“White Man Got No Dreaming Him Go “Nother Way” — Albert Muta

Abstract

Land is an essential value for the Australian Aboriginal people, intimately associated with the Dreaming, which is best characterized as a religious value. It was during the Dreaming that the earth was formed and particular land was assigned to particular communities as a permanent responsibility and trust: you were to take care of the land and the land would take care of you. The attitude of immigrant settlers to the land has been different: Australia is a place tto be settled, planted and worked. This matches the Christian understanding that religious identity is not located in a physical place, since the Eucharistic assembly is the central locus of Christian identity. But it is also at the breaking of bread that Christians find their attachment to the earth. The article argues that Christians need to learn to live in and with the land they inhabit, since it is the land which provides the ultimate context for the Eucharistic assembly.