Contemporary worship music publisher Hillsong Church from Sydney’s northwest suburbs is Australia’s most famous Christian music exporter, having produced many gold-certified albums and received industry accolades (Riches and Wagner 2012). Known for its adaption of American industrial models—for example, annual CD releases and conferences—it promotes church resources for similarly highly energetic, technologically focused services (Hawn 2006, 16; Riches 2010b; Ingalls 2008, 118). Hillsong’s globalized music product now reflects its expansion beyond Sydney to numerous international campuses, and its identity as a transnational church thus challenges notions that it produces specifically Australian music (see Evans, this volume).
In contrast, another significant Pentecostal expression—relatively invisible on the international stage—has been arising in Australia among its Indigenous peoples.1 These worship musicians do not utilize the resources of large publishing houses, often traveling long distances as solo artists or bands for evangelistic concerts in rural communities. Marketing is largely word of mouth or through low-budget video clips, and products are self-distributed, but in limited supply in the usual Christian bookstores and distribution channels. Considered primarily evangelistic but rarely commercial, much of this music is digitized and available through music-sharing websites such as Spotify. CCLI’s Australian Web resource SongSelect omits most Indigenous artists’ songs,2 and thus they are best known locally rather than nationally. Many nonindigenous Australian Christians are unaware of the contribution of these worship musicians, although they draw directly from Australia’s geographical landscape and cultural heritage. This chapter contends that scholars should examine Aboriginal Pentecostal music more closely because music is of central importance to these Christians, who construct their religious identity in relationship to and in dialogue with dominant (nonindigenous) Australian culture, and because it shows the contribution of Indigenous Australians toward reconciliation with this dominant culture.
Peter Dunbar-Hall and Chris Gibson state, “Aboriginal people have consumed and performed folk music, gospel and choral music for at least a century, and country music for over fifty years. At what point these musical heritages take on meaning as ‘traditional’ is unclear” (2004, 17). Despite these years of Aboriginal Pentecostal music making, scholars have largely ignored songs within the Christian tradition, perhaps in part because of Christianity’s previous collusion with colonization. This chapter does not seek to minimize the painful effects of Australia’s damaging mission history upon the lives of Indigenous Australians, but challenges continuing scholarly disregard for Indigenous Christianity and its music.
Noel Loos claims that Christianity is now woven into the fabric of indigeneity (2007, 2). Australian census data claims that while 1 percent of Indigenous Australian peoples hold to traditional religions (6 percent in rural areas), over 73 percent identify as Christian (Bouma 2006, 31; Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006). Of this number, one-third identify as Catholic and one-third as Anglican, with the remainder including adherents of the Uniting Church denomination and Pentecostals (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006).3 Malcolm Calley (1955) first noted Pentecostalism among the Bandjalang in rural New South Wales in 1955, although Akiko Ono (2011) considers its identity markers (for example, Spirit baptism) to have been minimized as tribal religion. Bouma distinguishes Australian movements from their American counterparts but declares, “Focus on Spirit baptism, glossolalia, and healing is definitional for contemporary Pentecostalism” (2001, 89). Within his nonindigenous Australian Pentecostal ecclesiology, Shane Clifton cites appeal to experience, narrative testimony, and a culture of change as other defining markers (2005, 110; see also Hutchinson and Wolffe 2012). Adding to these themes, I suggest that the immanent presence of the Spirit and supernatural empowerment for evangelism are important within Australian Pentecostal music (Riches 2010b, 58). Furthermore, a contention of this chapter is that the greatest contribution of Indigenous Pentecostalism and its music to Australian Pentecostalism as a whole is its emphasis on holistic reconciliation—between God, the people, and the land of Australia—made possible through a theology of the power of the Spirit.
