Bringing comfort to strangers.(Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town)(Book Review)

Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, by Heather McDonald; Melbourne University Press, 2002, $38.45.

THE LIVES of contemporary Aboriginal people, displaced but surviving, are central to Blood, Bones and Spirit. The focus of Heather McDonald's book is Aboriginal Christianity--in particular, the kinds of Christianity embraced by the Halls Creek Aboriginal inhabitants, in Protestant and Catholic churches--which McDonald considers to be part of the response to the very plight of dispossession.

Heather McDonald describes herself as "post-Christian". Coming from several generations of Christian missionaries, she no longer identifies with their belief. In one respect, however, she certainly follows them: in her clear concern and love for Aboriginal people and their plight. She has spent several years with various Aboriginal people working in community health, and now as an anthropologist. Her thesis in anthropology led her to live for two years with the Halls Creek Aboriginal communities.

She has presented a fascinating story of real people, coming to terms with a radically new philosophy and way of life. McDonald's main exposure was to the Pentecostal Assemblies of God church (a relative newcomer to Halls Creek) and slightly less so to the United Aborigines Mission, an older and more traditional Protestant organisation.

What is immediately striking is how easily many of the Aboriginal Christians have appropriated biblical concepts. "When Halls Creek Aboriginal people talk about what it is to be Christian," McDonald writes, "they talk about 'following a way' rather than undergoing a life-transforming experience." Whether or not the believers are consciously following Acts (where Christians are initially called "followers of the Way") McDonald does not say; it seems this method of describing themselves suits the Aborigines' ideas of self and spirituality.

Another area in which the Aboriginal Christians pick up particular biblical metaphors is in the crucial area of forgiveness. McDonald writes:

 
   Just as sin, for Aboriginal people, is not seen in 
   terms of a hierarchical spirituality, so the remedies 
   for sin do not derive from hierarchical models of 
   jurisprudence ... Their methods of dispute resolution 
   were developed within a family/kin-based polity and 
   are informed by an ethic of reciprocity.