Australian Aboriginal Catholic Women Seek Wholeness: Hearts Are Still Burning

Abstract

This article is both a celebration of the changes in the Catholic church since 1986 and is critical of the oppression that still exists concerning Australian Indigenous Peoples. The material comes from field research, undertaken when I stayed with the East Arrernte at Santa Teresa mission outside Alice Springs, and the Tiwi Islanders near Darwin. I have selected this material specifically because both these communities are Indigenous Catholic and the Santa Teresa Community partook in Pope John Paul II's visit in 1986. The Aboriginal Santa Teresa women have a deep love for their “spiritual father” as they call the Pope, but are not forgetful of the abuse the church has put them through, and the church is making a sincere effort in this community to rectify spiritual ontological, cultural and theological oppression. In the Tiwi Islands community the church is not quite as forthcoming in dealing with oppression, particularly theological. The women, however, find they must inculturate Christianity into their Indigenous Spiritualities if they are to find salvation. They have to make Catholicism contextual. Thus, this article will reveal their historical and present-day Sitze im Leben and Weltanschauungen, their Indigenous Christian theologies/spiritualities, and their attempts to find salvation and wholeness while suffering, what I term, Quadri-dimensional oppression, that is racism, classism, sexism and naturism (abuse of nature) through church and State.