In order to address silences within scholarly accounts of Indigenous Christian music making, this chapter highlights Pentecostal themes in Indigenous Australian Christianity from a missiological frame, seeking specifically to redress a lack of written material acknowledging the contribution of Indigenous Australian worship musicians. As a review, it is not exhaustive, nor does it suggest broad uniformity across Indigenous Australian worship, which utilizes a range of genres and styles. As a nonindigenous Pentecostal songwriter and worship leader, my own engagement with this community occurred when I moved into Sydney’s Redfern area in 2001 to conduct the Hillsong City Campus choir. Indigenous Christianity eventually became the topic of my Ph.D. research. My Indigenous contacts recommended the music of notable Indigenous worship leader Robyn Green, and I conducted a content analysis of three of her albums in order to illustrate her contribution to Pentecostalism, as presented below. Additionally, Pastor David Armstrong, an Indigenous colleague at the Australian Christian Churches denominational Bible college Alphacrucis, invited me to visit the Mount Druitt Indigenous Choir, the core ministry of Initiative Church in Sydney’s western suburbs. Participant observation was conducted over a period of four weeks in summer 2012, as I attended weekly rehearsals, Sunday services, and two performances—a fundraiser in Mount Druitt Square and a celebration hosted by Christian City Church, Prospect. I also contributed to the musical life of the community, teaching warm-ups and breathing exercises.4
The undiscovered Southern land had long ignited the European imagination. When Portuguese navigator Pedro de Quirós reported having found the continent, his announcement of the “Great Southland of the Holy Spirit” (Australia del Espiritu Santo) implied a concomitant missional interest in its peoples (Hardiman 2009, 9). Hardiman notes the continued influence of this phrase on the Pentecostal imagination, particularly through the song “This Is the Great Southland” by Geoff Bullock, sung as a prophetic declaration in many churches nationally during Australia Day services.
Prior to colonization, Australia was home to more than two hundred Indigenous nations, its intricate social system conducted primarily via overland walking tracks (Trudgen 2000, 25). Music was crucial to this life, with two- and four-line lyrical verses committing geographical information to memory in a functional musical mapping of the land (Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2004, 21). Individuals were initiated into a repertoire accompanied by the clapping of sticks, boomerangs, or hands (Maddern 1988, 595; Gibson and Dunbar-Hall 2000, 73; Treloyn 2003) and, in the northern nations, the iconic didjeridu (Moyle 1981).5 Sporadic contact with Dutch ships on Australia’s west coast and annual trading with Macassan sea slug traders on the northern coastline occurred until English adventurer James Cook formally drove a European flag into the soil in the 1770s (Trudgen 2000; Banner 2005). By this time, entrenched mythological thinking about Aborigines motivated the declaration of Australia as Terra Nullius, or uninhabited land. Early records reveal clashes of Indigenous value systems and knowledge with English property ownership law as the foundation of civilization—and Australia’s nomadic nations were deemed barely human, being “in the genuine state of nature” (Banner 2005).
During colonization, Indigenous Australians suffered greatly, as settlers, pastoralists, and government agents contributed to the atrocity that Noel Loos controversially terms “the Aboriginal Holocaust” (2007, 41). In collusion with White Australia policies, missionaries participated in the Europeanization of Aboriginal culture, language, and music (Breen 1989, 4). But most damaging was the church’s role in “the Stolen Generation” and the forcible removal of Aboriginal “half-caste” children to missions by government officials, exposed in the report Bringing Them Home (Wilson 1997). This blight upon the witness of the church led many to question Christianity’s relevance to Indigenous Australian peoples. Gary Bouma states, “Again we had hoped for better and expected more. The violation of trust was bad enough, particularly for those directly victimised. But for others, for the whole society, it was a violation of hope. One of the sources of hope had in fact undermined hope” (2006, 20).
Prime Minister Rudd’s government apology to Indigenous Australian people in 2008 acknowledged the role of the missions in assimilation policies and cultural loss suffered by families placed in these often-impoverished and harsh disciplinary institutions (Rudd 2008). Nevertheless, as David Hollinsworth notes, “Not all examples of the abandonment of cultural practices were due to suppression or interference by non-Aborigines.... Conversion to Christianity was then, as it is now, often a conscious choice by an individual or a family rather than imposed from outside” (1992, 144).
