Walking The Land: Inculturation And Footprints in the Western Desert of Australia

Abstract

Father Carl Starkloffbegan teaching at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology in 1981. He arrived with experience in teaching, as associate professor at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, and in cross-cultural ministry, having served in Wyoming at the Wind River Reservation and St Stephen's Mission, where he was Director from 1975-1981. These twin foci of academic work and hands-on experience continued during his time at Regis. Once each month, he would set out on the long drive to the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre in northern Ontario to spend the weekend with Native peoples who wished to engage in ongoing reflection on Gospel-Culture issues. During this time, he continued to build up an impressive bibliography of academic writings on issues of inculturation and missiology.l This dual concern for theory and praxis is captured in the title of a course he taught for many years, "Inculturation: Theory and Practice." Not, for him, a theoretical formulation with no bearing on actual cross-cultural experience. Nor, at the other extreme, was he interested in a praxis which failed to be critically reflective. Rather, Starkloff sensed that discussion of inculturation can too easily get caught up in motherhood statements with which no one could disagree but which say very little, and that the real questions arose when people sought to do inculturation. Thus, while he certainly brought to cross-cultural experience a wealth of theological knowledge and astute critical skill, he aimed to give flesh to theoretical reflections on inculturation by grounding them in experience-his own, that of the Native peoples with whom he maintained regular contact, and that of culturally-diverse groups of students.