The Invention of God in Indigenous Societies 9781844657544, 9781844657551, 9781315729473

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THE INVENTION OF GOD IN INDIGENOUS SOCIETIES

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THE INVENTION OF GOD IN INDIGENOUS SOCIETIES JamES L. COx

First published in 2014 by Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

© James L. Cox, 2014 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

isbn: 978-1-84465-754-4 (hardcover) isbn: 978-1-84465-755-1 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, CF36 5BL.

To Valerie

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: definitions, terminology and the “invention of tradition”

1

1. The “God controversy” in pre-Christian indigenous religions

11

2. The debate over Io as the pre-Christian Māori Supreme Being

35

3. Making Mwari Christian: the case of the Shona of Zimbabwe

67

4. The rainbow-serpent in the Rainbow Spirit Theology

89

5. Alaska: Ellam Yua, the person of the universe

113

6. Invention as cultural hybridity

137

Notes Bibliography Index

163 167 177

vii

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aCkNOwLEDGEmENTS

I wish to acknowledge the kind assistance of many organizations and individuals who have made this book possible. I am grateful to the Universities of Sydney and Edinburgh for approving and facilitating my participation for six months in 2009 in an exchange between the Department of Studies in Religion in the University of Sydney and the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Carole Cusack of the University of Sydney, with whom I traded academic responsibilities, and Professor Larry Hurtado, then Head of the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, without whose help my temporary appointment in Sydney would not have materialized. In addition, I received an award from the Small Grants fund of the British Academy that enabled me to conduct research while I was in Australia in 2009. This was followed in 2011 by the Auber Award from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which funded a return visit to Australia and also facilitated my research trip to Alaska in April 2011. I was appointed the de Carle Distinguished Lecturer for 2012 in the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, which provided support for research in New Zealand and also partially funded a further research trip to Australia in March 2012. I am grateful to the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs, Australia, and to its librarian, Mr Graeme Shaughnessey, and its then Director, Dr Michael Cawthorn, for making available to me important documents held in the archives of the Centre. I am also grateful to Mr David Moore, an independent researcher and linguist in Alice Springs, for organizing a symposium in March 2012 at the Strehlow Research Centre on the idea of God among Aboriginal Australians. This was preceded by a oneday conference held at the University of Western Sydney under the direction of the sociologist of religion Professor Adam Possamai, to whom I express my thanks for inviting me to participate. My research was aided greatly by colleagues in the various locations on which I have built my case studies for this book. I am particularly indebted ix

acknowledgements

to Professor Norman Habel of the Lutheran Theological College in Adelaide, Australia, who generously helped me understand the Rainbow Spirit Theology and facilitated many contacts with leading Christians in North Queensland. I also want to express my gratitude to Mr David Spanagel, the Lutheran mission superintendent for North Queensland and the Rev. Victor Joseph, Principal of the Wontulp-Bi-Buya Theological College in Cairns for sharing their views on the Rainbow Spirit Theology. Others who helped in the Australian research include Mr Wilfred Gordon in Cooktown, the Rev. Basil Schild in Alice Springs, Dr Bill Edwards in Adelaide, the Rev. Dr Chris Budden in Sydney, the Rev. Dr Kerry Enright in Sydney, Dr Eugene Stockton in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, and Dr Steve Bevis of the University of Sydney, who offered invaluable advice. I appreciate the support of Dr Will Sweetman and Professor Murray Rae at the University of Otago for promoting me for the de Carle Lectureship in 2012. I also want to express my gratitude to Professor Michael P. J. Reilly, Dean of Te Tumu, School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies in the University of Otago and Professor Jenny BryantTokalau, Chair of the Postgraduate Programme of Te Tumu for their advice on my research in New Zealand. I am particularly grateful for the encouragement and dialogue I had in Dunedin with my longstanding friend and fellow doctoral student from the 1970s in Aberdeen, Dr John Roxborogh. I want to thank Mr Phillip Lambert, an independent researcher in Hamilton, New Zealand, who brought to my attention some newly published material relevant to my discussion of the Māori Supreme Being. Although my research in Zimbabwe was not so recent as in Australia and New Zealand, I remain indebted for the help I was given in conducting research near the village of Mberengwa by Professor Tabona Shoko of the University of Zimbabwe and Dr Douglas Dziva, who was my student in the University of Zimbabwe and now is Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. During my visit to Alaska in 2011, I was helped enormously by Dr Ann Fienup-Riordan, who has subsequently assisted me by clarifying some further points I raised with her. Finally, I want to thank the Rev. Mark Allred of the Alaska Native Lutheran Church in Anchorage for his helpful insights on Protestant Christianity in Alaska. James L. Cox Edinburgh, November 2013

x

IntroductIon

DEFINITIONS, TErmINOLOGy aND THE “INVENTION OF TraDITION”

The title of this book was inspired by the critique of Western interpretations of African religions developed in the late 1960s by the Ugandan poet, philosopher and anthropologist Okot p’Bitek, in his now-classic work entitled African Religions in Western Scholarship. P’Bitek (1970; 1990: 80) opens his tenth chapter, which he calls the “Hellenization of African deities”, with the following words: “When students of African religions describe African deities as eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. they intimate that African deities have identical attributes with those of the Christian God.” He closes the same chapter with an indictment of such conclusions, which he labels as “absurd and misleading” (p’Bitek 1990: 80), by referring to the same attributes: “African peoples”, he writes, “may describe their deities as ‘strong’ but not ‘omnipotent’; ‘old’, not ‘eternal’, ‘great’, not ‘omnipresent’” (ibid.: 88). He then concludes in a way that indicates how I obtained the title for this volume: “The African deities of the books, clothed with the attributes of the Christian God, are, in the main, creations of the students of African religions” (ibid.). P’Bitek has suggested quite correctly that African Christians nowadays generally take for granted that there can always be found an equivalent in the local language to a concept of a Supreme Being. This uncritical attitude primarily has resulted from years of missionary teaching and carries with it the assumption that the Supreme Being can be translated into Christian categories. P’Bitek (1990: 62) recounts how among his own people, the Acoli of northern Uganda, in the early part of the twentieth century, Italian Catholic priests put before the elders the question “Who created you?” P’Bitek argues that because in the local Luo language there is no independent term for “create” or “creation”, the question was rendered to mean “Who moulded you?” P’Bitek adds that this was an equally meaningless question to which the elders simply answered they did not know. But the missionaries persisted. Finally, one of the elders remembered that when a person is afflicted with 1

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tuberculosis of the spine he loses his normal figure; he gets “moulded”. So the elder answered the insistent questioning of the missionaries with the word, “Rubanga – the one who moulds people” (ibid.). P’Bitek notes that this is the name of the hostile spirit which the Acoli believe causes the hunch or hump on the back. “And instead of exorcising these hostile spirits, the representatives of Jesus Christ began to preach that Rubanga was the Holy Father who created the Acoli”. P’Bitek concludes: “Whenever we read that an African people believed in a ‘creator’, we can be assured that is the result of such soliciting on the behalf of the reporter” (ibid.). Following p’Bitek’s lead, the overarching aim of this book is to provide an in-depth study of Christian or Christian-inspired interpretations which posit an ancient, but universal, belief in a Supreme Being among indigenous societies. On the basis of empirical evidence, my intention is to critically evaluate the assertion that those writing in traditions influenced by Christian theological assumptions, both indigenous and non-indigenous, have tended not to take seriously indigenous religions in their own right, even when they have attempted sympathetically to interpret them as consistent with Christian teaching and hence with what they regarded as “higher” forms of religion. This charge was made by p’Bitek when he declared that “the aim of the study of African religions should be to understand the religious beliefs and practices of African peoples, rather than to discover the Christian God in Africa” (1990: 111). P’Bitek’s criticism was aimed at the widespread notion put forward by leading African theologians of the twentieth century, such as J. S. Mbiti and E. B. Idowu, who followed the lead of the British missionaries Geoffrey Parrinder and Edwin W. Smith by asserting that African indigenous religions contained all the elements necessary to prepare traditional Africans for the Christian message when it was presented to them (see Cox 2006: 141– 52). For such a contention to be maintained, a universal African belief in a Supreme Being became a necessary assumption. In this book, after reviewing the historical debate over an original belief in God in “primitive” societies (Chapter 1), I present four case studies depicting how indigenous religious beliefs have been interpreted in terms largely consistent with the Christian idea of God. I begin in Chapter 2 with the case of New Zealand, where the controversy over whether Io, the postulated Māori Supreme Being, antedates missionary contact has exercised academics for well over a century and is rooted in the debate over primitive monotheism. Ethnographers sympathetic to Māori traditions and Christian theologians have promoted the idea, sometimes uncritically, that belief in Io represents an ancient, but highly secret belief found in a cult rooted in the class distinctions typical of Polynesian societies. In Zimbabwe, as we will see in Chapter 3, the overwhelming consensus today among Christians is that the original idea of Mwari, the so-called Shona High God, is commensurate with the Christian belief in God the Father, the creator of the universe. In Chapter 4 I consider the case of Australia, where in consultations occurring in the mid-1990s Aboriginal Christian 2

introduction : definitions , terminology and the “invention of tradition ”

leaders from North Queensland have sought to integrate Christian teachings into ideas found in Aboriginal spirituality by suggesting that the traditional stories about a “rainbow-serpent” provide a key to deciphering an Aboriginal belief in a Supreme Being. Among the Yupiit of southwest Alaska, the case comprising Chapter 5, missionaries tended to dismiss indigenous beliefs as containing no idea of God at all, but more recently academics and indigenous community elders have begun to assert that the Yupiit believed in a “person of the universe”, called Ellam Yua, who stood behind and informed the vision of shamans. This, however, has never been put into a theological statement or formalized by church leaders, and in this sense the Alaskan situation offers a sharp contrast to the cases of New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Australia. As the chapters unfold, in each case I critically analyse explanations that assert a primordial belief in a Supreme Being in light of what we know empirically about the religious teachings and ritual observances prior to extensive contact with Western missionaries, explorers and colonial officials. In the final chapter, I consider in what ways the postulated universal belief in God among indigenous societies can be described as an “invention” that developed against the backdrop of prior pejorative attitudes towards so-called primitive religious beliefs and practices. My conclusions will have a strong bearing on the fundamental ethical challenge posed by p’Bitek that academics treat all religions in the same way by not privileging in the first instance Christianity and secondly the “world” religions over indigenous traditions. Finally, I will suggest how my study sheds additional insight on the persistent controversy dogging the academic study of religion over the relationship between religious studies and theology. DEFINITIONS aND CLarIFICaTION OF TErmS: “INDIGENOUS” aND “rELIGION”

It is necessary at the outset to clarify how I am using terms in this book. I have written extensively elsewhere about how I define the two key words, “indigenous” and “religion”. I will therefore refer only briefly in this context to how I understand these fundamental and at times contentious concepts. I want to devote most of my attention to explaining how I am employing the term “invention”, since this potentially could prove offensive to some of my informants and to contemporary members of the indigenous societies whose histories and beliefs I am describing. This raises the background methodological issue, often posed by researchers committed to phenomenological approaches, about the moral and scientific implications of depicting religious communities in terms with which the communities do not agree or in which they do not recognize themselves (see W. C. Smith 1981: 97). In my book From Primitive to Indigenous (Cox 2007a: 68–71), I identified two principal characteristics of indigenous religions: 3

the invention of god in indigenous societies

1. indigenous religious beliefs, rituals and social practices focus on ancestors, and hence have an overwhelming emphasis on kinship relations; and 2. they identify exclusively with a specific geographical place. Both of these primary characteristics demonstrate that indigenous religions are localized rather than universal and that their religious beliefs and practices apply only within a particular and quite restricted cosmological framework. In today’s world, indigenous peoples are still defined by ancestral traditions and location, even though they may no longer reside in the place from which they originate. In other words, even if they live in diaspora communities or in urban centres, they continue to identify with the land out of which their ancestors mythically emerged or where according to legend the ancestors led their people and established their traditions. Kinship and location, as irreducible, defining qualities, provide students of religion with testable and scientific criteria for denoting what is and what is not an indigenous religion. For example, it would be clear, according to these standards, that the various expressions of Australian Aboriginal religions are indigenous religions. They fundamentally relate to ancestors and are limited to specific locations where their ancient ancestors travelled and settled, bringing the people who now live in these locations into being (Bell 2001: 177–92). Judaism, on the other hand, provides a more ambiguous case. It clearly identifies with a place and in the broadest sense might be considered a religion of kinship that is traceable back to the founding ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jewish cosmology could be construed as ethnocentric, since it is restricted to the God of Israel. Nonetheless, it is more likely that in its early history the people of Israel might have been considered to have practised an indigenous religion, since their god was a tribal god among other deities. Today, this normally cannot be applied strictly to Jewish theology, which describes the God of the Hebrew Scriptures as the Creator of the universe and has spread its practices throughout the world (Bowker 1997: 512–14). On my analysis, in accordance with a scientific method, no matter which cases are being considered, the religious beliefs and practices of any community can be designated as indigenous only if their central belief focuses on ancestors and their primary identity is defined by its relation to a specific geographical location. In From Primitive to Indigenous, I also proposed a two-pronged definition of religion, one element of which I called substantive, the other functional (Cox 2007a: 77–9). The substantive part of my definition stressed that religion can be delineated from other aspects of human behaviour by referring to the content towards which religious activity is aimed. I called this “postulated, non-falsifiable alternate realities”, by which I meant that believing communities do the postulating, while, according to scientific criteria, the object of religious attention remains entirely non-falsifiable. I defined the 4

