The Lamb Enters the Dreamingtraces the life of Nathanael Pepper of the Wotjobaluk people, who was born as the first pastoralists were driving cattle and sheep into Victoria's Wimmera region. In their wake came Christian missionaries, who were just as hostile to the settlers' violence as they were to the traditional beliefs of Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, Pepper converted to Christianity in 1860. The extraordinary story of Pepper's conversion, and his subsequent attempts to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable, reveals much about the deeper symbolic and moral forces at work in this collision of cultures. Robert Kenny challenges many orthodoxies in this profound reconsideration of how indigenous people and Europeans thought about each other. He traces Aboriginal attempts to accommodate the 'people of the sheep' and their pastoralist totem, Jesus, while arguing that it was European animals more than the settlers themselves that ruptured the Dreaming. On the European side, Kenny argues, increasingly powerful scientific and philosophical challenges undermined evangelical Christianity's belief that all humanity was of 'One Blood'. And behind it all lurked the spectre of slavery and the question of the moral order of imperialism. Brilliantly original in conception, and written with a rare lucidity and lightness of touch, The Lamb Enters the Dreamingis a detailed and sensitive exploration of a life, a meditation on the matter of culture and conversion, and a major reappraisal of the relations between Aboriginal and European societies in the first decades of contact in southern Australia.

A major reframing of world history, this anthology interrogates eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European imperialism from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Rather than casting indigenous peoples as bystanders in the Age of Revolution, Facing Empire examines the active roles they played in helping to shape the course of modern imperialism. Focusing on indigenous peoples’ experiences of the British Empire, the volume’s comparative approach highlights the commonalities of indigenous struggles and strategies across the globe. Facing Empire charts a fresh way forward for historians of empire, indigenous studies, and the Age of Revolution. Covering the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australia, and West and South Africa, as well as North America, this book looks at the often misrepresented and underrepresented complexity of the indigenous experience on a global scale. Contributors: Tony Ballantyne, Justin Brooks, Colin G. Calloway, Kate Fullagar, Bill Gammage, Robert Kenny, Shino Konishi, Elspeth Martini, Michael A. McDonnell, Jennifer Newell, Joshua L. Reid, Daniel K. Richter, Rebecca Shumway, Sujit Sivasundaram, Nicole Ulrich

Christianity is never just about beliefs but habits and practices-for better or worse. Theology always reflects the social location of the theologian-including her privileges and prejudices-all the time working with a particular, often undisclosed, notion of what is normal. Therefore theology is never "neutral"-it defends particular constructions of reality, and it promotes certain interests. Following Jesus in Invaded Space asks what-and whose-interests theology protects when it is part of a community that invaded the land of Indigenous peoples. Developing a theological method and position that self-consciously acknowledges the church's role in occupying Aboriginal land in Australia, it dares to speak of God, church, and justice in the context of past history and continuing dispossession. Hence, a "Second people's theology" emerges through constant and careful attention to experiences of invasion and dis-location brought into dialogue with the theological landscape or tradition of the church.

Arriving in the remote Arnhem Land Aboriginal settlement of Oenpelli (Gunbalanya) in 1925, Alf and Mary Dyer aimed to bring Christ to a former buffalo shooting camp and an Aboriginal population many whites considered difficult to control. The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931 represents a snapshot of the tumultuous first six years of the Church Missionary Society’s mission at Oenpelli and the superintendency of Alfred Dyer between 1925 and 1931. Drawing together documentary and photographic sources with local community memory, a story emerges of miscommunication, sickness, constant logistical issues, and an Aboriginal community choosing when and how to engage with the newcomers to their land. This book provides a fascinating and detailed record of the primary sources of the mission, placed alongside the interpretation and insight of local Traditional Owners. Its contents include the historical and archaeological context of the primary source material, the vivid mission reports and correspondence, along with stunning photographs of the mission and relevant maps, and finally the oral history of Esther Manakgu, presenting Aboriginal memory of this complex era. The Bible in Buffalo Country emerged from community desire for access to the source documents of their own history and for their story to be known by the broader Australian public. It is intended for the benefit of communities in western Arnhem Land and is also a rich resource for historians of Aboriginal history (and other scholars in relevant disciplines).

Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Theology focuses on what postcolonial theologies look like in colonial contexts, particularly in dialogue with the First Nations Peoples in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. The contributors have roots in the Asia-Pacific, but the struggles, theologies and concerns they address are shared across the seas.

From natural phenomenon such as Cyclone Tracy, and the Ash Wednesday and Black Friday fires, to key moments in our military history such as Flanders in 1917, and the fall of Singapore, this is an essential guide to understanding the people, the ideas and the events that defined the course of Australia's history.

How do indigenous matters inform, irritate and advance postcolonial theologies and postcolonial biblical criticisms? What options emerge from confronting readings of religious, customary, scriptural, political and cultural texts, traditions, leanings, bodies and anxieties? These two questions epitomize the concerns that the contributors address in this collection. The postcolonial voices that come together between the covers of this book show that indigenous subjects and heritages do matter in the theological and hermeneutical business, for we all have something to learn from First Peoples, and that theologians and biblical critics have much to gain from (and offer to) confronting and troubling traditional views and fears. Together in this book, the postcolonial voices from Downunder (geographically: Oceania, Pasifika; ideologically: marginalized, minoritized) confront political and religious bodies, including Christian churches, on account of their participation in and justification of the occupation and poaching of native lands, wisdom, wealth, and titles. This book is for First Peoples and Second Peoples, whether they are down under or up yonder, who are curious about possible advents of postcolonial theologies and postcolonial biblical criticisms in the future.