April 28.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Jesus through Indigenous eyes
An indigenous perspective on Jesus.
An interesting example of a non-scholarly view [of..Mark's gospel] is...an Australian [A]boriginal's plea made at the Catholic Bishop's Conference, Sydney, 1977:
When I read the Gospels, I read them as an [A]boriginal. There are many things in the Gospel that make me happy to be an Aboriginal because I think we have a good start. So many of the things Christ said and did, and the way he lived, make me think of the good things in our way of life.
Christ did not get worried about material things. [1] In fact, he looked on them as things that get in the way and make it hard to get to our true country. He was born in the countryside in a cave, like many of us have been born. He walked about like us and with nowhere to lay his head. [2] He died, with nothing, [3] on a cross. So many of our people die with nothing. He had his own little group like us. He was strong on sharing: “If someone wants your tunic, give him your cloak”. [4] We do a lot of things like that...He liked the bush, as we do. He loved nature. He saw in the lilies of the field a glory greater than Solomon's. [5] He loved the little things like the mustard seed [6] and the grain of wheat [7] and the corn, drops of cold water, [8] and the little sparrows. [9] We have similar things, like seeds and berries and yams, small waterholes, and we like the quietness of the hills and the bush. Like him we have a deep sense of God in nature…
Matthew 6:19.
Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58.
Mark 15:24; Matthew 27:35.
Luke 6:29.
Matthew 6:28-29; Luke 12:27
Mark 4:31; Matthew 13:31; Luke 13:19.
John 12:24.
Matthew 10:42.
Matthew 6:26, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7.
Acknowledgment: Sean P. Kealy, Mark' Gospel; A History of Its Interpretation, Paulist Press, New York, 1982, pp. 238-39, n.5.
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Two contrasting notes
Daniel Matthews, like James Dawson at Camperdown in western Victoria, stands out amongst his contemporaries for his passionate interest in Aboriginal justice. In 1873 he published a pamphlet entitled 'An appeal on behalf of the Australian Aborigines' in which he argued that as the Aborigines had been dispossessed, and had a moral claim on the government, they should be given large grants of land.
Acknowledgment: Review by Ian D. Clark of Mister Maloga, by Nancy Cato. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1993 in Aboriginal History, Vol. 18 (1994) p. 186.
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A correspondent named Outis, writing in the Queenslander in 1880, argued for the truth to be revealed. ‘If as a colony we should indulge in wholesale murder of the race we are dispossessing, let us have the courage of our opinions and murder openly and deliberately – calling it murder, not ‘dispersal”’. [1]
‘White versus Black’ by ‘Outis’, the Queenslander (15 May 1880), 627.
Acknowledgment: Jonathan Richards, The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2017 pp. 71, 275 n.59.