John Harris (21)

This is a remarkable book, telling a tale that even at the end of the the second decade of the third millennium few are bold enough to tell. The Indigenous people of Australia were treated as nothingness. The missionary endeavour was, and Harris' case is largely irrefutable, somewhat better in some quarters than that of colonizing opportunists - pastoralists, miners, sealers, police. But missionaries too were too often blinded by confusion of gospel and Europeanization. Despite this Christianity took root and, with many false starts and chicanes and errors, became a major narrative in the history of Australian Indigenous. Harris and I share the belief that this is a good thing - and share the belief, too, that much of Indigenous spiritual and philosophical and cultural belief and practice should have been and could have been but was not left alone in the process of adopting a Palestinian, Hebrew, story of redemption. Hindsight is wonderful, but only, Harris hints, if we learn from it. To learn from the story of the Australian Indigenous encounter with the Middle Eastern story of Jesus is to realize that the Australian Indigenous culture is deeply profound, to respond by entrusting the proclamation of a Crucified Messiah to Indigenous themselves, in their languages, in their gestures, in their rites of choice.

With that in mind we have to admit that Harris tale is a story of woe. Only in the final stanza does hope break through. That has been the story of the Australian Indigenous encounter with Christianity, and Harris pulls no punches. It is what it is.

Five stars. The book is marred by lazy editing: many repetitions of facts and accounts should have been spotted by the publishers but were not. These appear throughout the book - an example amongst many is the affirmation of Giese that "I only want to help you and all the other Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory" (842, repeated 848) Yet Harris' tale is so powerful and his authorial integrity so great that in the end it is his work, not the errors of his publishers, that has the final word. Still: Albatross should have done better for such a fine piece of work.… (meer)