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  • Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings ed. by Max Charlesworth, Francoise Dussart, and Howard Morphy
  • Diane Bell
Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings. Edited by Max Charlesworth, Francoise Dussart, and Howard Morphy. Ashgate, 2005. 324pages. $94.95.

A “variety of recent writings, by a wide range of scholars” (i), that is what the editors of Aboriginal Religions in Australia claim to present in this sequel to the earlier anthology of 1984. To be sure, there are more contributors, and the writing dates from 1985 to 2003, but does this volume do justice to the “remarkable change in the way in which anthropologists and other scholars have approached Australian Aboriginal religions?” (1).

Stressing the plurality of Aboriginal religions, editor Max Charlesworth’s “Introduction” surveys some of the significant shifts and emerging themes in the field: theinterconnectedness of ritual, art and acrylics, critical rethinking of the founding fathers, new readings of the concept of the Dreaming and the nature of sacred sites, the influence of other religions on Aboriginal religions, defining politico-legal moments, the possibilities of a comparative approach, [End Page 691] and future directions. The volume is then divided into seven parts, each with a one-page introduction by one of the editors and each with three to four pieces that address the issues identified by Charlesworth.

The contributors are predominantly non-Indigenous anthropologists and well-established ones at that. Several new strands in the study of Aboriginal religion, though mentioned as significant in the introduction, are not represented in the parts that follow. I would like to see more about the intertwining of new age beliefs and practices, eco-tourism, new religious movements, and the emergence of distinctive Aboriginal theologies—some of which have a strong social justice core and others of a decidedly evangelical nature. Lynne Hume’s work on new age spiritual ecology is lauded in the introduction, but there is no excerpt. Fiona Magowan’s “Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity” (279–295) is an excellent account of the Yolngu from Galiwin’ku in northeast Arnhem Land and Ian McIntosh’s “Islam and Australia’s Aborigines” (297–318), also on the Yolgnu, is a fine example of how outside influences can be absorbed, but we need also to hear from people in rural and urban settings. How is Aboriginal religion practiced in the inner cities? What role, for instance, do mainstream churches, evangelical, and fundamentalist religions play in the lives of disaffected youth?

More Indigenous voices could have made the point regarding the plurality of Aboriginal religions. Marcia Langton, Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies, University of Melbourne, writes as an Indigenous anthropologist of “Sacred Geography” (131–139) and David Mowaljarlai, of the Ngarinyin people of the Northern Kimberley in Western Australia, shares a creation story from the Kimberley (217–223). Again, what of Aboriginal people in the more densely settled south?

In terms of relatively recent writings that have captured the popular imagination, there are two texts that deserve comment: Marlo Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under (1994), wherein a middle-aged American alternative health worker is abducted by a hitherto unknown tribe of Aborigines and treks barefooted across the burning desert wastes of Australia and Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines (1987), a travelogue and discourse on Aboriginal singing the world into existence. In the seventeen years I lived in the USA, these two books were the ones about which I was most consistently asked when I said I was an Australian anthropologist who wrote about religion. Both of these books are read as accounts of Aboriginal religion, yet both are fictional. Do they have a place in an anthology on Aboriginal religions? Should they be the subjects of scholarly research? In my view, we must engage with such texts. Their wide appeal indicates the enduring power of the image of the noble savage. Although scholars may have “moved on,” readers have not.

Charlesworth notes the emergence of W. E. H. Stanner as the central figure in the study of Aboriginal religions, but how is this claim sustained? Apart from Ian Keen’s nuanced reading of Stanner’s reaction to the limitations of structural functionalism and his approach to...

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