In the 1970s, self-determination policy sought to remove missionaries and empower Indigenous leadership. Whereas traditional religion encompassed every aspect of life, following conversion Indigenous Christians grappled with a secularized European faith that missiologist Paul Hiebert describes as “the excluded middle” (1982, 36). The Elcho Island charismatic revival, or the “Adjustment Movement,” was an attempt to reconcile missionary teaching with the anthropological push for reclamation of culture within a former Methodist mission site. Christian crosses were erected upon the madayin, or sacred sites (McIntosh 1997, 281). Indigenous leaders such as Terry Djiniyini Gondarra wove traditional rites, sacred objects, and the Ten Commandments into an influential Aboriginal theology (Magowan 2003, 296), and David Burramurra declared that “Walitha ’walitha was one and the same as the Christian God” (McIntosh 1997, 278). Wesleyan hymnbooks were replaced with “translocal” charismatic choruses, promoting reconciliation through “brotherhood,” “love,” and “friendship” (Magowan 2007, 469). Following the revival, Indigenous evangelists and musicians carried this indigenized Pentecostal Christianity throughout Australia, emphasizing continuity between the Spirit’s involvement in Australia before and after missionaries. One such early Indigenous gospel band, Soft Sands, was highly influential in the composition of popular song in Arnhem Land (Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2004; Corn 2005, 64).
However, famous ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl recounts traveling to Australia in search of Indigenous repertoire, where gathered representatives shared a rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross.” He concludes, “I could find no difference between this performance and what I expected of white Australians” (2005, 426). Due to the belief that Christianity replaced Aboriginal culture, indigeneity and Christianity are largely still presented as conflicting forces within the academic literature (Schwarz 2010; Tippett 2006). Thus, scholars have long discounted the Christian spirituality contained in Indigenous cultural expression. Yet Fiona Magowan’s emphasis on the deep intentionality of song selection by her Indigenous teacher (2001, 91) and the notable omission of the geographical origins of the Indigenous singers in Nettl’s accounts suggest that their attempts to illustrate the absorption of gospel tunes into Indigenous repertoire(s) may have been minimized. The integration, translation, and innovation within Christian hymnody in Oceania has only recently been acknowledged by scholars such as Amy Stillman (1993).6 While Christianity has played a significant, though sometimes problematic, role in the history of Indigenous Australian peoples, Indigenous evangelists and musicians have played and do play a meaningful role within Australian Christianity, as seen in their innovative use of music as an expression of urban Indigenous Christianity.
Of Australia’s Indigenous Pentecostal worship leaders, Robyn Green7 is often considered the most influential. Formerly from Darwin, Northern Territory, Green’s itinerant worship ministry is based in Tingoora, Queensland. Since 1986, she has released seven independently recorded and distributed albums; however, her online promotion consists of a simple website (www.robyngreen.com.au) with limited biographical information and links to online sales. Credited with ministering in Darwin’s prisons, Green has also participated in notable worship events such as the BBC’s Songs of Praise episode recorded in the iconic Sydney Opera House (Rhodes 2000).
In order to understand Robyn Green’s passion for music and worship, it is important to examine her musical roots. Green’s father was evangelist Peter Morgan, born within the Mullinbulla nation in 1923 near Gordonvale, North Queensland. Removed from his family by the government, he was sent to Palm Island at four years old. He never again saw his mother and was reunited with his father only in adulthood. Yet he was known to be “full of love and forgiveness.” Converting to Christianity in 1949, he met and married his wife, Eva, in the Atherton Tablelands. Peter recorded a cassette of country gospel songs, with Eva’s accompaniment on piano, entitled It’s in My Heart, distributed by Australian Heart Ministries. He was considered to “[know] the power of ‘Nadji’ ”—the traditional name for God in the Northern Territory (Australian Prayer Network 2004). The Morgan family moved to Darwin with their daughters in 1966, planting churches within the Pentecostal denomination Assemblies of God (now Australian Christian Churches, or ACC), as well as Darwin Full Gospel Church and Faith Centre Darwin (now known as C3 Church Darwin).
