Zadok Catalogue 2007

Aboriginal issues

I love a sunburnt country ... but I love the beach more.
Matt Bell
Zadok Perspectives 84, Spring 2004
The biblical history of covenanting can be a guide for us as Christians in our search for ways of bringing healing to broken relationships in this land. True reconcilliation will happen when the quality of relatiionships between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians makes it impossible not to happen.

Imagine a Girl … an Australian Aboriginal Story.
Graham & Iris Paulson
Zadok Perspectives 77, Summer 2002
Gordon begins with an overview of some significant dates in recent history that have shaped our history and story as Australian people. He includes some of the church’s journey in this period. Then Iris tells her story, and how it might connect with ours.

The Old Testament of Indigenous Australia.
Mark Brett
Zadok Perspectives 77, Summer 2002
What are the resources for an authentic indigenous theology? To suggest expansively, that scripture, reason and tradition are the primary resources, already threatens to preempt the discussion by introducing Western theological categories.

Counting the Bodies: Aboriginal Deaths in Colonial Australia.
John Harris
Zadok Paper S115, Spring 2001
A significant debate in Australia concerns Aboriginal history. Some allege that accounts of the massacre of Aboriginal people are mostly fabrications. “Counting the bodies” affirms that there was an immense and appalling reduction in the Aboriginal population during the first 130 years of European settlement. The three major causes of Aboriginal depopulation were massacre, sexual abuse and disease. Closer to the 19th century and early 20th century, writers knew what had been done to Aboriginal people and onsciously revised history to exclude their story. Recent historians have been trying to write back into history the story of Aboriginal Australians that has been hidden for so long.

Jean Carter: Sister of the Son.
Tom Mayne
Zadok Perspectives 72, Spring 2001
Jean believes strongly that to offer an apology is a way of helping victims know that they are believed.

Land and Reconciliation.
Mark Brett
Zadok Perspectives 69, Summer 2000
Can Leviticus 25:13-17, 23-31 and Luke 4:14-30 make a contribution to the debate about Aboriginal land rights and reconciliation?

True Stories in Black and White.
Terry Cleary
Zadok Perspectives 67, Winter 2000
In the 1999 Boyer Lectures Inga Clendinnen called for an Australian history to be told that consists not of a “single, simple and therefore necessarily false tale,” but of a “cornucopia of true stories which will tell us what really happened.” Terry Cleary came across an intriguing Aboriginal-white Australian story…

Aboriginal reconciliation: a starting point for theological reflection.
Bruce George
Zadok Perspectives 57, Winter 1997

Owning our past, building our future: the reconciliation debate in Australia in the light of experiences across the Tasman
Richard Randerson
Zadok Perspectives 57, Winter 1997

Mabo: the step from truth to justice
John Harris
Zadok Paper S67, April 1994,
A readable and informative paper which considers Mabo within the broad sweep of Australia's history. The discussion includes the following issues: the use of the words 'dispossession' and 'invasion' to describe Australia's history, the idea of guilt, and the early and contemporary meanings of 'Terra Nullius'. Harris gives the history of the Mabo finding, the passing of the Native Title Bill, and its implications for Australia.

Strangers in their Own Land: the year of indigenous people, 1993
John Harris
Zadok Perspectives 40, April 1993

The Process of Aboriginal Reconciliation: a local church example
Digby Hannah
Zadok Perspectives 39, Dec 1992

Christianity and Aboriginal Australia
John Harris, 1998
This special series of five papers covers five significant periods in the history of the relationship between the Christian church and Australian Aboriginal people since 1788.
Part 1: The Earliest Christian Missions. S35
The beginnings of Christian missions to Aborigines, up to about 1840
Part 2: Indifference and Compassion in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. S36
Although often indifferent to the plight of Aboriginal people in the early 1800s, the church also sometimes demonstrated compassion.
Part 3: Dispossession and Despair: The Missionary Response at the end of the Nineteenth Century. S37
In this era of dispossession and despair among Aboriginal people, there were significant and enduring missions which provided places where Aboriginal people survived.
Part 4: Justice and Injustice at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. S38
On the frontiers, a few courageous missionaries spoke out against violence and oppression, but in the fringe-camps of settled white Australia, Aboriginal people suffered a different kind of oppression, condoned or ignored by the churches.
Part 5: Owning the Gospel: From Aboriginal Missions to Aboriginal Churches. S39
At last, as the white churches relinquish their domination of Aboriginal Christian development, we see the gospel transforming and renewing the lives of Aboriginal Christians, their culture being both challenged and affirmed by the gospel.

Aboriginal Issues
John Harris
Zadok Reading Guide, R23, 1989
This reading guide provides a basic list of essential reading on Aboriginal issues for thoughtful Australian Christians. For those who wish to study the issues more
deeply, further readings are recommended.

Aboriginies and Australian Christianity 2
Jill Fraser
Zadok Paper S8, 1979

Aboriginies and Australian Christianity 1
Jill Fraser
Zadok Paper S7, 1979

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