introduction : definitions , terminology and the “invention of tradition ”

object of religious attention as “alternate” in the sense that when communities engage with a religious object, they clearly are operating in a space and time that they differentiate from ordinary space and time, but which is closely intertwined or enmeshed with normal life experience. So, rather than calling this an “alternative” reality, I preferred to describe this as an “alternate” reality into which religious believers enter, usually in ritual contexts, and pass through, as it were in waves, alternating between one form of reality and the other. I used the term “realities” to designate that for believers the object of religious devotion is as “real” as that which they experience in everyday life, and that for some religious communities the reality is plural, consisting of various alternate realities. The functional part of my definition emphasized that religion is always a communal and social affair, although, of course, it can be and is experienced individually. Nonetheless, religion can never be regarded as religion if what is referred to is an entirely isolated experience. For this reason, religious communities are established and sustain themselves according to authoritative traditions, which are passed on from generation to generation. The traditions develop over time, change and transform themselves into new traditions, but in every case there is an appeal to an authority that legitimates the hold the tradition maintains over the community. For identifiable religious groups, this authority derives from the postulated, non-falsifiable alternate reality or realities, and thus wields an overwhelming power over the beliefs, social organization and moral obligations adhered to and enforced by the community and its leaders. This definition is functional because it emphasizes the communal and social roles of religion. By combining the substantive and functional parts to my definition of religion, I conclude that religion is best conceived of in the following terms: “Religion” refers to identifiable communities that base their beliefs and experiences of postulated non-falsifiable alternate realities on a tradition that is transmitted authoritatively from generation to generation. We can then extrapolate from this definition of religion to arrive at a statement of what is meant by indigenous religions: The term “indigenous religions” refers to localized, kinship-based communities that base their beliefs and experiences of nonfalsifiable alternate realities on ancestral traditions that are transmitted authoritatively from generation to generation.

5

the invention of god in indigenous societies

THE “INVENTION” OF TraDITIONS

The tradition which is transmitted from generation to generation and which stands at the core of the functional element in my definition of religion should never be understood as invariable or constant. Traditions transform themselves into new expressions as social, economic and cultural changes affect communities. The legitimization of the authority nonetheless is regarded by the community as having been derived from an ancient tradition, even if the source of the tradition is imagined, postulated or “invented”. Numerous examples of this can be provided from established religions, such as Christianity or Islam, which appeal to the authority of the Hebrew traditions, albeit re-interpreted in light of new prophetic movements. Or, in the case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), we find the authority of the tradition validated by the postulated reign of the resurrected Christ on North American soil (Bowman 2012: xvii–xviii). Another example can be found in numerous “new age” movements, such as “neoshamanism”, which claims that the contemporary practice of shamanism reflects ancient ecstatic and universal experiences characteristic of humanity from its inception. It is the antiquity and the alleged universal character of the shamanic journey that legitimates its authenticity as practised within contemporary shamanic groups (Cox 2007a: 150–60). In this sense, all religions are “invented”, since religious authority is obtained from postulated alternate realities to which appeals are made to justify the overwhelming power of the transmitted tradition. The idea that traditions are invented has been the subject of much academic discussion since Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger edited their seminal volume The Invention of Tradition in 1983. For Hobsbawm and Ranger, the term “invention” was intended to convey a process of social and cultural change rather than imply that some traditions were authentic and others merely imagined. They did, however, distinguish between traditions that had long histories and those that had been introduced more recently. And, although they referred to lasting as opposed to transient traditions, as Hobsbawm explained in his opening essay, “it is their appearance and establishment rather than their chances of survival which are our primary concern” (Hobsbawm [1983] 2012: 1). Hobsbawm defined invented tradition as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past” (ibid.). He adds that “inventing traditions … is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition” (ibid.: 4). This process resembles what I mean by the transmission of authoritative traditions through which religious communities legitimize their beliefs, practices and social norms, and which, ostensibly at least, have been passed on from generation to generation. 6

introduction : definitions , terminology and the “invention of tradition ”

The essays in the book edited by Hobsbawm and Ranger do not examine religious customs as such but explore national and cultural traditions, including the Highland tradition of Scotland (Hugh Trevor-Roper), the reconstruction of Welsh cultural identity during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Prys Morgan), and the traditions built up around the British monarchy between 1820 and 1977 (David Cannadine). As a historian of Africa, Ranger’s own contribution to the book examines “the invention of tradition in colonial Africa”, in which he argues that the “neo-tradition” of the newly created white “gentility” fostered by the “glamour of empire building” had the greatest impact on both whites and blacks in colonial Africa (Ranger [1983] 2012: 214–15). Clearly, Ranger is referring to an “invented” tradition of white superiority and the perceived European burden of advancing civilization, which, although not authentic in the sense of being “real”, nonetheless fostered and promoted historical change throughout much of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Hobsbawm and Ranger do not treat the invention of tradition in this sense as deliberately deceitful. This, however, is precisely how the term invention is used in a book dealing directly with religious traditions edited by Olav Hammer and John R. Lewis, which carries the title The Invention of Sacred Tradition. In their opening essay, Hammer and Lewis (2007: 1–2) refer to the coexistence of “historically verifiable traditions” with “recent innovations whose origins are spuriously projected back into time”. As an example of a “spurious” invention of tradition they refer to “the contemporary New Age scene” in which practices are attributed to “hundreds if not thousands of years of history … that the usual standards of secular historiography date no further back than the 1970s and 1980s” (ibid.: 2). Of course, the invention of sacred traditions is not limited to recent innovations, since, according to Hammer and Lewis, such inventions appear “to be a perennial motif in religious history”. They refer to the Jewish and Christian traditions in this regard which freely credit Moses as being the author of the Pentateuch, although according to contemporary scholarship, Moses “probably never existed” (ibid.). They also cite the case of Mahayana Buddhism where “texts put words in the mouth of the historical Buddha” (ibid.: 3). These are examples of misattribution, which raise for Hammer and Lewis a central question: “Why does nearly every religion have spurious traditions and misattributed texts?” (ibid.: 4) They suggest that inventing traditions serves the purposes of the leaders of religious communities and, as in the case of Mormonism, enables them to “ascribe … radically new ideas to ancient founding figures” (ibid.: 6). They call this a process of “constructing an ideologically skewed historical lineage” that has the benefit of bestowing “legitimacy on one’s own tradition”. By contrast, opponents of a religious community “can create their own equally invented histories in order to delegitimate others” (ibid.). 7

the invention of god in indigenous societies

Although much of what Hammer and Lewis maintain corresponds to my own interpretation of how traditions are authenticated, transformed and reinvented over time, I oppose equating the term “invention” with deceit and I resist labelling all such social and cultural appropriations as spurious. Rather, I prefer the position suggested by Hobsbawn that all traditions are “invented” and legitimate themselves by appealing to sources acknowledged within the community as authoritative. Invented religious traditions can be distinguished from one another by their relative relationship to antiquity and by the pragmatic effect their assertions have in reinforcing the authority of the tradition. This is why I contend, as do Hammer and Lewis, that empirical evidence used in evaluating the authoritative claims of religious communities is relevant to understanding the motives and intentions of those promulgating them, but I want to use the empirical evidence as a means for social analysis rather than as a source for normative judgements. This is precisely the point made by Charles L. Briggs, Chair of Folklore in the University of California at Berkeley, who argued that debates concerning “the scholarly use of such terms as invention or imagination … revolve less around questions of misunderstanding than around the way that people making claims to represent cultural constructions are located vis-à-vis one another in shifting political economies” (Briggs 1996: 438, original emphasis). TwO LEVELS OF aNaLySIS

In this book, when considering the “invention of God” in indigenous societies, I am subjecting the term “invention” to two distinct, but related levels of analysis. First, the central question, which I address in each chapter, explores how accurate the claims are that are being made by various parties interested in discovering a Supreme Being among indigenous populations prior to extensive contact with Christian missionaries and Western patterns of thought. It will be important to establish in so far as possible the reliability of the evidence cited in the light of what we can actually ascertain about pre-Christian indigenous religious beliefs. In this way of speaking, “invention” denotes those cases where the facts do not support the assertions being made by advocates of primordial indigenous conceptions of God. A second level of analysis points towards the motives of those who make contentions about indigenous deities as being commensurate with a High God or a Supreme Being. In some cases, such assertions are put forward by nonindigenous people who have a vested interest, usually theologically inspired, in convincing a largely non-indigenous public of the existence of a primal belief in a universal God. In other instances, the argument has been taken up by indigenous leaders and scholars for a variety of reasons, some of which represent reactions against earlier denigrating attitudes towards their own religious traditions. On this second level, “invention” implies that conscious 8

introduction : definitions , terminology and the “invention of tradition ”

efforts have been made to link ancient traditions with more recent religious innovations for purposes which suit the aims of those doing the inventing. In the concluding chapter, I introduce the concept “cultural hybridity”, which I use as a critical tool to uncover the social, historical and cultural processes at play at this second level of analysis. In the end, all traditions are invented. When applied to an analysis of indigenous religious communities, this idea asserts that indigenous societies have always been dynamic and have changed in response to internal and external factors that have led in turn to new interpretations of the tradition. The new interpretations nonetheless almost always are based on the assumption that the sacred source for the tradition is authoritative and forms the basis on which those who derive their authority from the postulated ancient tradition justify their exercise of power. In the context of this book, this conclusion suggests that contemporary indigenous societies, which construct an alleged line of continuity between their current religious expressions and ancient traditions, have indeed “invented” a tradition, but the invention reveals more about contemporary issues directly affecting the welfare of the community than it does about the postulated veracity of the claim itself. I will return to the second level of analysis in the concluding chapter of this book. At this point, I simply want to underscore that I am not making use of the term “invention” to defame the character of any of the players involved in my analysis by implying that they have utilized or currently are employing dishonest tactics in support of their overriding ideological purpose. Rather, my aim is to expose the many agendas that inform a variety of interpretations of indigenous religious beliefs and to place them into historical, social and cultural contexts. My own motive in doing so, as I stated at the outset of this Introduction, in accordance with Okot p’Bitek’s stinging critique of Western scholarship, is to appeal for fair treatment of indigenous traditions as a condition for academic credibility and scholarly integrity, and to use this as a platform for presenting religious studies as a scientific as opposed to a theological field of study.

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chapter 1

THE “GOD CONTrOVErSy” IN prE-CHrISTIaN INDIGENOUS rELIGIONS

When modern missionary activity developed among Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century, partly influenced by the founding of the Society of Jesus, and reached its heyday among Protestants in the nineteenth century, various questions about pre-Christian faith came to preoccupy Christian theologians. The Jesuit Matteo Ricci argued in the early seventeenth century that the original word for God among Chinese Confucians (Shangti) represented a form of monotheism consistent with Christianity, but that this had later degenerated into “atheistic neo-Confucianism” (Ahn 2011: 44–5). The London Missionary Society missionary and noted sinologist James Legge, working in China during the early to mid-nineteenth century, supported Ricci’s interpretation of an original Confucian monotheism that had subsequently degenerated. Legge suggested further that humanity had diffused throughout the world from a single source according to the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel (ibid.: 76). Ricci and later Legge represented a missionary strategy that, although controversial and contentious among some of their church sponsors, anticipated later academic discussions of an original monotheism as the source of religion, which had deteriorated into polytheism, animism and lower forms of religion. As a missionary theology, this fitted nicely into the Christian doctrine of a fallen humanity, which could only be rescued by accepting Christ and by returning to the true, pure monotheism of biblical faith. It is often overlooked by scholars writing about the history of religious studies that notions of a primitive monotheism advocated by certain latenineteenth-century and twentieth-century interpreters of religions among archaic societies, such as Andrew Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt and (as we shall see) Mircea Eliade, had their roots in theological interpretations of pre-Christian religions. That the academic debate over primitive monotheism developed in the wake of the rapid development of missionary activity is therefore no surprise. This relation is missed, for example, by Jane Simpson in her discussion 11

