Two Victorian corroborees: Meaning making in response to European intrusion 1

• Published in: Aboriginal history Vol. 41; pp. 121 - XXI
• Main Author: Newton, Janice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canberra Australian National University Press 01.01.2017
• Subjects: 20th century; Bible; Cargo cults; Christianity; Colonialism; Creativity; Extinction; God; Imitation; Indigenous peoples; Intrusion; Land; Maoris; Material culture; Meaning; Mythology; Native peoples; Peace; Power; Progressive movement; Renewal; Syncretism; Traditions; Transformation; Villages; Worldview; New Zealand; Australia; Manus Island
• ISSN: 0314-8769; 1837-9389

Bark figures were 3 feet 2 inches high, and there was 'a ½ man (figure) above 20 inches on the donkey'.9 'Minutiae of action and context': Re-examining syncretism Such corroborees have been recently described as evidence of syncretism between particular Indigenous traditions and Christianity.10 In order to extend understanding of the Indigenous response to Christianity and construction of meaning in frontier contact zones in settler colonial societies, I wish to critique and tease out an oversimplified notion of syncretism. The detailed explication, in keeping with approaches that acknowledge Indigenous people as legitimate actors,14 focuses, as stated, on Aboriginal creative adaptation and 'mimicry' of specific items of European material culture and everyday behavioural rites.15 The article concludes with an examination of Aboriginal responses to Thomas's teachings on Christianity, evidence of innovative creativity in corroborees and an overview of the value of looking at behavioural rites and specific objects as nodes of meaning making in a situation of culture contact. While Margaret Mead saw the Manus Island Paliau Movement as a progressive movement of radical transformation towards the brotherhood of man and peace,17 others emphasised the significance of the Melanesian worldview and how they understood the cosmic order.18 Melanesians 'gave an autochthonous form to the civilizing processes that were transforming them'.19 From 1850 to the early 1900s, after huge losses of land, which was their means of spiritual and economic subsistence, and a series of wars (1845-72), the New Zealand Maori feared extinction.20 Differing from Australia in its indigenous structure of settled villages, political hierarchies and a single language, New Zealand by the 1840s had missionary and Maori quickly learning each other's languages. The religious/political prophet movements, for example, aimed to have a Maori King sharing power with the British Queen, aligned the Maori with Israelite ancestors and called upon 'god(s) to recreate their world'.21 European and Christian biblical renewal myths 'were often blended with indigenous myths of return',22 and prophesies were made about a Promised Land and a time of peace.23 The salient feature of the syncretism in these movements was not the mix of tradition and new Christianity, but the autochthonous attempt to restore the sacred by retaining power over the land.24 Scholars have generally claimed that Aboriginal Australia did not experience millenarian movements like the New Zealand Prophet movements or the cargo cults of Papua New Guinea,25 but there is a small body of work that counters this conclusion.