“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas


One Blood: Aboriginal Australia and Christianity




Dr John Harris is the author of 'One Blood', a landmark study into 200 yrs of Aboriginal encounter with Christianity. He spent many years as a teacher and school principal in Aboriginal Communities in the Northern Territory of Australia, and has worked as a consultant in the translation of the Bible into Aboriginal languages.

In this interview he discusses the impact of Europeans on Aboriginal culture, and especially the role of Christianity. With an enormous depth of understanding of the history and the people, Harris cautions against a simplistic reading of this period of Australia's past. Importantly, he gives reasons for hope for what might lie ahead. 

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20-Aug-2009 03:38 PM Anonymous 3 out of 5 stars
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22-Aug-2009 12:43 PM Warwick Howard Grace 4 out of 5 stars
I have been researching the story of a deceased aboriginal friend who was placed in Bomaderry Home in about 1935. He became a boxer in a country town when he was in late teens or early 20's, encouraged by the farmer employing him. In 1975 he married a white woman from a local farm, a friend of my wife's. The issue of white-aboriginal relations and the place that the church and missionary agencies played is of interest to me. I appreciate the tape and will try and obtain the book (library!) As a friend of SIL, I want to find out the number and names of aboriginal languages that have been translated by agencies.
14-Sep-2009 01:51 AM nicholas Brown 4 out of 5 stars
John gave valuable insights into the complex issues relating to the past & present missionary and white intervention to our indigenous peoples.
19-Oct-2009 09:45 AM Phill Birtles 4 out of 5 stars
Yeah it was good to hear where John came down on the intervention in the NT. So rare to get a decent christian point of view on this.
30-Dec-2009 04:22 PM Jim Harris 5 out of 5 stars
After a week spent reading One Blood I have nothing but admiration for John's fortitude in patiently uncovering and weaving together all of those long-lost tidbits of Aboriginal grief and occasional triumph into a consistent whole, not to mention that of the compassionate men and women of faith who considered the rewards of this world as of little merit. Also the valid though understated point raised that the high literacy of many mission-trained Aborigines enabled their taking on of administrative jobs. The missionaries were good for something after all!
09-Jul-2010 08:09 PM Chris M 5 out of 5 stars
Not whitewash, not black armband, with attention to both good and less good.

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