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of primitive monotheism in the context of the postulated Māori belief in the Supreme Being, Io, to which I will return in the next chapter. Simpson (1997: 56) argues that “the primitive monotheism of a certain school of anthropologists and of the early historians of religion … was indispensable for the survival and growth of their new disciplines”, particularly in their attempt to dissociate themselves from theological methods. She explains that primitive monotheism accomplished this since it demonstrated that “the missionary God had not been needed after all and … that the religious beliefs of ‘primitive’ peoples met post-Enlightenment tests of advanced mentality and introspective thought” (ibid.). Although this conclusion applies, as we will see, particularly to late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anti-missionary ethnologists working in New Zealand, for important precursors to the academic study of religions who advanced the doctrine of primitive monotheism, this idea underscored the need for the superior and advanced revelation of God in Christian faith, particularly in light of the contention that original monotheism had degenerated into forms of polytheism and animism. Moreover, the very argument that indigenous peoples were fully human and had from time immemorial been the recipients of divine revelation provided a foundation for all missionary work and is a bedrock of current reconstructions of Christianity in indigenous traditions (see Cox 2007a: 10–13). In this chapter, I examine the relationship between academic and theological interests in making God indigenous, which consumed much of the attention of anthropologists and ethnologists at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first two decades of the twentieth century. My purpose in doing so is to set the context for my later case studies by demonstrating that the academic arguments which reached a heightened intensity at the turn of the twentieth century and which still bear on contemporary efforts to locate the Christian God in indigenous societies, were based largely on ideological presuppositions that pre-determined the interpretations scholars gave to the data they uncovered. I will argue that those who sided with the primitive monotheistic argument did so primarily for theologically inspired reasons, although these were often veiled beneath “scientific” evidence based on what reports from field studies told them about beliefs in God in indigenous societies. By contrast, the aim of anthropologists writing with an anti-religious bias was to disclose the earliest phases of religion by studying, but not interfering with, societies that they believed were doomed to extinction. Neither position had anything to do with the interests of indigenous people themselves nor was it intended to treat indigenous religions as worthy of study in their own right. This point was emphasized in this instance quite correctly by Jane Simpson (1997: 85), who at the conclusion of her discussion of the debates surrounding Io in the context of New Zealand observes that the protagonists in this controversy were not interested in what she calls the “Other”, even as “object”, but primarily were engaged in an argument over “the primitive origins of the religious beliefs of the colonizer, the ‘subject’”. 12

the “ god controversy ” in pre - christian indigenous religions

THE appLICaTION OF EVOLUTIONary THEOry TO THE STUDy OF aUSTraLIaN INDIGENOUS pEOpLES: THE INFLUENCE OF BaLDwIN SpENCEr

In the chapter he calls “Darwinism Makes It Possible”, Eric Sharpe (1975: 47), in his seminal Comparative Religion: A History, argues that by around 1880, “the Darwinian hypothesis was becoming virtually impossible to resist”. The most influential scholar who applied evolutionary theories to social and cultural development, according to Sharpe, was the British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer, whose First Principles, initially published in 1862 before Darwin’s theories had become widely known, subjected “every aspect of human culture” to an evolutionary pattern and by the end of the nineteenth century “it was a matter of working Spencer’s insights out in detail” (ibid.). Sharpe notes the radical change evolutionary theory made for interpretations of religion: “From being a body of revealed truth, it became a developing organism” (ibid.). In the new field of anthropology, two key figures who employed evolutionary thinking to determine the origins of religion among human societies were E. B. Tylor and J. G. Frazer. In his Primitive Culture, first published in 1871, Tylor posits his famous theory that religion originated in the primitive’s projection of spirit or anima onto all natural objects, whether animate or inanimate. This had resulted from the imagination of prehistoric humans who in dreams encountered unembodied spirits and at death saw breath, interpolated as soul, leave the human body (Tylor 1913: vol. I, 428–9). Through a process of psychic projections representing a universal internal working of the human mind, external objects, such as stones, trees, pools, rivers, mountains, forests and any other number of natural objects were imbued with life, breath, spirit or anima. From this early human projection, Tylor built up a developmental model of religion which advanced to gods and ultimately to the belief in monotheism and ethical forms of religion (ibid.: vol. II, 332–61). He regarded the presence of animistic beliefs in the “doctrines and rites of the higher races” as a “survival of the old in the midst of the new” (ibid.: vol. I, 500). In his multi-volume work written over many decades called The Golden Bough,1 J. G. Frazer followed a similar developmental model as that of Tylor, but Frazer suspected that the origins of religion lay in magical thinking, the attempt by human communities to manipulate external forces for good or evil. Frazer regarded this as false science, which because it did not always work, gave way to religion which assigned to forces outside human control independent wills with power over events affecting human welfare. This resulted in the development of ritual life, sacrifices and other characteristics of religion which are aimed at persuading unseen powers to act according to the requests made by human communities. For Frazer, the end of all this is science, true causality, which demonstrates how humans actually can control forces that impinge on their health and well-being.2 13

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It will be clear that on a Darwinian interpretation the earliest form of religion was simple, basic and unsophisticated, which over time became increasingly more complex, more diverse, involving ever more intricate and multi-layered forms of ritual behaviour. Herbert Spencer (1880: 327) defined evolution as “a universal process”, which, “under its primary aspect, is a change from a less coherent form to a more coherent form”. He referred to this process as a development from “a homogeneous state to a heterogeneous state” (ibid.: 330), which culturally can be seen when “these traits are turned into those of the adult European” (ibid.: 342; see also Cox 2006: 70–71). Of course, the evolution of religions was not understood in a strictly linear fashion as if one stage moved seamlessly into the other. This is evidenced in the notion of “survivals” as suggested by both Tylor and Frazer, in which it was posited that primitive ways of thinking and acting still could be detected in the higher religions. For example, according to Frazer, in the Christian Eucharist we can discern the survival of the ancient Greek Dionysian cult where the body of the god was sacrificed and consumed (see Frazer [1922] 1963: 578; see also Cox 2007a: 15; Berner 2004: 141–9). Nonetheless, it was not in the contemporary survival of early forms of religion expressed in the great monotheistic religions where primitive human religious expressions could be located and analysed, but in the actual and still existing simple societies which anthropologists were discovering and studying in Africa, parts of South America, but most notably among the Australian Aborigines. It was against this background that the ethnographic work of Baldwin Spencer was conducted among the Aboriginal peoples of the central desert regions of Australia. Spencer studied natural sciences at Oxford University where he was influenced by E. B. Tylor. In 1887 he was appointed Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne. Seven years later, in 1894, he was invited to join the Horn Expedition to central Australia, which was a collaboration between the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, aimed at investigating in a remote part of Australia a wide range of scientific interests, including botany, geology, anthropology, ethnology and zoology. Spencer was the expedition’s zoologist and photographer, and later the author of its report. The Horn Expedition, which lasted three months, stimulated Spencer’s interest in studying further the Aboriginal peoples of the central desert region. He returned two years later, and in close cooperation with the Alice Springs postmaster, F. J. Gillen, whom Spencer had met during the Horn Expedition, began a study of indigenous societies in the region. Gillen, who in 1892 was appointed Alice Springs post and telegraph station master, according to the linguist and anthropologist T. G. H. Strehlow (1947: 169), arranged “a series of initiation and other ceremonies … for Spencer’s benefit”. This research resulted in a joint article published in the journal Nature in 1897 describing a cycle of ceremonies performed by the Arunta (Arrernte) called Engwura, which Gillen described in a letter he wrote to Spencer in 1896 as “a big ceremony … which is performed in various places 14

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and at long intervals throughout the whole tribe” (cited by Jones 2005: 18). In 1899, Spencer and Gillen published their comprehensive volume outlining their research among central desert Aboriginal peoples under the title, Native Tribes of Central Australia. According to Phillip Jones of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, this work is notable not only for its ethnographic descriptions (praised by J. G. Frazer), but for its adept use of photographs. Jones explains: Spencer and Gillen went to considerable lengths to position photographs in the book, illustrating and expanding upon particular points and themes. As a result, the book revealed Central Australia as a previously unknown stage, peopled with human actors whose choreographed rituals explicitly linked ceremony to place. (Ibid.: 10) Spencer returned to the central desert region in 1926. A year later, he published The Arunta: A Study of a Stone Age People, in which he credited Gillen, who had died fifteen years earlier, as co-author. Since his days at Oxford, Spencer had been a committed evolutionist, a position he maintained consistently with respect to his studies of the tribes of the Australian central desert. In her unpublished PhD thesis completed at the University of Sydney, Anna Kenny (2008: 7) argues that “Spencer never abandoned his view that the Arrernte were ‘Stone Age’ or primitive people and the evidence of … ‘the missing link’ proclaimed in social Darwinist theories”. This view is expressed by Spencer himself in the starkest terms in his Preface to The Arunta: Australia is the present home and refuge of creatures, often crude and quaint, that have elsewhere passed away and given place to higher forms. This applies equally to the aboriginal as to the platypus and kangaroo. Just as the platypus, laying its eggs and feebly suckling its young, reveals a mammal in the making, so does the Aboriginal show us, at least in broad outline, what early man must have been like before he learned to read and write, domesticate animals, cultivate crops and use a metal tool. It has been possible to study in Australia human beings that still remain on the culture level of men of the Stone Age. (Spencer & Gillen 1927: vii) Between the publication of The Native Tribes of Central Australia and The Arunta, Spencer noted such a decline in the numbers of Aboriginal peoples that he was sure the indigenous population was bound to die out. He writes: “Of the local group of Udnirringita people at Alice Springs, that numbered forty when we knew them in 1886, not a solitary man, woman or child remains” (ibid.: ix). This same situation is replicated by numerous groups that Spencer and Gillen had studied thirty years earlier, leading Spencer to 15

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conclude that with the dying out of the older generation of Arrernte men “with them will pass away all knowledge of primitive customs and beliefs” (ibid.). This conclusion prompted T. G. H. Strehlow (1947: xvii) to suggest that Spencer regarded the Arrernte “merely as a highly specialized offshoot of the human species – primitive and incapable of further development, and therefore inevitably and naturally doomed to total extinction from the day when the superior white man entered upon his domains”. Spencer returned to Alice Springs to conduct further research on the Arrernte partly in response to the findings of the missionary Carl Strehlow, who had been stationed at the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg and who wrote his own in-depth study of the central desert peoples in German in seven volumes published between 1907 and 1920 under the title Die Arandaund Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Spencer in particular wanted to investigate the claim made by Strehlow that the Arrernte believed in a High God or Supreme Being, which the missionaries translated as Alchera in the native language. In The Arunta, Spencer (Spencer & Gillen 1927: x) wrote that he “re-investigated, as carefully as possible, the Alchera and Churinga3 beliefs, and realized how fortunate we [he and Gillen] had been in having the opportunity of seeing and studying in the early days, the various initiation, Engwura, Intichiuma and other ceremonies in their entirety and primitive state”. On the claim by Strehlow that Alchera refers to God, Spencer concluded that “the word is not applied to any Being, either mythical or actually existing” and asserted that “its use by the missionaries as the equivalent of God is wrong and misleading” (ibid.: x–xi). Spencer claimed that Alchera, rather than referring to God, “is associated intimately in the mind of the native with the far past times in which his totem ancestors came into existence, lived and died” (ibid.: 304). As a result, every individual possesses his or her own Alchera which “includes his totem … the original ancestors of his totemic group, his association with them, everything that they possessed, everything they did and the times in which they lived” (ibid.).4 Spencer’s conclusions about the lack of belief in a Supreme Being among the Arrernte were consistent with the evolutionary theory of religion as advocated by Tylor and Frazer, and they point to the prior assumptions on which Spencer’s research was based. It would not have been expected that a primitive society, with its elemental grasp of ideas, would have developed a concept of God that could be considered commensurate with monotheistic religions. In light of his conviction that the indigenous people of the central desert region inevitably will become extinct, Spencer believed it was incumbent on scientists to describe and record Aboriginal customs, beliefs and rituals without interfering with them or trying to change them. On this score, the missionaries were absolutely wrong to attempt to alter the beliefs of Aboriginal peoples by introducing them to concepts that were beyond their grasp. In the report of the Horn Expedition, Spencer (1896: vol. I, 111) described the work of the Lutherans at Hermannsburg under the leadership of Carl Strehlow as 16

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attempting “to teach them [natives] ideas absolutely foreign to their minds and which they are utterly incapable of grasping”. He then asserted that “it is far better that as much as possible he should be left in his native state and that no attempt should be made either to cause him to lose faith in the strict tribal rule, or to teach him abstract ideas which are utterly beyond the comprehension of an Australian aborigine” (ibid.). This attitude, although appearing scientific and objective, reveals the underlying evolutionary presupposition under which Spencer’s work was conducted. He regarded his role as preserving for posterity that which would soon disappear, much like other Stone Age civilizations had been overtaken by advancing technologies and intellectual developments. This presupposition prompted T. G. H. Strehlow (1978: 3) to charge that Spencer’s work, was not only prejudiced from the outset, but that this inherent evolutionary bias has largely gone unchallenged by the wider scientific community with damaging results for how Aboriginal society has been evaluated: The nauseating insults heaped upon his aboriginal informants by Spencer himself … have always been passed off in silence by the later anthropologists, who have followed in his steps and reserved their criticisms for the missionaries, some of whom admittedly criticized “pagan” ideas strongly, without, however, ceasing to regard the original people of this continent as fellow human beings. CarL STrEHLOw: GErmaN ETHNOLOGy aND a mISSIONary STraTEGy