The Morgan family often traveled from church to church, and it was on these tours that Robyn Green’s singing and songwriting talent was made clear. Her first album, He Is the Answer, is a country/gospel fusion utilizing country vocal inflections and instrumentation. Songs such as “I’m a Believer,” “He Is the Answer,” and “He Is the Reason” reveal the album’s primarily evangelistic emphasis. Many of Green’s songs directly address the Spirit. From her 2003 album Shine On, the song “Reign on Me” features a saloon-style honky-tonk piano under a country rock band. The humorous lyric likening a move of the Holy Spirit to a downpour is accentuated by the piano’s comic sound:
Reign on me, don’t forget
Cover me ’til I’m soaking wet
All I’m asking, Holy Spirit reign on me
“Pour Out Your Spirit,” the first track on the 2000 album Sweet Surrender, is a piano-led contemporary Christian ballad. After the band vamps on the final chorus, Green begins to ad-lib:
Pour out Your Spirit, Oh God
Revive us, Lord
Australia needs You, Lord
An electric guitar note is sustained, and a didjeridu begins to play behind the vocals. In this way, the song draws sonic continuity between Australia’s present and history, emphasizing the role of the Spirit in bringing both reconciliation between indigenous and nonindigenous people and healing to the land.
Healing is an important part of Green’s story, featuring in her music and narrative of her calling as a musician. In a video testimony, in a simple spoken style, she faces the camera with an iconic Australian gum tree behind her and attests to the miraculous power of God in her own physical healing: “When I was eleven years of age I lost my sight and I was paralyzed from the waist down. I was a very sick girl. I had acute nephritis.... And it was during the night, I remember praying to the Lord and just saying, ‘God, just heal me, if you heal me I’ll sing for you.’ ” Green describes a vision of a visitation from Jesus Christ, explaining that she has kept her promise by singing for the Lord. She outlines recent miracles during ministry trips to Groote Eylandt and Vanuatu. Then she prays for her viewers, asking the Holy Spirit to directly touch those who have needs, saying, “God is the Healer. You know, ever since he healed me I know that he can do anything, He can do the impossible. So whatever your need is, whatever you need... just reach out and believe” (“Robyn Green Healed from Blindness” 2011).
Restoration is another important theme in Green’s music. From her latest album, I Will Arise (2008), the song “On Eagle’s Wings” begins with the ambient, laid-back sounds of an electric guitar playing in lounge style, followed by a groove with a bass and a very “present” lead vocal. Multilayered backing vocals emerge under the chorus. The verses describe human oppression through metaphors of being lost and being bound by chains and heavy weights, while in the chorus Green sings,
He promised we’d mount up
On eagles’ wings
Fly like the wind
We’ll see victory
Up over the clouds where we’re meant to be
On eagles’ wings
Here, the biblical imagery of Isaiah 60 could be interpreted with Indigenous significance, connecting to the Australian wedge-tailed eagle, as well as evoking black history within the United States. A restoration of strength and clarity of vision are here associated with physical and emotional healing.
However, Green’s choice of performance venues makes clear that the healing about which she sings extends beyond Indigenous Australian communities; the rifts between Indigenous and settler communities can also be healed in the transformative context of Christian worship. Throughout her career, Green has been involved in several important cross-cultural endeavors, including the BBC’s Songs of Praise episode, televised during the 2000 Olympics (Rhodes 2000). This musical performance is symbolic, reminiscent of the healing themes prevalent in Green’s music, and it emphasizes what Fiona Magowan refers to as “performative dialogue” between Aboriginal and white Australian Christian communities (2000, 310).
During the introductory segment, two contemporary Indigenous dancers stand in the center of the stage, shrouded in smoke, while moving to the sounds of Pentecostal didjeridu artist Adrian Ross. Green’s haunting voice cuts across this music, embodying the voice of Indigenous Australians in the well-known song “I Am Australian”:
I came from the Dreamtime, from the dusty red soil plains
I am the ancient heart, the keeper of the flame
I stood upon the rocky shores and watched the tall ships come
For forty thousand years I’ve been the First Australian
Country gospel artist Steve Grace sings the settler verses of this anthemic song, which outline the story of Australia’s nonindigenous migrant inhabitants:
I came upon the prison ship bound down by iron chains
I cleared the land, endured the lash and waited for the rains.
