Abstract
On February 8, 2011, the local member of the Legislative Assembly for Frankston, Geoff Shaw, gave his maiden speech in the Victorian Parliament among a number of others as part of an “Address in Reply” to the Governor’s Speech. In his speech, Shaw begins by thanking his family and then continues:
In taking my place in the Legislative Assembly it is appropriate for me to acknowledge the original owner of the land on which we stand—God, the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Bible.1
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Notes
Cited by Emma Kowal, “Welcome to Country?,” Meanjin 69 (Winter 2010): 15.
See, for example, Sarah Pritchard, “The Stolen Generations and Reparations,” UNSW Law Journal 21 (1998): 259–267.
Mark G. Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 2000) and Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire, The Bible in the Modern World, 16 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2008), esp. 44–61;
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Land of Our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims (London: T&T Clark, 2010).
Karen J. Wenell, Jesus and Land: Sacred and Social Space in Second Temple Judaism, Library of New Testament Studies, 334 (London: T & T Clark, 2007).
Wenell, Jesus and Land, esp. 104–38; see also, Cecilia Wassen, review of Jesus and Land: Sacred and Social Space in Second Temple Judaism, by Karen J. Wenell, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookre-views.org] (2009), 4. While relationship to land often seems absent from the Gospels, allowing a kind of landless colonial and universalist impulse, this link through the twelve to ancestral lands suggests otherwise, and has a political edge in the context of the first-century imperialism of the Roman colonizers of Palestine.
Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: Norton, 1995), 50.
Commentators note several possible translations for the Hebrew תברכו in 12:3. W Silbey Towner discusses three possibilities; the verb can be read passively (in you all families of the earth shall be blessed); reflexively (in you all families of the earth shall bless themselves); as a middle (in you all families of the earth shall find a blessing). Towner opts for the third meaning as does John Scullion. See W. Silbey Towner, Genesis, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 135;
John J. Scullion, Genesis: A Commentary for Students, Teachers, and Preachers, Old Testament Studies (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 110.
On this universal impulse in the narrative, see for example, Frank Crüsemann, “Human Solidarity and Ethnic Identity: Israel’s Self-Definition in the Genealogical System of Genesis,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett, trans. Rainer Schack and Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 73.
On the importance of this motif of barrenness in the ancestral narrative, see Brueggemann, Genesis, 116–18; Scullion, Genesis, 102; Hemchand Gossai, Barrenness and Blessing: Abraham, Sarah, and the Journey of Faith (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2010), 1–22, though I think Gossai extends the metaphor too far when he suggests that the occupied country, parallel with the barren womb, can be described as “barren” because both require divine intervention for the promised fertility of the Abra(ha)mic group.
E. A. Speiser, Genesis: Introduction, Translation and Notes, Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), 86.
Judith Wright, The Generations of Men (Sydney: ETT Imprint, 1995; first published 1959), 5.
Judith Wright, The Cry for the Dead (Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1981).
Ibid; Philip R. Davies, “Abraham and Yahweh: A Case of Male Bonding,” in Abraham and Family: New Insights into the Patriarchal Narratives, ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 2000), 21–40.
Brett, Decolonizing God, 51–52; see also Norman C. Habel, The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 119, 125; cf. Stavrakopoulou, Land of Our Fathers, 33–35.
Alter comments that the reiteration of the divine promise in “vivid language” confirms Isaac’s blessing of Jacob; Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2004), 150.
Roland Boer, Last Stop before Antarctica: The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 68.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 1–19.
Cited in Lynne Hume, “The Rainbow Serpent, The Cross, and the Fax Machine: Australian Aboriginal Responses to the Bible,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 366–367.
The Eighth Report of the Auxiliary Bible Society for Australia Felix 1848 (Melbourne), 6; L. E. Threlkeld, The Gospel by St. Luke Translated into the Language of the Awabakal (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1891);
L. E. Threlkeld, An Awabakal—English Lexicon to the Gospel by St. Luke (Sydney: Charles Potter, Government Printer, 1892);
David Andrew Roberts, “‘Language to Save the Innocent’: Reverend L. Threlkeld’s Linguistic Mission,” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 94 (December 2008): 107–25;
Brenda L. Croft, Michael Riley, Sights Unseen (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2006), 134; D. Burramurra with Ian McIntosh, “Motj and the Nature of the Sacred,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 26 (Summer) (2002), http:// www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/motj-and-nature-sacred (accessed May 28, 2012); Monica Morgan, “Colonising Religion,” Chain Reaction (Summer 2005/2006): 36–37;
Anne Brewster, “Oodgeroo: Orator, Poet, Storyteller,” Australian Literary Studies 16 (1994): 101.
Frank Brennan SJ, “Dreaming from the Heart of Australia Twenty Years On—Reflecting on Pope John Paul II’s 1986 Visit to Alice Springs,” The Australasian Catholic Record 83 (July 2006): 284
Graham Paulson, “Towards an Aboriginal Theology,” in Land, Culture and Faith, ed. Elizabeth Pike et al, Pacifica 19 (October 2006): 310–320.
See also Graham Paulson and Mark G. Brett, “Five Smooth Stones: Reading the Bible through Aboriginal Eyes,” Colloquium 45 (November 2013): 199–214.
Cited in Diane J. Austin-Broos, “‘Two Laws’ Ontologies, Histories: Ways of Being Aranda (Aboriginal People) Today,” Australian Journal of Anthropology 7 (1996): 11.
Robyn Reynolds, “Marginal Persons in the Theology of Mission Discourse,” published as “Orang-Orang Yang Dipinggirkan Dalam Wacana Teologi Misi,” Indonesian translation by Yosef Maria Florisan, in Menerobos Batas: Merobohkan Prasangka, Festschrift, in honour of John M. Prior, ed. Paul Budi Kleden and Robert Mirsel (Maumere: Penerbit Ledalero, 2011), 221–241; Brett, Decolonizing God, 182–85,197, 204.
Cf. Mark G. Brett, “Law, Sovereignty and Australian Postcolonial Theology,” paper given at Storyweaving Conference, Whitley College, January 2012, revised as ch. 11 in this volume.
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Elvey, A. (2014). Acknowledging Traditional Owners: A Theological Inquiry. In: Brett, M.G., Havea, J. (eds) Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Theologies. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137475473_15
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