2, 1988,pp 9-11
2 W.E.H. Stanner White Man Got No Dreaming ANU Press Canberra, 1979, p 31
3. ibid, p 35
4 T.G.H. Strehlow ‘Geography and totemic landscape in Central Australia: a functional study’’ in Australian Aboriginal Anthropology; Modern Studies in the Social Anthropology of Australian Aborigines, R.M. Berndt (ed), University of Western Australia Press, Perth. 1970 p 132
5 M.-R Ungunmerr-Baumann Compass Theology Review, no. 1-2, 1988,pp 9-11