NGURUNDERI AND THE MURRAY COD: GLIMPSES INTO AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY FROM A WHITE FELLA’S VIEWPOINT

Abstract

Lynn White Jr., a progenitor of eco-theology, wrote that “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny – that is, by religion.”1 In Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin the contrast between what European settler society is ‘doing about its ecology’, and what the Aboriginal society it supplanted did is so striking, and the ecological damage being done currently so serious as to stimulate theological reflection on Aboriginal anthropology, cosmology and eco-praxis. This paper offers insights into the first two of these areas from a ‘white fella’s’ point of view. The insights are tentative, because the differences in worldview between Australia’s ‘first’ and ‘second’ peoples are vast and still not fully appreciated. They are offered in hopes of continuing the ‘greening’2 of Christian theology, one of eco-theology’s most important functions. doi: 10.7833/111-1-18