I’m a settler, I’m a farmer’s wife on a dry and barren run
A convict then a free man, I became Australian
The duet weaves the two narratives, Indigenous and nonindigenous Australian, together into a chorus of unity. As the dancers continue moving to the beat using both traditional and contemporary shapes, the video pans to a young, predominantly white Australian choir joining in from the choir loft above the stage. The image is one of reconciliation on various levels, ethnic and generational.
Dance is often considered a means of Aboriginal resistance against a “homogenized identity” imposed by Australia’s dominant culture (Hollinsworth 1992, 147). Magowan terms this “poetic politics” and writes that “the symbolic power of dance lies in its ability to conceal as much as it reveals to performers and audience. Consequently, performative dialogue is a chess game of coming to know the nature of embodied sentiment between groups” (2000, 310). Within this Pentecostal worship service, however, the use of this nonreligious song as the opening chorus is an intentional declaration by Aboriginal Australians: they demonstrate the continuous line of the Spirit’s presence in their land between Dreamtime and Christian spirituality, colonial and now Pentecostal.
The contribution of traveling music evangelists such as Green cannot be overestimated in regard to Pentecostal expansion into indigenous communities. Green serves as a forerunner and present-day representative of a generation of indigenous musicians and singers who are drawing contemporary worship songs into urban Christian Aboriginality and sounding the promise of healing and reconciliation within Australian Christianity more broadly.
However, the influence of Indigenous Pentecostal expression on Australian Christian music making is not limited to the Northern Territory or to one generation of Indigenous musicians. Thirty-five kilometers from Sydney’s center, the suburb of Mount Druitt is bounded by the M2, M4, and M7 freeways. Named after military officer and Australian settler George Druitt, the area was farmland, but housing developments have recently claimed its open grassy spaces. It hosts “the largest urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in NSW with 7,055 people [and] 2.6% of the area’s population” (Blacktown City Council 2012). Mount Druitt is also considered a socioeconomically disadvantaged community (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011). Although boasting the new Westfield shopping center, local residents cite concerns about safety after dark, gangs, and substance abuse. The Indigenous population in this area is predominantly young, with many single-parent family units (Blacktown City Council 2007, 6, 33). Hope regarding the youth and a sense of uncertainty about the future for teens simultaneously persist in this suburb. The following field narrative draws from visits to this community and showcases the ways in which Pentecostal music is used as a bridge between Aboriginal ethnic groups, as a vehicle for teaching new generations the value of the Indigenous cultural heritage, and as a way of reconciling Indigenous and Christian identities.
In July of 2012, my husband and I returned to Sydney from Los Angeles to visit family and renew visas. Having interacted previously with Pastor David Armstrong via email, we were invited to visit his choir ministry in Mount Druitt. An ACC pastor of mixed Indigenous and white Australian heritage, David is originally from Rockhampton, Queensland. With his wife, Angela, he pioneered this musical project and missional outreach among Indigenous children of the Mount Druitt area during the Christmas season of 2010. The choir consists predominantly of children under ten years old, who attend rehearsals, performances, and weekend services. Angela Armstrong writes most of the music for the choir, and three of their four children are musically involved.
We arrived about fifteen minutes late, due to a misdirected drive past Whalan’s shops, where fire-damaged and vandalized roller doors betrayed the area’s reputation. I reminded myself that for locals, it’s just home. Angela met us on the front lawn of “Aunty’s” house, where three adults sat on the front porch, one smoking.8 Around ten kids played on the front lawn, waiting for choir rehearsal. They varied from about three to sixteen years old, all running around together and tossing a rugby football. Angela sent a worried text to Pastor David, who was picking up the last five children so that they could begin rehearsal.
