| Book Review | Labour History, 85 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Christine Halse, A Terribly Wild Man, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2002. pp. xv + 220. $35.00 paper;

Heather McDonald, Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton South, 2001. pp. xvi + 238. $38.45 paper.

These two books explore the relationship between Christianity and Aboriginal Australians along two different but related paths. Christianity has unquestionably had a significant impact on Aboriginal societies and belief systems since the first missionary endeavours began in the late eighteenth century. The nature of that impact has been hotly debated and contested: has it been for good or ill? Neither of these books seek directly to answer this question, rather both highlight that the issue is exceedingly complex.

Christine Halse's A Terribly Wild Man is an insightful account of the life of Ernest Gribble, one of the more controversial and prominent missionaries in Australia. Ernest Gribble was no ordinary missionary. He was intimately associated with two missions — Yarrabah in north Queensland and Forrest River in the Kimberley — and then later spent time as a chaplain on the Palm Island settlement in north Queensland.

Ernest Gribble was the son of missionary John Brown Gribble who founded a mission at Warangesda in NSW and later established a mission at Yarrabah, near Cairns. However, J.B. Gribble died after only a year at Yarrabah and Ernest reluctantly took over as Superintendent. For the next 16 years, he attempted to build Yarrabah into a successful mission, but his management was constantly engulfed by controversy. Yet, where many other missions had failed, Yarrabah survived, in part due to Gribble's doggedness. Gribble was forced to resign in 1910 and three years later was asked to establish a mission in the Kimberley. Forrest River Mission was situated in a remote part of the East Kimberley, with Wyndham the closest town. Like Yarrabah, it was plagued constantly with problems. Some were due to Gribble's autocratic style of management, but many of the difficulties were beyond his control. As at Yarrabah, he was ultimately forced to resign from his position as Superintendent.

Undoubtedly, Gribble's most significant contribution while at Forrest River was to expose the brutal treatment of Aboriginal people on the Kimberley frontier in the 1920s. Gribble conducted a sustained campaign to highlight the injustices in the region. In particular, he pursued the case of the massacre of Aboriginal people by police. Gribble attracted many enemies and sometimes received little support from his church as he remorselessly pursued his claims which attracted national and international attention. The Western Australian government was ultimately forced to appoint a Royal Commission into the massacre.

A Terribly Wild Man is no hagiography; it reveals the controversies, complications and contradictions that surrounded his life. Gribble was a man of contradictions: arrogant, opinionated, a 'control-freak', vain, passionate, paternalistic, unafraid to offend, a campaigner against injustice, a visionary. He was both reviled by his enemies (of whom there were many) and revered by his supporters.

A Terribly Wild Man is an important contribution to the understanding not only of a controversial figure in the history of Aboriginal missions but also of the development of missions. Gribble's activities as a missionary reveal the complexities of any assessment about the impact of missionaries. On the one hand, Gribble's time as a Superintendent — characterised by his ruthless paternalism, his disapproval of traditional customs (in particular, marriage practices), his endorsement of the dormitories system and the removal of children from camps — contributed to the dislocation and breakdown of clan and family groups. On the other hand, missionaries such as Gribble were often lone voices in speaking out about injustices on the frontier.

Heather McDonald in Blood, Bones and Spirit travels a different path in examining the impact of Christianity on Aboriginal culture. She explores a basic question: the Christianisation of Aboriginal people. Why have, and how do, Aboriginal people embrace Christianity? From one perspective, the response is puzzling. Given that Christianity has been so much part and parcel of the colonisation process and used, at least historically, to legitimise the suppression and destruction of Aboriginal society, why has it been embraced by Aboriginal people? But equally significant is how Aboriginal people have embraced Christianity.

McDonald seeks to answer this latter question, the how, by focussing on Christianisation in Halls Creek, a small East Kimberley town. About one quarter of the Aboriginal population identifies as Christian and associate with one of three denominations: United Aborigines Mission (UAM), Roman Catholic, and Assemblies of God. McDonald adopts an anthropological approach to her analysis but contends that it is not sufficient to anthropologise Aboriginal Christianity; the same approach must be taken to Western Christianity. The latter she argues should be regarded as a Hellenistic Mediterranean religion of displaced peoples developed in a political context of city-states. Christianity is a universal salvation religion. How then, did a land based people with a local cosmology and who understand their lives to be 'organically connected to all life-forms' embrace Christianity?

McDonald explores how Aboriginal Christians re-interpret and integrate Aboriginal and Christian beliefs and concepts into a new and meaningful cosmology and ontology in terms of both their colonial past and present social and political circumstances. McDonald highlights the dynamic and dialectical nature of religious expression among the people of Halls Creek in a variety of forms and contexts. For example, she argues that the Lord's Supper is regarded as a form of mortuary cannibalism. A UAM adherent explained: 'Wine is the blood of Jesus, And that bread what we take, that's the one what they were break in his bone, and smash im up, That's why we break bread and eat im' (p. 155).

Blood, Bones and Spirit is an important contribution to an understanding of contemporary Aboriginal society, particularly in northern Australia. But its relevance goes further. Christianity has had a significant influence on Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. This book provides insights into the often perplexing relationships between Christianity and Aboriginal society. McDonald adopts a different and fresh approach to this issue. In the past, historians and anthropologists have tended to highlight the extent to which missionaries condemned and attempted to eradicate Aboriginal social and cultural practices. Rather this book seeks to evaluate Aboriginal Christianity on its own terms.


Brisbane	THOM BLAKE

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