The name is absent

307

even in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, adjacent to
the Strelley Mob.
■

The theorizing of the missionaries is that, since, for the
Christian, *his true home is in heaven’, no Christian should be
involved in Aboriginal Land Rights movements. Those churches which
uphold Aboriginal claims are branded as communist by these
movements.

Thus, this particular version of Christianity continues to
separate Aboriginal people from thei,r identity with the landɪ.

' A fundamental difference between Strelley and the urban
people lies in the securing, by the former, of their identity
within a religious systematization of reality, that is, within
the Law, which then provides for them a cohesive world view.
For urban people, religion is likely to separate them even further
from traditional Aboriginal belief and from a traditional Aboriginal
identification with land.

• Erikson (1977:225) points out that faith - religious faith or
faith in a person, is an essential component in identity formation.
An element common to all the ’reality definers’ interviewed was
their insistence on the role of personal faith in giving them
direction in their lives and a strong sense of identity.

Unlike the people at Strelley, none of the urban people saw
the actions of missionaries of the first half of this century as
a bad thing. The people at Pt. Augusta in particular saw the
activity of missionaries as an intervention by God in the lives of
individuals at a particular point in history. This intervention
resulted in an education which later permitted the people to contribute
to the well-being of other Aborigines. They saw religious faith
providing them with two things: a coherent view of life and a personal

A generalization cannot be made from this to all religious
efforts. Religious people, other than fundamentalist groups are
at the forefront of Land Rights movements and are careful NOT
to proselytize. The result is that religious conversions are
to fundamentalist sects, which destroy links with the Law and the
land.

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