In this second half of the semester, I'm going to be pushing the students in "Aboriginal Australia and the Idea of Religion" to get beyond simple and static ideas of "authenticity" - a word which keeps coming up. They seem to have come to terms with the first challenge to "authenticity" - the role of Western observers and media in most of what we can learn of Aboriginal cultures (at least in a classroom in New York City). But a second challenge will, I think, bother them more, and yield richer fruit: Aboriginal Christianity (or: appropriations of Christianity). As one student asked on Thursday, are not the narratives of David Mowaljarlai "tainted" by Christianity? We were discussing one of my favorites, a moiety-system refraction of Cain and Abel (Yorro Yorro 49-52):
What are they going to make of the art of Linda Syddick, then, who often paints Christian motifs like the images at the top of this post in the Australian Museum in Sydney. Apparently the scene at left shows the nativity with the magi, though it's hard not also to see the Trinity revealed to Abraham, too. (Syddick's series on Steven Spielberg's ET may trouble the students less; we'll see!)
