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Going Native: Converting Narratives in Tiwi Histories of Twentieth-Century Missions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2018

LAURA RADEMAKER
LAURA RADEMAKER*
Affiliation:
College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Historians and anthropologists have increasingly argued that the conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity occurred as they wove the new faith into their traditions. Yet this finding risks overshadowing how Indigenous peoples themselves understood the history of Christianity in their societies. This article, a case study of the Tiwi of North Australia, is illustrative in that it uses Tiwi oral histories of the ‘conversion’ of a priest in order to invert assumptions about inculturation and conversion. They insist that they did not accommodate the new faith but that the Catholic Church itself converted in embracing them. Their history suggests that conversion can occur as communities change in the act of incorporating new peoples.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 98 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I thank the Tiwi people for their generous support of my research. I also thank Professor Shurlee Swain, Dr Hannah Forsyth, Dr Altin Gavranovic and Samuel Blanch for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research was supported by funding from the Australian Research Theology Foundation. All interviews took place on the Tiwi Islands.

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