While we waited, Angela talked to me about the philosophy of the choir. She explained that it was “calming” for the kids to rehearse outdoors, even in Sydney’s chilly weather. She outlined how local elders had encouraged them to choose to sing in Dharug, the language of the Mount Druitt land, although some consider it a dead language. Angela was honest about struggles to accommodate cultural differences among Sydney’s diverse urban Aboriginal community, a diaspora drawing from a large geographical area. A number of conflicts had caused the choir to now host two weekly rehearsals to allow cultural “avoidance” norms to be observed with appropriate members of kin.
By the time Pastor David returned, he had seven children (two extras had turned up unexpectedly), and Angela had largely talked me through the choir’s schedule. The children laid a rug on the grass and procured an electric piano. Then two didjeridus were carried over and held by some young boys. During my time with the choir, it was stated repeatedly that girls are not allowed to touch this traditional instrument, and Pastor David asked me not to touch it while with the community. However, clapsticks were handed out to everybody.
David loudly announced that my husband and I were special visitors from Los Angeles in America. The mothers stared at us as though we had walked out of a Hollywood sitcom, while the children acted impressed. Angela looked at me and asked, “What would you like to do with the choir today?” She smiled politely. But, as I led impromptu choir vocal exercises with the children, I worried that the announcement about having traveled from such a faraway place would give us an aura that we did not want to perpetuate, as Australians.
When we finished our exercises, I asked the children to sing a song. They selected “Dreaming,”9 which was poignant, as it consists of both a welcome in the Dharug language and a statement in English about indigenous leadership moving from healing to leading:
Gi Walawa Nalawala
Gi Walawa Nalawala
Gi Walawa Nalawala in Jesus
Warami Wellamabamiyui
Warami Wellamabamiyui
Dreaming of our past
Dreaming of our present
Dreaming of our future
Angela later translated the Dharug lines as “Please stop here and rest (in Jesus)” and “It’s good to see you wherever you have come from.” The children sang proudly and confidently.
The choir has performed over forty times, at indigenous events including Sorry Day 2012 and NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Indigenous Day Observance Committee) Week and at private functions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait elders and the governor-general of Australia (see figs. 3.1 and 3.2).10 In local performances, the choir sings original songs such as “Dreaming” and “Nalabiyuni,” a song about Australia’s wildlife; the children use appropriate gestures for seabird, kangaroo, and emu. They also adapt contemporary Christian songs from Hillsong and Bethel Live.11
David notes that the children do not object to Christian content in songs, and he believes that this is because Indigenous children are socialized to be attuned to the spiritual world: “I take a group of aboriginal kids to a park. Immediately they will start talking about the spirits or ghosts in that area.... The spirit world is more real to them than the physical or material world.”12 Thus, many of the songs sung by the choir explicitly attend to the role of the Spirit, as Armstrong believes that there is a great need to address the invisible world within the bounds of Christianity. During practice, when they spoke about troubles or fear, the immanent presence of the Spirit was emphasized. Each prayer concludes with the children joyfully shouting “In the name of Jesus” three times in unison. Through indigenous instrumentation and language, as well as traditional cultural values within the music (for example, welcoming the stranger), the Armstrongs model an indigenous Christian spirituality, thus reconciling both Aboriginal and Christian identities through music. The Mount Druitt Indigenous Choir is the fulfillment of the Armstrongs’ desire to use music as a bridge to bring the local community together and link that community to Aboriginal groups elsewhere. It also facilitates successful dialogue with nonindigenous Australian Christian groups.