We can contrast the approach of Spencer with that of Carl Strehlow, who was senior missionary at the Hermannsburg Lutheran mission, located around 125 kilometres southwest of Alice Springs, from 1894 until he was forced to leave due to illness in 1922. According to Kenny (2008: 10), Strehlow inherited the larger nineteenth-century German humanistic tradition which can be “traced through German philology, the German Romantic movement, Humboldtian cosmography, history and comparative geography”. This humanistic interpretation of Australian religions can be compared to Spencer’s dismissal of Aboriginal peoples as Stone Age primitives destined to extinction. Kenny describes the difference between Strehlow’s and Spencer’s intellectual backgrounds as representing two quite divergent traditions: “Unlike the British anthropological tradition which dominated Australian discourse, German anthropology was based on a humanistic agenda, and as a result it was anti-evolutionistic, as well as anti-racist and anti-colonialist” (Kenny 2005: 56). As evidence for this Kenny cites a comment Strehlow made in the 7 May 1920 edition of The Register in which Strehlow wrote: “And these people with such mental capacities should form the missing link? Never” (cited by Kenny 2008: 7). 17

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Carl Strehlow shared a tradition embodied also by F. Max Müller, who is dubbed by Eric Sharpe (1975: 35) “the father of comparative religion”. Müller, who was born and educated in Germany, spent most of his academic career in Oxford. According to Sharpe, Müller’s German heritage is reflected in three “streams” of eighteenth-century German intellectual traditions that he embraced: German romantic idealism, comparative Indo-European philology and “the stream of post-Hegelian philosophy of history (not to be identified with the evolutionism of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and the anthropological school, which Max Müller mistrusted)” (ibid.: 36). Müller believed that the origin of religion can be traced to the human propensity to grasp or apprehend the infinite through finite objects or symbols. This apprehension by itself does not translate into religion, which occurs only when humans assign to the infinite a moral character. Müller (1891: 294–5) defined religion as “the perception of the Infinite”, which is manifested in ways “as are able to influence the moral character of man”. What is important for us to note in this context is Müller’s view that the development of myths represents a retrogressive move away from the pure ideal of the moral infinite. In his Introduction to the Science of Religion, Müller describes mythology as “natural and intelligible at a certain stage, or at recurring stages in the development of thought and speech”, but he adds that myth, “after becoming traditional, becomes frequently unnatural and unintelligible” (Müller 1893: 252). Sharpe summarizes Müller’s thinking on this issue: It was in the religion of Vedic India that this ideal [apprehension of the Infinite] was most nearly realized … There the original state of man, perceiving the infinite beyond the phenomena of nature, appeared to be accessible to the scholar; there he could see what man made of nature before the decline set in with the elaboration of mythology. (Sharpe 1975: 39) Carl Strehlow shared Müller’s philological methodology, in Strehlow’s case, the languages of the Aboriginal peoples of central Australia. And, consistent with the German romantic tradition, he read back into the origins of the people a grasp of the infinite, which had already given the Aboriginal a sense of God. Suzanne Marchland (2003: 284) describes late nineteenth and early twentieth century German ethnology as concerned centrally with “the historical development of language and culture”, which was shaped in the context of “established religion’s dramatic struggle with science and secularization”. Strehlow inherited this tradition and, combined with his Lutheran theological background, interpreted Aboriginal peoples as being capable of gaining (or re-gaining) the human propensity to perceive the Infinite in Nature and pitted this approach against the evolutionary agenda of Baldwin Spencer. Strehlow arrived in Australia in 1892, a young man of twenty, who had recently graduated from the Neuendettelsau Seminary in Bavaria. He had 18

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not planned to become a missionary, and, in fact, according to his grandson, John Strehlow (2004: 82), intended to emigrate to America and work in the Lutheran Church in the United States. In light of the pressing need of the Lutheran mission in Australia, he was persuaded by his teacher at the Seminary, Johannes Deinzer, to accept a call to southern Australia. He first served at the Bethesda Lutheran Mission, in the far northern part of South Australia among the Dieri people, where he immediately began learning the local languages and set to translating the New Testament into Dieri. This caused him to spend long hours interviewing Dieri speakers, trying to find equivalent meanings from the Greek New Testament in the Dieri language. One of his most important conclusions during these early encounters with Aboriginal people was that their language was in a state of decay, and by extension, so too was their culture. In a letter written in 1893 to G. J. Rechner of the mission board in Germany, Strehlow suggested that “the language of our people has already had its flowering and is now falling into decay” (cited by J. Strehlow 2004: 83). This led John Strehlow (2004: 83) to conclude that “in Carl’s view Aboriginal culture had declined from an earlier, higher state of development”, a notion which stood in strong contrast to the perspectives of Tylor, Frazer and Baldwin Spencer, but which was consistent with the primitive monotheism argument, which I discuss in detail below, and with Müller’s evaluation of myth as a cultural degeneration away from a pure grasp of the moral ideal. John Strehlow notes that Carl Strehlow’s judgement regarding the then current Aboriginal society being in a process of decay informed his missionary strategy: “Christianity would reverse this decline, and enable them to regain their former condition” (ibid.). As I have suggested, like Spencer and Gillen, Carl Strehlow provided an in-depth study of the Arrernte peoples in the central desert region, but his method was primarily linguistic as opposed to making observations of Aboriginal rituals and practices. Strehlow’s strengths in understanding the Arrernte resulted from his commitment to learn native languages and from his prior philological training, which, as T. G. H. Strehlow (1971: xv–xvi) notes, was clearly deficient in the research provided by Spencer and Gillen who “were forced by their ignorance of the aboriginal languages to omit the texts of the songs sung” in their descriptions of various festivals and rituals. In her research on Carl Strehlow, Anna Kenny’s evaluation of his contribution to understanding indigenous peoples in Australia is overwhelmingly positive. She claims that because his work was “resistant to grand theory, nearly one hundred years after its publication, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien remains an invaluable resource for Arrernte and Luritja people” (Kenny 2008: 11). John Strehlow (2004: 82) affirms Kenny’s evaluation: “It offers the most profound insight into the Aranda mind at the end of the 19th century, available to a Western researcher.” T. G. H. Strehlow, who was Carl’s son and who became an expert in his own right of the central 19

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desert peoples and who knew their languages intimately, was not so generous and noted his father’s shortcomings: C. Strehlow … was handicapped by the fact that he had never been an eye-witness of any of the sacred ceremonies. His view was that his missionary status prevented his appearance at all pagan rites. Hence his descriptions of the totemic ceremonies, for instance, had to be based purely on hearsay, and are therefore not very satisfactory. (T. G. H. Strehlow 1971: xvi) What is important for us to note in this context is that Carl Strehlow began with the theologically inspired presupposition that the Aboriginal peoples of the central desert regions, like all humans, had fallen from an original state of purity, but, in light of the Christian Gospel, could be redeemed and assume the very same relationship to God as any Christian in Western society. This presupposition, although generating a highly prejudicial attitude towards Aboriginal rituals, beliefs and customs, promoted the idea that Aboriginals were not destined to become extinct and in fact could become like Christians everywhere who had been lifted out of a life of degradation into a state of grace. If Kenny is right, Carl Strehlow not only embodied in this assumption a Christian theological interpretation of Aboriginal societies, but reflected the broader anti-evolutionary school of German ethnology in contrast to anthropologists in the British tradition, who were committed to Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theory of cultural and religious development. At about the same time that the dispute between Baldwin Spencer and Carl Strehlow was being played out quite practically on the field in dealings with Aboriginal peoples, a controversy was developing among European academics that bore directly on the issues that divided Spencer and Strehlow. The Scotsman, Andrew Lang, discovered reports coming from southeast Australia that Aboriginal peoples in that area held a belief in an All Father with attributes very similar to the Christian God, but apparently without having been influenced by Europeans or missionaries. This evidence seemed to contradict prevailing evolutionary theories that dominated British anthropology at the end of the nineteenth century and gave rise to the debate over the theory of primitive monotheism. This debate persisted well into the twentieth century, with the theory of the degradation of archaic religions from a primitive monotheism being supported by another scholar in the German ethnological and missionary tradition, Wilhelm Schmidt, in contrast to the dominant view espoused by Tylor and Frazer that followed the evolutionary scheme. The academic discussion of this issue in theory proceeded on purely descriptive or empirical grounds, but it is clear that looming behind both positions were ideological assumptions: for the evolutionists, a clear antireligious sentiment; for the primitive monotheists, (although at times hidden 20

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or disguised) a Christian theological bias. It is to the primitive monotheism controversy that I now turn. THE EUrOpEaN DEBaTE: THE EVOLUTIONISTS VErSUS THE aDVOCaTES OF prImITIVE mONOTHEISm

We begin with Andrew Lang, who was not an anthropologist nor a student of religion, but in Eric Sharpe’s words (1975: 59) a “dilettante”, who wrote about a wide range of topics, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, fairies and psychic phenomena, as well as being in his own right a novelist, classicist and a translator. Sharpe (ibid.) describes Lang as “the most brilliant and mercurial of characters”. How, then, did Lang enter into the High God debate in Europe in such a serious way that he was pivotal in advocating for the position that belief in a monotheistic Supreme Being is universal and helped explain the origin of religion? Sharpe divides Lang’s interest in religion into two phases. The first, when he was a disciple of Tylor, was his mythological period in which he engaged in polemical discussions in opposition to Max Müller’s “nature-mythological” school, according to Sharpe (ibid.), “from about 1873 until 1897”. During the second phase, from 1897 until his death in 1912, he became a chief player in discussions about the universal High God, relying on reports primarily about the discovery of an All Father figure called Baiame in southeastern Australia, found in accounts of the anthropologist A. W. Howitt. These reports, he believed, might be replicated in numerous other “primitive” societies. Lang argued that at the very least the reports from the field about beliefs in High Gods should be taken seriously and not suppressed simply because they did not conform to evolutionary theories.5 He was referring to Tylor’s explanation of the reports about Baiame that such clearly Christian notions of a High God or All Father could have originated only after contact with missionaries and thus represented Christian influences (Tylor 1892: 283–301; on this point, see Eliade 1973: 8). In response to Tylor’s contention, Lang asserted that Tylor could not answer “two insuperable prima facie objections” (Lang 1908: 120–21). First, if the indigenous peoples Howitt had discovered near Wellington, about 360 kilometres west of Sydney, had been influenced by missionaries, surely they would have prayed to him, in Lang’s words, “as the missionaries pray to their God” (ibid.). But Lang points out that “they offer no gifts to their All Fathers” (ibid.). Second, “only initiated men have any knowledge of the All-Father” (ibid.). Even his name “is concealed from women, children, and, usually, from white men, except the few who have been initiated” (ibid.). If the idea of the All Father had been obtained from missionaries, “it is inconceivable that … their women and children should have been left in the dark by these evangelists” (ibid.). Lang concludes that he has seen “no reply to these two 21

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arguments” and thus he is convinced that belief in the Australian High God, the All Father called Baiame is “not the result of Christian influences” (ibid.). L. R. Hiatt, who has written about the High God controversy in Australia (Hiatt 1996: 100–119), adds a third argument which Lang used to refute the assumption that beliefs in Australian High Gods had resulted from European influence. Hiatt notes that the missionaries near Wellington were told of a belief in Baiame shortly after they arrived in the area. Further north, reports by a settler named John Manning recounted how indigenous people held a belief in Baiame, which he noted bore similarities to the Christian God, but no missionaries had been directly in contact with the Aboriginal people at the time Manning wrote his accounts. Hiatt observes that this led Lang to conclude that in order for the belief in a High God to have been carried by Europeans, “one would have to assume that Christian beliefs caught on at their points of introduction and (like smallpox) travelled ahead of the invaders” (ibid.: 104). In his book, Interpreting Aboriginal Religion, the Australian scholar of religion Tony Swain (1985: 94) cites what he calls “Lang’s famous dictum: ‘the more Animism the less “All-Fatherism””’ as evidence that Lang had interpreted the apparent lack of an All-Father belief among the Arrernte in the central desert regions as reported by Baldwin and Spencer as resulting from a decline into animism from an earlier monotheistic belief.6 In support of this contention, Swain cites Lang in The Making of Religion, where he writes: “the crude idea of a ‘Universal Power’ came earliest, and was superseded, in part, by a later propitiation of the dead and ghosts” (Lang 1898: 186; Swain 1985: 94, emphasis Lang’s). This is precisely the argument Lang made in one of his last publications, entitled The Origins of Religion and Other Essays, where he argues that evidence accrued from around the world suggests that: many very backward tribes believe in an All Father, not animistic, not a ghost; not prayed to, not in receipt of sacrifice, but existent from the beginning, exempt from death, and (in his highest aspects) kindly, an ethical judge of men, and either a maker of men and most things, or a father of men and a maker of many things. (Lang 1908: 121–2) He then speculates that “it is not at all impossible that, while they were being matured in human minds, the simpler belief in the All Father was destroyed (if it existed), and among some tribes was wholly forgotten, while in others it was partially obliterated” (ibid.: 123). Leaving aside the validity of Lang’s critique on historical and social grounds of those who, like Baldwin Spencer, maintained that Aboriginal peoples could not have conceived so elevated a concept as a Supreme Creator, what were the motives that caused Lang to latch on to the High God issue and so fervently argue, as he puts it in The Making of Religion (Lang 22

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1898: 184–5) that “the lowest savages evolved the theory of a God who reads the heart and ‘makes for righteousness’”? Lang offers several answers to this question, all theologically inspired. In The Making of Religion (ibid.: 185), he affirms the theological position that “they ‘were not left without a witness’”. In the revised version of Myth, Ritual and Religion (Lang 1899: vol. I, 305), he writes: “Man’s earliest religious ideas may well have consisted … of dependence on a supreme moral being” (emphasis added). In the same sentence, he invokes the idea that original monotheism degenerated into various lower forms of religion: “When attempts were made by savages to describe the modus of his [the supreme moral being] working”, they “became involved in the fancies of mythology” (ibid.). In a letter to Grant Allen, cited by Sharpe (1975: 63), Lang writes that “the primitive monotheists … have no idea what strong cards they hold”. These and similar comments by Lang led L. R. Hiatt (1996: 109) to suggest that Lang “was an essentially religious man who wished to demonstrate that belief in a powerful, kind and righteous deity is part of the heritage of people everywhere”. This is confirmed when, in anticipation of the theory of religion posited by the theologian Rudolf Otto, Lang speculated in The Making of Religion that the origin of religion, which he defined as “belief in the existence of an Intelligence, or Intelligences not human, and not dependent on a material mechanism of brain and nerves”, can be traced ultimately to “an unanalysable sensus numinis” (Lang 1898: 50–51). We are left with one overwhelming conclusion: Andrew Lang, “the gifted amateur” (Sharpe 1975: 59), who extracted the primitive monotheism theory out of the hands of missionaries and Christian theologians, defended the theory so adamantly, not so much because of historical or even ethnographic evidence, but because, during the second phase of his intellectual development, he came to embrace the idea that God had planted in human hearts a sense of his overpowering presence (a sensus numinis) – nowhere had God left himself without a witness. Lang himself admitted as much in his 1908 essay on the origin of religion, when he acknowledged that the evidence from the field on the question of which came first, the belief in the All Father or animism, is not conclusive and thus “in deciding this point (unless we receive further information) I suppose that everyone will be influenced by his natural bias” (Lang 1908: 125). I am arguing that Lang’s “natural bias” was at its root theological. The attempt to provide scientific evidence for the idea of primitive monotheism was left in great measure and in intricate detail to Wilhelm Schmidt, the German–Austrian ethnologist, linguist and Catholic priest of the Society of the Divine Word Order (SVD). After completing his studies at the University of Berlin in 1895 with a focus on Semitic languages, Schmidt turned his interests to investigating the languages of the peoples of the Pacific Islands, through which he became interested in the customs of the indigenous population living in the German protectorate of Papua New Guinea. In 1906, 23

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Schmidt founded the journal Anthropos as a serious review dedicated to the study of cultures around the world. Of course, he intended the journal to inform the work of the SVD missionaries, but he insisted that it uphold the highest standards of anthropological and ethnographic research. In 1910, Schmidt published a book dedicated to a study of the Pygmies of central Africa, under the title Die Stellung der Pygmäenvolker in der Entwicklungsgeschicte des Menschen (“The Place of the Pygmies in the Developmental History of Mankind”), in which he claimed to have demonstrated that the Pygmies believe in a High God or Supreme Being. As hunters and gatherers, Schmidt regarded the Pygmies as representatives of an early stage of human development, and, if a belief in one God could be located there, it would confirm a primitive form of monotheism among at least one archaic human society. Schmidt devoted much of the remainder of his career to documenting a belief in God among primitive peoples around the globe. Over a period of nearly thirty-five years, he produced what he regarded as incontrovertible proof that religion had originated in the belief in a High God. He detailed his results in twelve volumes published between 1912 and 1955 under the title, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (“The Origin of the Idea of God”). A highly condensed version of his findings as he had recorded them to date was published in English 1931 in one volume under the title The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories.7 There can be little doubt that Schmidt regarded his ethnographic work as supporting the Christian mission and as confirming the fact that God had been at work in every human society preparing the way for the reception of the Christian Gospel. His accomplishments in this regard were recognized by Pope Pius XII, who asked him to set up the Lateran Museo Missionario– Ethnologico in Rome, which Schmidt directed from 1926 until 1938 from Vienna, and in 1937, he became a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It would be easy therefore to dismiss Schmidt’s life work, which was dedicated to documenting the universal belief in one God, as purely theological. This is precisely the charge made by L. R. Hiatt (1996: 109) when he asserted that “implicit in Fr. Schmidt’s project was that men have formed the idea of a Supreme Being because a Supreme Being exists”. Hiatt also notes that the degeneration of original primitive beliefs in God into polytheism, animism and superstition fitted nicely with Schmidt’s missionary theory since it confirmed, as in the Genesis account of the fall of humanity, that “the essential truths revealed in the Bible are pristine and universal” (ibid.). In The Origin and Growth of Religion, Schmidt asserted that his theory was fully supported by ethnographic evidence. He writes: “By the methods of the history of culture we can establish two connected propositions, firstly, that these high gods are found among, and only among, the peoples ethnologically oldest, and secondly, that all these ethnologically oldest people have such gods” (Schmidt 1931: 14). In a later chapter, he restates this assertion: 24

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Comparing the primitive cultures with the later ones we may lay down the general principle that in none of the latter is the Supreme Being to be found in so clear, so definite, vivid and direct a form as among the peoples belonging to the former. (Ibid.: 257) He then proceeds to present a summative overview of these cultures showing how the High God has been found in societies around the globe. He begins with what he calls “the central or pygmy primitive culture”, then moves to the “southern primitive culture”, by which he means the Bushmen of southern Africa, the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego in South America and the Australian Aborigines. He then refers to “the Arctic primitive culture” and concludes with “North American primitives” (ibid.: 258–60). This survey, he claims, proves that the “primitive belief in a Supreme Being … is an essential property … of the most ancient of human cultures, which must have been deeply and strongly rooted in it at the very dawn of time, before the individual groups had separated from one another” (ibid.: 261). The notion that humans had at one time constituted a single society and subsequently separated from one another, of course, conforms to the biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Although Schmidt’s missionary motives beneath his unflagging advocacy for the idea of primitive monotheism are clear, this is not sufficient to discredit the claims he made in support of his argument. His ethnographic studies are detailed and he provided a theoretical framework for his conclusions about the dissemination of the idea of God through the concept “culture circles”, which he claimed, with reference to the cultures in his survey noted above, demonstrates that “the extent of these primitive cultures and the distribution of their Supreme Being is almost a girdle around the south central part” (ibid.: 160). He adds further: “Besides this belt there is so to speak a lateral extension reaching to the very ends of the earth” (ibid.: 161). Through the idea of culture circles, Schmidt explained how contact between different groups sharing common ideas and practices, in his view, could be documented. This could make clear how the original idea of God had been transmitted and transferred, and also how the original belief in a Supreme Being could have degenerated into lower forms of belief and magic. He justified this theory on the grounds that “wherever remnants of the primitive peoples are still discoverable over this huge area, they show belief in a Supreme Being” (ibid.: 261). Towards the conclusion of The Origin and Growth of Religion, Schmidt (ibid.: 262) claimed that although many scholars dispute it, his research has demonstrated that “the Supreme Being of the primitive culture is really the god of a monotheism”, and that the attributes of the primeval Supreme Being are consistent with the high monotheism of Christianity. He lists these attributes as: eternity, omniscience, beneficence, morality, omnipotence and creative power (ibid.: 270–73). Although Schmidt admitted that 25

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these attributes are not evenly distributed among all indigenous peoples, he contended that in general the commands of the Supreme Being as “giver of the moral code” extend “to the conduct of the ceremonies instituted by him, prayer and sacrifice, obedience to elders, care for the life of man and avoidance of unjustifiable homicide, sexual morality … honesty and a readiness to help those who need it” (ibid.: 274). Again, in support of these claims, he refers to those societies forming a kind of “girdle” around the central part of the globe, including “the Ituri Pygmies, in South-East Australia, North Central California, among the Algonkin and the Agonkinized Sioux, and in Tierra del Fuego” (ibid.). He found a less clear correlation between the Supreme Being and morality among the Bushmen of southern Africa and the “primitive Eskimos” and explained the degeneration of religions away from primitive monotheism as due to a number of historical factors, including what he called “distribution”, by which he meant factors such as association of the Supreme being with lunar and solar mythology, confusion over the origin of evil and “a multiplicity of superior beings … when he appears with a wife and children” (ibid.: 262–3). In his discussion of Schmidt, Eric Sharpe, as a historian and not an ethnographer, refuses to evaluate Schmidt’s theory but concludes that “although few were prepared to accept his thesis that all religion originated in a belief in one Supreme Being, many scholars came to realise that ‘high gods’ were undeniably a feature of primitive religion, explain them how we will” (Sharpe 1975: 184, original emphasis). The important qualification made by Sharpe on this point is not merely a throwaway phrase, “explain them how we will”. How to explain beliefs in High Gods defined the central point of contention in the entire controversy. As we have seen in the Lang–Tylor debate in the context of the All Father Baiame of southeastern Australia, the critical question about the theory of primitive monotheism was this: Did the belief in High Gods in primitive societies antedate contact with the Christian missionaries or did it develop rapidly after explorers, settlers and missionaries had brought with them the belief in one God? This is a question to which I will return on many occasions in the case studies of indigenous societies in later chapters. It is one that Schmidt believed he had answered definitively, but due to Schmidt’s prior missionary commitment and Christian motivation, the ease with which he assigned the attributes of the biblical God to indigenous peoples continues to cast suspicion on his conclusions.8 THE pLaCE OF mIrCEa ELIaDE IN THE prImITIVE mONOTHEISm DEBaTE

Mircea Eliade, who was one of the most influential scholars of religion during the second half of the twentieth century, is seldom discussed in terms of the debate over primitive monotheism, but he nearly always figures when scholars engage the question of the All Father and sky gods in Australia, largely 26

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because of the place he gives to sky gods in his monograph Australian Religions: An Introduction (Eliade 1973) and in his classic study, Patterns in Comparative Religion (Eliade 1958). A brief word about Eliade himself at this point will help situate him in the overall discussion about primitive monotheism. He was born in 1907 in Bucharest, Romania and brought up in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In 1925, he enrolled in the University of Bucharest, where he studied philosophy. At the age of twenty-one, he went to India where he immersed himself in Indian religiosity for three years at the University of Calcutta, followed by six months living in an ashram in Hardwar, a Hindu place of pilgrimage in the Himalayas. He wrote in his autobiography about this experience: My encounter with this tradition-laden culture at an age when spiritual discoveries can still enrich and transform one’s personality has had important consequences over and beyond my work as an Indian scholar. Indeed, the understanding of religious symbolism as it is lived at the level of the people has helped me to better grasp the symbolism still alive in my own tradition, that of an Eastern European people. (Eliade 1981: 203) In 1956, Eliade delivered the Haskell Lectures in the University of Chicago. Two years later he assumed the Chair of the History of Religions in the same university, a post he held until his death in 1986.9 In Eliade’s important and highly influential book Patterns in Comparative Religion, which he first formulated as part of his courses on the history of religions in the University of Bucharest and later delivered as lectures in Paris in 1946 and 1948 (Eliade 1958: xv), his position on the question of original monotheism is not addressed directly, but he alludes to Wilhelm Schmidt near the beginning of the section in which he deals with the universal human preoccupation with the sky. At the outset of this discussion, he describes beliefs in sky gods in an overtly Christian way by referring to the first phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven” as “the most popular prayer in the world” (ibid.: 38). He then asserts that “it is possible that man’s earliest prayers were addressed to the same heavenly father” (ibid.). This is an obvious allusion to the notion of primitive monotheism, which is confirmed by his immediate reference to Schmidt, whom Eliade credits as having written “the fullest monograph yet produced on the subject of the origin of the idea of divinity” (ibid.). Referring to Schmidt’s claim to have demonstrated the fact of primitive monotheism, Eliade comments that, although he will not enter into a discussion of Schmidt’s theory, “what is quite beyond doubt is that there is an almost universal belief in a celestial divine being, who created the universe and guarantees the fecundity of the earth (by pouring rain down on it)” (ibid.). In a way that is consistent with Lang’s comment that “God has not left himself without a witness”, Eliade (ibid.: 38) suggests that 27