Common “inalienable qualities,” defined by Minette Mans as “qualities that are so closely aligned with identity that they cannot / may not be transferrable” (2007, 240), can be noted within Indigenous Australian Pentecostal music. The didjeridu is representative of Aboriginality within the urban environment in both the recordings of Robyn Green and the repertoire of the Mount Druitt Indigenous Choir. Moreover, lyrical themes including Spirit baptism and divine healing emphasize the Holy Spirit’s presence and the continuity between precolonial Indigenous identity and contemporary Christianity. Although these Indigenous Pentecostals do not often refer to glossolalia in their repertoire, the theme of supernatural empowerment for evangelism is clearly evident. Important to the music and performance of Indigenous Pentecostalism is holistic reconciliation—between God, the people, and the land of Australia—through the power of the Spirit. Pentecostal influence has long existed within the Indigenous musical repertoire, and Indigenous worship musicians have also contributed to the expansion of Pentecostal Christianity. For many, these artists and bands powerfully embody the sound of the nation’s worship.
While the Aboriginal Pentecostal musical repertoire is less visible than its nonindigenous Pentecostal counterpart, their emphasis on healing and reconciliation may be having a broader effect. Influential songwriter Geoff Bullock, in a video of his performance of “The Great Southland” at Gospel Live in Manly, announced, “Our role... is to find a way of bringing grace to the Aboriginal nation, and healing and restoration, and whatever else we can do—all that must come after simply saying sorry” (“Geoff Bullock—Great South Land” 2010). For many, his song has now become a song of unity and prayer for reconciliation between Indigenous and nonindigenous Australians:
This is the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit,
A land of red dust plains and summer rains
And to this Great Southland we will see a flood
To this Great Southland His Spirit comes
Thus, the desire for reconciliation, birthed within the Indigenous Australian Christian community, is still a sung national prayer today. Perhaps in listening to the Christian spirituality in the music of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, we can best understand the power of the Spirit for reconciliation—in its spiritual, physical, and emotional dimensions. These powerful songs embody the fervent prayers of Aboriginal Australian Christians—and, increasingly, their nonindigenous neighbors—that, through repentance and restoration, the land might be healed.
1. Indigenous Australians consist of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groupings constituting about 2.2 percent of the national population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006). Most Indigenous Australian people prefer their national terms—for example, Eora nation. The term “Aborigine” or its plural, “Aborigines,” although used within the literature, is often considered pejorative within Australia. The Australian government has a tripartite system of genetic relationship, personal identification, and community acceptance for definition of indigenous status.
2. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) administers the SongSelect database through its online site http://www.ccli.com. This popular fee-based website provides access to lyrics, charts, and music sheets for contemporary Christian songs. None of leading Indigenous gospel singer Robyn Green’s songs could be found on SongSelect.
3. While specific statistics for Indigenous Australian Christianity are not readily available, the literature and my fieldwork suggest that Pentecostalism may account for a significant portion of these Indigenous Christians, perhaps up to 10 percent of this population, compared to 1–2 percent of the general population. Moreover, the Elcho Island revivals heavily influenced Uniting, Anglican, and Catholic denominations, particularly in regard to musical worship. Thus, statistics alone cannot illustrate the significance of indigenous Pentecostal communities.
4. During this time, I traveled to Tweed Heads, Queensland, and spoke with seventeen Indigenous Bible college students at Ganggalah College, in addition to Pastors Will and Sandra Dumas, who were recently appointed Indigenous Ministry leaders for the ACC denomination. The conversations do not feature in this chapter, but I am indebted to the information that the students and staff shared with me, as well as their assistance in obtaining Robyn Green’s albums.
5. The didjeridu (or didgeridoo) is a traditional Aboriginal wind instrument consisting of a hollowed-out piece of wood, played using circular breathing.
6. In the North American context, Luke Lassiter (2001) similarly notes the unique musical contribution of Native American Christians, including the Kiowa.
7. Green stated in an interview that her next release will be recorded under her married name, Robyn Beezley.
8. “Aunty” (or “Uncle”) is an endearing and respectful term for an Indigenous Australian elder or community leader.
9. “Dreaming” is an unpublished song that Angela Armstrong wrote in 2011.
10. The governor-general is appointed by the Queen as her representative and respected as the highest formal authority in the Australian state.
11. One of the children’s favorite songs during my time with them was “Deep Cries Out” by Bethel; they sang along loudly and created actions to go with the lyrics.
12. Email correspondence with David Armstrong, September 29, 2011.
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