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the sky itself contains deep religious significance, so much so that it “directly reveals a transcendence, a power and a holiness”. And then, in clear support of the Christian doctrine of general or natural revelation, Eliade (ibid.) asserts that the very contemplation of the sky acts as “a revelation” showing itself “as it really is: infinite, transcendent”. Such explicitly Christian, theological language suggests that Eliade was interpreting the development of religion in a way that is consistent with the missionary theory of praeparatio evangelica, which he confirms in a footnote where he states quite boldly: “One may see [pagan religious ways] as desperate attempts to prefigure the mystery of the Incarnation” (ibid.: 30). What he claims in this footnote not to support is the idea that humanity degenerated from a pristine primitive monotheism into what he calls “fetishs, idols and such” (ibid.). So, it would appear that the early Eliade was happy to embrace the idea that the original expression of religion may have been monotheistic, but as to its degenerating into lower magical beliefs and superstitious practices, he was less enthusiastic, since he preferred to interpret all forms of human religiosity as anticipating the coming of Christ. In Australian Religions: An Introduction (1973), a book based on a course he developed at the University of Chicago in 1964, Eliade analysed in detail the debates between evolutionists and supporters of primitive monotheism and devoted considerable space to the entire controversy over sky gods as representing a primordial belief in one Supreme Being. He outlined the positions which divided scholars like Tylor, Frazer and Baldwin Spencer from advocates of primitive monotheism, chiefly Lang and Schmidt, and in the process provided his own mature verdict on the theories of Lang and Schmidt. Eliade (1973: xiv) names the two opposing camps in the debate over how to interpret primitive religions as the “evolutionist” and the “romanticdecadentist”. He describes the “evolutionist” position as rooted in nineteenthcentury positivism whose chief exponents “range from Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer to E. B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer” (ibid.). The primary representatives of the “romantic-decadentist” school are Andrew Lang and Wilhelm Schmidt, although Eliade comments that their position “never became popular among ethnologists and historians of religion”, probably because they are so closely linked to “the Enlightenment’s Noble Savage ideology and to Christian theology” (ibid.). Both the evolutionists and the romanticdecadentists share in common their “obsession with the origin and beginnings of religions” and “their taking for granted that the beginning was something ‘simple’ and ‘pure’” (ibid., original emphasis). For the evolutionists, “‘simple’ meant elementary, that is something very near animal behaviour”; for the romantic-decadentists, following Lang and Schmidt, it was “a form of spiritual plenitude and perfection” (ibid.: xiv-xv, original emphasis). It is in his discussion of Lang and Schmidt that we find the clue to Eliade’s own position in this debate. Eliade criticizes Lang for his sharp distinction between religion and myth. In 1898, Lang had written in a way that was 28

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consistent with his old protagonist Max Müller: “There are two currents, the religious and the mythical, flowing together through religion” (Lang 1898: 198). In line with his theory that religion had degenerated, Lang contended that “even among the very low savages” religion is “pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit” (ibid.). The decline away from religion is expressed in mythology, which Lang describes as “full of magic, mummery, and scandalous legend” (ibid.). Eliade (1973: 9) labels this position a “methodological error”: “It is a characteristically and inveterately Western and rationalistic approach to separate ‘myth’ from ‘religion’”. Eliade (ibid.: 15) counters that “myth is the ground of religion” and that “we always find the myth at the beginning of religion – of any type of religion” (original emphasis). In his book Myth and Reality, we find the reason Eliade elevates the position of myth to a primordial place at the very source of religion (Eliade 1963). He defines myth as narrating a “sacred history”, as relating “how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality” (ibid.: 5). Myth, in other words, as Eliade suggests in Australian Religions, is of primary importance in interpreting religion because it provides the means to attain “understanding of the meaning of a particular culture, as it was understood and assumed by its own members” (Eliade 1973: xviii, original emphasis). Moreover, it is in myths of primitive societies that we can see the “primordial condition” because “in ‘primitive’ societies myths are still living, still establish and justify all human conduct and activity” (Eliade 1963: 5). Eliade’s primary disagreement with Lang thus centred over the place of myth in primitive societies. For Eliade, in the forms in which they still persist, myths provide unparalleled insight into the origin and nature of religion as a human phenomenon. Eliade then turns to consider Schmidt’s position on the origin of the God idea in human history. Eliade (1973: 16) argues that Schmidt’s careful studies of Australian High Gods, extending over 600 pages, were undertaken in part to substantiate, correct and systematize the theories of Lang. According to Eliade (ibid.: 17), Schmidt, like Lang, committed the fundamental error of attempting “to identify Western conceptions of divinity among the ‘primitives’”, which meant that his notion of an original, pure monotheistic God from which all religion had sprung was “without myths and devoid of any anthropomorphic traits and weaknesses”. So, like Lang, Schmidt’s theoretical flaw resulted from his argument “that the idea of the Supreme Being belongs to a religious stage preceding any mythological formulation” (ibid.). Just as he had contended in Myth and Reality, Eliade refutes this by calling Schmidt’s position “a contradiction to everything that we know of homo religiosus” because “a Supreme Being is always a primordial and creative Being, and ‘primordiality’ and ‘creativity’ are mythical thought structures par excellence” (ibid.: 17–18, original emphasis). This statement makes it clear that Eliade was not challenging the theory promoted by Lang and Schmidt that a belief in a Supreme Being stood at the foundation of religion, but Eliade rejected what 29

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he called their “rationalist” interpretation of myth as somehow representing a degenerated form for expressing the original idea of a High God (ibid.: 14). Eliade admitted that myths about Supreme Beings appear less often in oral traditions than do stories and legends about lesser deities, culture heroes and ancestors. This does not mean, however, that “Supreme Beings belong to a premythological epoch” (ibid.: 18). Rather, it confirms that their “activity is somehow exhausted in the works that they do in the beginning” when they “shaped the world and man, … founded the principal social institutions … and proclaimed the moral laws” (ibid.: 18, original emphasis). Once their work is completed, the Supreme Being can withdraw and leave the running of the world to the lower deities. This represents the theory of a deus otiosus, also referred to in some missionary writings as a deus incertus or deus remotus (see Cox 2007a: 19), the idea that the Creator, after completing his work, withdrew to the highest heaven or the remote regions of the sky and devolved direct contact with human communities to lesser deities and ancestors. It is at this point that we meet Eliade’s own theory concerning the degeneration of religion. The widespread belief among primitive peoples that the Supreme Being has withdrawn to the highest and most remote part of the heavens explains why only special individuals in such societies are able to ascend to the sky and commune directly with the Supreme Being, usually on behalf of the community and often at times of grave threats to its survival. Eliade (1973: 34) puts it this way: “After the breaking of the communications between Heaven and Earth the God retires, becomes more or less a deus otiosus, and only a few privileged persons – shamans, medicine men, heroes – are able to ascend to heaven and meet him.” This means that for Eliade the religious experience of primordial humans, through which they could perceive directly in an unmediated fashion the transcendent in the sky, as the “vault of heaven” (Eliade 1958: 38), gave way over time to the need for mediators in the form of religious specialists. As the Supreme Being withdraws to the highest, most remote part of the sky, the religious mediator replaces the original, direct experience of the divine and vicariously acts on behalf of communities. This idea is expressed clearly in Eliade’s groundbreaking book on shamanism, which was first published in French in 1951. When it was published in English in 1964 under the title Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, it generated widespread interest, both academically and in popular circles, among English-speaking audiences. In this book, Eliade represents the shaman as the homo religiosus par excellence, precisely because shamans need no mediator between themselves and the gods. Eliade exemplifies this in his detailed description of an Altaic horse sacrifice, which he obtained from accounts recorded by Wilhelm Radlov in his study of Siberian cultures published in two volumes in 1884, but which Eliade (1964: 190) says was based on an older translation of a Tatar text by the Orthodox priest V. L. Verbitsky obtained in 1858. Eliade (ibid.) also observes 30

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that Wilhelm Schmidt had devoted an entire chapter to Radlov’s account of the Altaic horse sacrifice in volume IX of Der Ursprung der Gottesidee. According to Eliade (ibid.: 192), the most important part of the ceremony, which takes place over several days, occurs after the horse has been sacrificed and when the shaman “exhibits his shamanic abilities during his ecstatic journey to the celestial abode of Bai Ülgan”. This part of the ceremony occurs in a traditional yurt around a fire in front of which a section of a birch tree has been lodged into the ground and on which have been carved several notches or steps one above the other. When the shaman enters into “a state of exaltation”, this is “the signal for the ascent proper”, which is symbolized by the shaman climbing the notches on the birch (ibid.: 194). The shaman acts out the ascent, while beating on his drum and mimicking riding the soul of the sacrificed horse. At each notch on the birch, the shaman announces that he has reached a certain level passing through the various heavenly regions extending beyond the moon at the sixth level and the sun at the seventh. Eliade (ibid.: 196) explains: “He passes through heaven after heaven to the ninth and, if he is really powerful, to the twelfth and even higher; the ascent depends entirely on the shaman’s abilities.” When the shaman has progressed as far as he is capable, he addresses Bai Ülgan directly, whom he praises as the creator of all “men” and to whom he makes petitions for the community to “deliver us not to misfortune” (ibid.: 196–7). In return, the shaman learns if Bai Ülgan has accepted the sacrifice, and, if so, receives various prognostications from the deity concerning matters relevant to the welfare of the community, such as the weather and the forthcoming harvest. In his analysis of the Altaic horse sacrifice, Eliade (ibid.: 198–9) makes some telling observations. He notes that this ritual is by no means limited to the regions of inner Asia, but similar ceremonies are “also known elsewhere in most archaic regions”. Yet an important difference must be noted. In many archaic societies there is no demand for “the presence of a shaman-sacrificer”. This would suggest that “the shaman in the Altaic rite is recent”. Another vital point to note is that because Bai Ülgan, even from the heights of heaven, concerns himself with everyday concerns of the community, he must not be the High God, but most likely is a “god of the ‘atmosphere’ or fertility”, which explains why he could predict the weather and foretell the outcome of the approaching harvest. The actual High God is Tengere Kaira Kan, “who plays the principal role in the myths concerning the cosmogony and the end of the world, whereas Bai Ülgan never appears in them”. This conforms to the theory of the deus otiosus, since “Tengere Kaira Kan’s withdrawal from the cult is the destiny of almost all uranian gods”. It is quite probable, according to Eliade, that the horse sacrifice originally was offered to Tengere Kaira Kan, since the replacement of the High God with a lesser deity as the direct recipient of sacrifices and petitions “is comparatively frequent in the history of religions”. As Tengere Kaira Kan, the real Altaic Supreme Being, was ousted by Bai Ülgan, the role of the shaman became increasingly important because 31

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through his “technique of ecstasy” the shaman could leave his body and travel to the heavens. Eliade concludes: “Hence it was easy for him to repeat the celestial journey, taking with him the soul of the sacrificed animal to present it directly and concretely to Bai Ülgan” (ibid.: 200, original emphasis). In so far as they communicate directly with the gods on behalf of the community, therefore, shamans reflect a broader state of religious degeneration away from a time when all humans walked and talked with God directly. Eliade (ibid.: 505) asserts that “it is indubitable that the celestial ascent of the shaman (or the medicine man, the magician, etc.) is a survival, profoundly modified and sometimes degenerated, of this archaic religious ideology centered on faith in a celestial Supreme Being and belief in concrete communications between heaven and earth”. It is in his ecstatic trances that the shaman is enabled “to relive a state inaccessible to the rest of mankind” (ibid.). From this analysis of the shaman as the prototypical religious person, we see that Eliade’s theory of degeneration differed only in degree from that of Lang and Schmidt, who proposed a pristine, pure, non-anthropomorphic primeval belief in one God free from the later contamination of mythology. Eliade emphasized that religion had its source in primordial myths, which tell of the creation of the cosmos, and in the subsequent withdrawal of the Creator to the highest, most remote and inaccessible regions of the sky, thereby giving rise to the need for mediators. Despite his criticisms of what he called the “romantic-decadentist” position of Lang and Schmidt, Eliade articulated his own version of the degeneration theory when he stressed that the original state of archaic humanity is characterized by the ability to commune directly with God without the need for mediators. As religions developed, the High God became more and more remote and eventually was replaced by lesser deities concerned with matters directly relating to communal welfare. Hence, the lesser deities, including ancestors, became the primary recipients of ritual attention and sacrifices. The theological agenda hidden within Eliade’s vast array of descriptive material interspersed through his many books becomes apparent just at this point. Like Lang and Schmidt, Eliade interpreted archaic religions positively, but, in contrast to Lang and Schmidt, he did not regard the primary signs of the degeneration away from original monotheism to be found in animism, polytheism and magic. Instead, he interpreted the most glaring expression of degeneration as reflected in the life of contemporary, profane, Western humanity. For Eliade, secularized humans lack points of orientation precisely because stories of divine intervention told in cosmogonic myths are unknown to them in any meaningful way. The resolution to the final process of degeneration, which finds its fullest expression in modern secularism, can be found only by recovering what originally was lost when God retired to the far reaches of the heavens. God must resume his original nearness to humanity, which is precisely what occurs in the incarnation of Christ. This explains Eliade’s high regard for “primitive man” whom he describes in 32

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Patterns in Comparative Religion (1958: 32–3) as interpreting “symbols, ideograms, nature- and genealogy-myths” as “hierophanies” (manifestations of the sacred) and which serve “to protect … against the meaningless, nothingness; to escape, in fact, from the profane sphere”. Eliade then reveals the assumption which sustained his entire theory of the history of religions: “The whole religious life of mankind – expressed in the dialectic of hierophanies – would from this standpoint, be simply a waiting for Christ” (ibid.: 30). This makes explicit why the shaman, as a nearly universal religious practitioner, represents a degeneration away from an original condition when all humans walked and talked with God directly, but, at the same time, anticipates Christ as the perfect mediator, who according to the Christian interpretation of the biblical story of the fall as related in Genesis 3, became the new Adam, thereby restoring to humanity its primordial relationship with God. CONCLUSION

The lengthy and complex debates over the place of a Supreme Being in indigenous religions conducted by scholars representing many fields of expertise, which I have discussed in this chapter, demonstrate that the controversy was primarily ideological, and even in the broadest sense theological. On the one hand, those following the evolutionary theories of Herbert Spencer were anti-religious, one could even say anti-Christian (as in the case of Frazer, certainly) (Cox 2007a: 13–16). On the other hand, those who promoted the idea of an original, pure form of monotheism did so because they firmly believed in the value of religion for human societies (interpreted largely in Christian terminology and language). I have argued that Lang was fundamentally a religious person, who wanted to demonstrate that at its source religion was associated with the elevated doctrine of the one God. Schmidt, of course, was a missionary and a theologian, as well as an ethnologist, and, if his critics are correct, used his ethnographic evidence not only to substantiate that religion originated in a belief in a Supreme Being, but that the Supreme Being was the source of this universal belief. I have shown that Eliade’s dispute with Lang and Schmidt (and presumably with Müller) was over their evaluation of mythology as evidence that humanity had degenerated from pure religion into beliefs in the various deities and their deeds as recounted in myths around the world. Eliade did not dispute their claim to have identified the universal belief in a High God among primitive peoples as evidence that originally humans were monotheistic. This is demonstrated by his rather uncritical assertion that at the very beginning of time, humans prayed to the universal Father, who presumably is the same heavenly Father to whom Jesus prayed in the biblical accounts (Eliade 1958: 38). His Christian theological bias, however, is fully confirmed by his detailed study of shamans, which, I have argued, actually veils his underlying belief that the shaman, as 33

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a mediator, reflects the universal human need for the incarnation of God in Christ. In the chapters that follow, I describe how this discussion has developed in four different indigenous societies. Each has a specific history of engagement with colonialism and with missionary activity and each represents a particular response to the way Western, Christian-inspired ideas of God have been transformed into indigenous deities. It will be important to discover if a difference can be identified in these cases from the debates I have outlined in this chapter. In order to determine this, I will analyse in each case the role indigenous peoples themselves have played or are playing in efforts to interpret their own ancient traditions in terms consistent with the idea of a monotheistic God. It will be decisive in my survey to ascertain if Jane Simpson’s “Other”, to which I referred at the outset of this chapter, has been converted from “object” to “subject”, or, in other words, whether those who have found God in indigenous societies have done so by treating indigenous religions seriously in their own right. Part of the answer to this question will depend on how carefully, consciously and for what reasons God has been made to fit into what we can know about pre-Christian or pre-contact beliefs and practices and how closely these interpretations conform to empirical evidence. I begin my studies by analysing controversies surrounding the origin of the God idea among the Māori in New Zealand, since this provides the clearest link, both in time and content, to the disputes I have outlined in this chapter.

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chapter 2

THE DEBaTE OVEr IO aS THE prE-CHrISTIaN māOrI SUprEmE BEING

The controversy over claims that “primitive” peoples around the world originally held a belief in a Supreme Being, which I described in the last chapter, was played out in the context of New Zealand throughout a large part of the twentieth century around claims that the indigenous Māori people possessed an elevated idea of a Supreme Being called Io long before they ever came into contact with Christian missionaries. The debate concerning Io as the primordial Māori God received international attention in the 1980s, when the highly respected historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith devoted a chapter in his Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (1982) to disputing the historical evidence used by those who, as part of the mid- to late- twentieth-century Māori cultural renaissance, were claiming that the pre-Christian Māori belief in Io is comparable with the Christian idea of God. By evaluating the case on which the early argument for a pre-Christian Māori belief in a High God was founded, Smith re-ignited the primitive monotheism debate in ways that bear directly on contemporary events in New Zealand. In this chapter, following Smith’s lead, I begin by outlining the historical development of the Io idea by examining the position advanced in the early part of the twentieth century by the eminent New Zealand ethnographer, Elsdon Best, which he based largely on a translation by S. Percy Smith of The Lore of the Whare-wānanga by Hoani Te Whatahoro (J. A. Jury). I then move to consider the collective argument in favour of Io advocated more recently by Christian theologians and clergy, some of whom are Māori and others Pākehā (non-Māori, normally referring to white New Zealanders). Following this, I review the case against the antiquity of the Io tradition as it was articulated in 1949 in an important book by the noted medical doctor, anthropologist and scholar of Polynesian culture, Te Rangi Hīroa (Sir Peter Buck). I then examine in detail the argument put forward by Jonathan Z. Smith himself, which was reinforced fifteen years later by scholar of religions Jane Simpson, and confirmed in a critical book published in 2010 on Elsdon Best by the 35

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New Zealand poet and researcher Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. The conclusions I reach at the end of this chapter are not based on field studies, but derive entirely from my analysis of the academic debate, which has extended well beyond New Zealand and has affected the wider controversy about the critical relationship between religious studies and theology, a topic I address in the final chapter of this book. ELSDON BEST aND THE DISCOVEry OF IO

The wide acceptance of the idea that the ancient Māori believed in a High God called Io can be traced to the writings of Elsdon Best, who is described by Seddon Bennington (2005) in his foreword to the reprint of part one of Best’s two-volume Maori Religion and Mythology (first published in 1924) as “New Zealand’s foremost ethnographer”. Best was born in 1856 to pioneer farmers north of Wellington, worked as a sawmiller and bushman, and in the process became a self-taught anthropologist who, in the words of Jeffrey Holman (2010: 80), developed into a committed “Māoriphile”. In 1892, Best joined with similarly minded men such as Edward Tregear, T. G. Hammond, the Rev. W. L. Williams and S. Percy Smith in founding the Polynesian Society, which described itself as “the first ethnological society in the Southern Hemisphere” (cited by Holman 2010: 94) with the aim of promoting “the study of the Anthropology, Ethnology, Philology, History and Antiquities of the Polynesian races” (Polynesian Society 1892: 3). Jeffrey Holman (2010: 94) describes Best as a “convinced salvage anthropologist” whom Smith and Tregear saw as “their greatest hope of retrieving from older Māori the treasures of a dying culture”. In 1913, Best published an article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland entitled “The Cult of Io, the Concept of a Supreme Being as Evolved by the Ancestors of the Polynesians”. Best’s landmark article brought to the attention of a European audience further support for Andrew Lang’s claim that the most ancient peoples around the world held a belief in an overarching and original Supreme Being. Although he claims not to take a stand “for or against” Lang’s thesis” (Best 1913: 98), Best believed if Io could be shown to pre-date Christian influence, it would demonstrate that Māori culture originally possessed an elevated notion of God every bit as sophisticated as that found among the pre-Christian peoples populating the biblical world. Best wrote: “A perusal of these notes will show any unbiassed readers (not a numerous body, we opine) that the Supreme Being of the Maori occupied a much higher plane than that of certain oldtime Semites” (ibid.: 99). Before beginning his discussion of Io as the Māori Supreme Being, Best (ibid.: 98–9) credits as the primary source for his conclusions “a remarkably intelligent and intellectual native, now seventy-three years of age, who was 36

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taught the old time beliefs of his people during his youth”. He adds that the knowledge obtained by this “native” “was imparted by two of the last survivors of the Maori priesthood, men who had been trained and taught in Neolithic times under the singular tapu system that obtained in Maoridom, men who jealously conserved that knowledge and kept aloof from European missionaries when they reached these parts” (ibid.: 99). Although he does not name him until later in the article, we know that Best’s informant was Te Whatahoro (Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury, also known as John Alfred Jury), who claimed to have been taught ancient traditions in a whare-wānanga (Māori School of Learning) in the 1860s. Best (ibid.: 101) describes him as “one of the last men taught the sacred traditions of the Takitumu tribes”. A word about Best’s primary source at this point is relevant. Te Whatahoro was born in 1841 of an English father who worked as a carpenter on a mission station on Mahia Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand and a Māori mother of Ngati Kahungunu descent. According to Jeffrey Holman (2010: 224), Te Whatahoro worked as “an interpreter, a recorder and an advocate in the Native Land Court”, over a period of forty years producing voluminous notebooks purporting to preserve indigenous traditions. During the 1860s, he attended a number of whare-wānanga where he claimed to have written down what he heard principally from two priests (tohunga), Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu. In 1883, missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) began evangelizing among the Māori in a region near Masterton. In his article prepared for the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, M. J. Parsons (2010) notes that “several people, including Hoani Te Whatahoro, were attracted to this faith”. Parsons adds that between 1886 and 1888, Te Whatahoro assisted Mormon elders translate the Book of Mormon into Māori and “on 26 June 1900 he was baptized into the Mormon church”.1 In the late 1890s, Te Whatahoro became a member of the Tanenuiarangi Committee, whose task was to determine which Māori traditions that had been spread widely by the end of the nineteenth century were actually authentic. He was also a participant in a pan-Māori political movement, and in 1907 became a corresponding member of the Polynesian Society.2 It is important to underscore at this point a fact I will return to later: that Te Whatahoro was the principal source for the information about Io that Best conveyed to a wide international audience in his watershed 1913 article. Best (1913: 99) calls “the cult of Io … the highest form of Maori religious belief”. He claims not to know where the idea of Io originated, but it “has been jealously conserved throughout the changing centuries by the higher class of Maori priesthood” (ibid.). This assertion is based on the notion that a class of ancient esoteric religious specialists comprising a select few who alone knew about the Io tradition existed among the Māori. Best notes that “it was only members of the superior order of priests who were taught the highly curious beliefs and mystical concepts that composed the cult of Io” (ibid.). So secret was this society that “only they could utter his name, repeat the thrice sacred 37

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invocations to him or perform the rites to which such invocations pertained” (ibid.). Even the name of Io was sacred, so much so that the name “was never uttered, even by the high-class priests, except when absolutely necessary” (ibid.). Normally, any recitation to Io was performed only in the forest far away from the hearing of ordinary people or during times of purification at a river, pool or some other body of water, where, Best observes, “nothing raised by the hand of man, as a house roof, came between the repeater and the vault of heaven” (ibid.). The only exception to a time when Io was referred to by name in a building occurred on rare occasions in the whare-wānanga as part of the training of the privileged elite. At all other times, Io was identified by his attributes, such as “The Beyond” or “The High One” (ibid.). Best adds that Io never intervened in ordinary concerns of people or bothered himself with “trivial affairs” (ibid.). He was only consulted on matters of major importance to the people, such as occurred in the teaching schools, matters affecting the welfare of the people as a whole or what he calls “the highly curious rite performed over newly-born children of the upper classes” (ibid.). Although numerous writers had described Māori religion as infected by evil spirits, Best observes that the cult of Io never practised “Black Magic, or any other shamanistic arts” (ibid.). These activities remained the concerns of the lower classes, which were taught “such inferior matters … in the vicinity of the village latrine” (ibid.: 100). The attributes of Io are revealed by the various titles assigned to him. Best lists twelve principal characteristics, which always follow the same linguistic pattern beginning with Io and followed by a descriptive attribute, as exemplified by the term “Io-nui”, meaning “Io the Great, or Mighty Io” (ibid.). Other attributes include eternal nature (Io-roa), the source of all sacred knowledge (Io-te-wānanga), the parent or origin of all things (Io-matua), permanent or unchangeable (Io-taketake), the life or vital spirit of all things (Io-te-waiora), the hidden face or that which cannot be looked at (Io-mata-ngaro), the withholder or the one who prevents humans from attaining all that they desire (Io-te-kore-te-whiwhia), the supreme one of all the heavens (Io-tikitiki-orangi), the unseeable one (Io-mataaho), the parentless one (Io-matua-tekore) and the vigilant one (Io-matakana). Best concludes that other names that display the attributes of Io were assigned to him, but the above list “will give the reader a fair idea of the concept of the Supreme Being evolved by the ancestors of the Maori in times long passed away” (ibid.). The Māori cosmology, according to Best, is divided into twelve heavens or “realms”, with the highest of these known as Tikitiki-o-rangi (note the repetition of the name for Io above as supreme over all the heavens) being the abode of Io and his attendants. Best calls the attendants “gods”, divided into male and female deities, which “have the power to enter all the other heavens, as also the privilege of visiting the earth and the spirit world below the earth” (ibid.). Each lower realm also is inhabited by what Best refers to as “supernatural denizens”, which like the beings populating the highest heaven are 38

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divided by gender. The supreme realm is the home of Io, and no beings from the lower realms are permitted to enter this sacred domain. Best contended that in the Māori conception Io is a moral God, since he can never be asked to intervene for evil ends. His sole concern is “with the welfare – physical , intellectual and spiritual – of the people” (ibid.). The only place he can be implicated in evil relates to the story of creation, where he is reported to have permitted the “art of war” to be introduced within human societies. This resulted from the quarrels which occurred, according to Māori myth, among the offspring of the primal parents Rangi (the sky above) and Papa (the earth below). Best says that the explanation for this provided by the priests (presumably those who had instructed Te Whatahoro) was that the offspring of Rangi and Papa rebelled against their parents, forcing them apart. Best explains: “It was necessary to endow man with the knowledge of the art of war, that is that evil (force) must fight evil” (ibid.: 101). This does not point towards a moral flaw in Io, but represents a pragmatic response to the fact that evil had entered the world through human actions. According to Best’s cosmological description, Io used intermediaries to convey his commands to all the lower realms. His principal assistant for this task was a figure called Ruatau, whom Best describes as a “special attendant of Io” (ibid.). In addition, beings called poutiriao were chosen by Io “as preservers of the welfare of all things” (ibid.). The poutiriao were assigned responsibilities in each of the heavens and specifically were given the care of what Best calls “each division of nature” (ibid.). So, for example, there was a poutiriao responsible for fish, for each type of animal life, for plant life and so on. The beings selected by Io for communication to the lower realms and for caring for each part of life ensured that order was maintained through each level of the heavens and, according to Best, “throughout the universe” (ibid.). It is at this point in his detailed account of Māori religion that Best for the first time cites Te Whatahoro as his source by name. Best indicates that Te Whatahoro described the abode of Io as containing “a large stone that showed, in some manner, all that was occurring in all the different realms or worlds” (ibid.). By looking into the stone, Io was able to see events that were taking place in the various realms below him. If one of the emissaries of Io told him something was occurring in one of the realms, as in Best’s example, “the realm of Kiwa (the ocean)”, Io could look into the stone and “see, or know, all particulars of such events” (ibid.). I will return later to discuss the significance of the idea that Io looked into a stone to see what was happening below him, but I want to underscore at this point that the authority for this statement quite deliberately is credited by Best to Te Whatahoro. It should be emphasized that Te Whatahoro was not Best’s only informant, and certainly not his principal source for information about the wider Māori culture, its folklore and its religious beliefs as it had been practised among the majority of the people. For this information, he relied on Tutakangahau, a chief of the Tūhoe people located south of the Bay of Plenty in the Urerwera 39

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District Native Reserve. In 1895, Best had been appointed by the colonial government as quartermaster for a road project in the District and obtained the services of Tutakangahau as his guide. Best’s principal interest, however, in the words of Jeffrey Holman (2010: 15), was primarily to act as “unofficial ethnographer”, since he had been “dispatched” by his fellow member of the Polynesian Society and surveyor-general S. Percy Smith “to recover and record vanishing knowledge”. Best saw in Tutakangahau, who had been born around 1830, a reliable supplier of information about the pre-contact customs and beliefs of the Tūhoe. According to Holman (ibid.: 10), this began a relationship between Best and Tutakangahau that lasted until the chief ’s death in 1907, during which time “huge amounts of information regarding Tūhoe and Māori lore and customs were passed on to Best”. Writing in 1925 in the first of his extensive two-volume account of the Tūhoe, Best ([1925] 1972: 1026) claimed that what he had learned from Tutakangahau had provided him with reliable accounts of pre-Christian Māori religion, since Tutakangahau had “been taught much of the old Maori ritual by his father, Tapui”. Best indicates that Tutakangahau was one of the few of his informants who had any knowledge of Io. Due to the secrecy surrounding the cult of Io, however, Tutakangahau revealed very little about the Supreme Being other than saying that the belief in Io “is a very old doctrine” (ibid.: 1027). He is recorded by Best as adding that Io “was a god of very ancient times” who “caused all the [other] gods to appear” (ibid.). When he sought to learn more about the ancient belief in Io from Tutakangahau, Best reports that “the old man was as close as the proverbial oyster”, adding that this “was the only subject on which he declined to talk” (ibid.). Best presumed, from Tutakangahau’s reluctance to speak about Io, that the cult of the Māori High God was practised exclusively by a small number of specialists who were located among the upper classes. Best concludes: “The cult of Io the Supreme Being was apparently confined to the few; it was the most aristocratic cultus. That of departmental deities, mostly personified forms of natural phenomena, occupied a second place, while shamanism was followed by the majority of the people” (ibid.: 1041). Best’s wide-ranging accounts covering two volumes describing in detail Tūhoe society and its religion, apart from the belief in Io, were largely obtained from Tutakangahau. Since very little was revealed to him about Io by the Tūhoe chief, it is safe to conclude that Best relied primarily on Te Whatahoro for the information he cited in his seminal 1913 article. It is just at this point that the relevance of a new, and perhaps surprising, idea is introduced by Best near the conclusion of his 1913 article. Best suggests that the proper way to understand how Io created is through the term “emanation”. He writes: “All life originally emanated from Io” (Best 1913: 101). This does not mean that humans descended from Io, but in mythical language, “from Io were obtained the spirit, the soul, the breath of life, that were implanted in Hine-ahu-one, the earth-formed maid, from whom man is truly descended” (ibid.). It is important to note that according to Best, the Māori 40

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view of creation emphasizes that everything flowed out of Io, although he did not literally make the things that populate the world. Best explains: Such was the chain of origin, first creation, then generation, the natural corollary of which is the very essence and kernel of the higher type of Maori religion, viz, that all things down to the humblest weed and fragment of clay originally emanated from Io, and contain, as it were, a portion of his spirit. There is but one further step to take: That fragment of clay is Io. (Ibid.: 102, original emphasis) I will return to the potential significance of the theory of the Māori view of creation as emanation later in this chapter, but again at this point I want to draw the reader’s attention to the importance it received in Best’s treatment of how Io brought the world into being and how he was seen as immanent in all things. Best concludes his article by suggesting that his analysis of the Māori High God demonstrates convincingly that the religion of the Māori as it was transmitted well into the 1860s could not have been derived from Christian missionaries. It represents an ancient Māori tradition, which in its highest form as expressed in the cult of Io, shows that “the ancestors of the Maori, in times long passed away” had developed a “very high plane of thought, one strongly tinged with monotheistic ideas, and replete with extremely fine conceptions of the attributes of a supreme Deity” (ibid.: 103). This also confirms that the age-old Māori belief in Io deserves to be regarded on the global stage as comparable with the great “ethical” religions of the world. The Lore of The Whare-Wānanga: S. pErCy SmITH

Much of what Elsdon Best disclosed in his 1913 article on “The Cult of Io” was derived from manuscripts delivered by Te Whatahoro to S. Percy Smith, who translated them in a publication entitled The Lore of the Whare-wānanga, which was divided into two parts: Things Celestial (Te Whatahoro 1913) and Things Terrestrial (Te Whatahoro 1915). Best’s descriptions of Io and his attributes follow almost identically what is recorded in Things Celestial, and thus I will not repeat these here. What is important to note, however, is the introduction to the book by S. Percy Smith, who also adds various editorial comments throughout the manuscript. The importance of Te Whatahoro as the primary source for the Io doctrine thus is emphasized by the publication of The Lore of the Whare-wānanga and the involvement of Smith in its production is made entirely transparent. S. Percy Smith, who was born in 1840, came to New Zealand as a boy after his parents decided to emigrate from their home in Suffolk, England. At the 41

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age of fifteen he joined a team to train as a surveyor. He devoted the remainder of his working career to surveying large areas of northern New Zealand, including in the 1870s Auckland, Taupo, Maketu, Waikato and Rotorua. In 1881, he was appointed as assistant surveyor-general, and in 1888 was made commissioner of Crown lands for the Auckland district. One year later, he was promoted to the position of surveyor general and secretary for lands and mines. During his many years of surveying, Smith travelled to various remote regions, often soliciting the assistance of local Māori leaders from whom he learned about traditional culture, myths and religion. Even before his retirement in 1900, he had acquired a reputation as a leading authority on Māori traditions, and, in addition to being one of the founders of the Polynesian Society, served as co-editor of the Journal of the Polynesian Society until his death in 1922. In her entry about Smith in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Giselle M. Byrnes refers to Smith as a “‘gentleman scholar’” who “was an exemplary model of the self-educated amateur who had risen to the heights of intellectual endeavour” (Byrnes 2010). About the Polynesian Society, Byrnes observes: “The society was formed largely in response to the widespread belief that the Maori were a dying race, and Smith was among those who hoped that it would help interpret and preserve the traditional knowledge of the Maori before this disappeared” (ibid.). This, in part, explains why he held Te Whatahoro’s manuscripts in such high regard, since Te Whatahoro was believed merely to be a scribe who faithfully recorded the teachings about Māori cosmogony as transmitted in the 1860s by the priests, Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu, and thereby revealed an ancient, but secret, knowledge of Māori religion. In his introduction to Things Celestial, Smith notes that Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu died in the early 1880s, both at the age of around eighty. This would have made them around sixty years old when Te Whatahoro was recording their teachings. For Smith (1913: ii), this confirmed the fact that both Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu “had been taught in the Maori College long before the influences of Christianity reached their tribe”. He further explains that Te Whatahoro had held onto his manuscripts for nearly fifty years, but recently permitted them to be copied and deposited in the Dominion Museum in Wellington. Smith clarifies that the version he used for his translation “was copied by myself from the original documents which were lent me for the purpose” and he claims additionally that “the whole of them bear the seal of the ‘Tāne-nui-a-rangi’ Committee”, which testifies to its authenticity (ibid.). Smith offers the opinion that the documents had remained undisclosed for so many years due to the secrecy attached to the information, but in light of “the advance of civilization”, the Polynesian Society “at last induced their owner [Te Whatahoro] to allow them to be copied and be preserved in print” (ibid.). Smith (ibid.: iii) then affirms that the volume he translated provides information “for the first time … as relates to the god Io and many other things”. 42

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He admits that no prior sources from the nineteenth century “ever obtained such valuable information as is herein given” (ibid.). In the process of translating the manuscripts, Smith indicates that Te Whatahoro helped interpret many arcane words with unclear meanings. He adds, “I can say with certainty that H. T. Whatahoro is the most learned man on these subjects it has ever been my lot to meet” (ibid.). The assistance of Te Whatahoro was needed to interpret certain words and phrases because the recordings are those “of a people that was less than a hundred years ago in the stone-age” (ibid.: iv). As a record of the ancient stories and beliefs of such a people, Smith claims that his translation “will offer to the student of Comparative Mythology, an additional light on the working of the mind of primitive man” (ibid.). Here we find clear evidence that Smith regarded his work as a kind of “salvage” operation, the aim of which was to preserve in written form the oral traditions of a Stone Age people before they were lost forever. Smith (ibid.: vii) anticipated that many critics would allege that “the idea of Io as the one supreme god creator of all things, is derived from the Christian teachers of the Maori people”. He argues that this is not the case based on assurances offered by Te Whatahoro and on the evidence of prayers to Io in Te Whatahoro’s notes that contain many “obsolete words” (ibid.). This leads to Smith’s judgement that the doctrine of Io is “a bona-fide relic of very ancient times, handed down with scrupulous care generation after generation, as the centre and core of the esoteric teaching of the Whare-wānanga” (ibid.). In a manner quite similar to that of Elsdon Best, Smith (ibid.: xiv) concludes that the manuscripts provided to him by Te Whatahoro make apparent “the effort of primitive man to get behind the veil of nature and adduce therefrom a sufficient cause for all phenomena” and at the same time attest that the ancient Māori had developed a sophisticated “system of philosophy that for their minds furnished a sufficient explanation of all things”. From Smith’s introduction to The Lore of the Whare-wānanga, we see clearly his motives in translating Te Whatahoro’s manuscript and we find confirmed his unwavering belief that the document he published bears a record of an archaic Māori cosmogony, free from Christian influences. We also find confirmed the telling admission that, although scattered and quite scanty references to Io can be cited from nineteenth-century sources, the volume he has produced contains the first comprehensive account of the primordial Māori belief in a Supreme God. It is important to underscore that, just as it was in Best’s case, Smith based these conclusions almost exclusively on the claims that Te Whatahoro had transcribed the manuscripts faithfully from the teachings of priests in the whare-wānanga over fifty years prior to making them available for widespread public dissemination. Although as a “self-educated amateur” Percy Smith wrote many articles, books and pamphlets on Māori history and culture for a period of over twenty years, most after his retirement as a surveyor, his translation of Te Whatahoro’s The Lore of the Whare-wānanga, was the most influential, primarily 43

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because it provided the underpinning on which Elsdon Best promulgated the Io doctrine internationally through numerous influential publications over the next fifteen years (for example, in addition to sources cited, see Best 1922: 19–22; 1923: 4–5; 1924: 98–103). Best’s continued importance as a respected expert on Māori culture throughout the twentieth century has been underscored by Jeffrey Holman who lists a significant number of acclaimed scholars who were influenced by Best’s voluminous writings. These include the eminent British anthropologist Raymond Firth, the noted French sociologist Marcel Mauss, the important anthropologist, historian and ethnographer of the Polynesian world Marshall Sahlins, and Lewis Hyde, whose book published in 1979 under the title The Gift: The Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property was described by Holman (2010: 267) as “a celebrated work of literary anthropology”. Best’s works, alongside Smith’s translation of The Lore of the Whare-wānanga, also influenced the Māori cultural revival of the mid- to late twentieth century, whose exponents grasped the idea of Io as the preChristian Māori Supreme Being as evidence that Māori religion, just as Best and Smith had maintained, evinced high intellectual, spiritual and ethical content long before any Māori peoples ever encountered Christian missionaries or were exposed to Western values. I turn now to review the writings of several influential figures, both Māori and Pākehā, who during the latter part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first found in the doctrine of Io a way of instilling and preserving pride in traditional Māori culture. THE prO-IO SCHOOL IN rECENT wrITINGS

I begin my survey of recent writers who supported the Io thesis by considering the view of Io as presented by the Rev. Māori Marsden (1924–93). Marsden is described on the back cover of a book containing a selection of his writings, published posthumously by his estate (Marsden 2003: back cover), as a “tohunga, scholar, writer, healer, minister and philosopher of the latter part of the twentieth century”. Marsden, who originated in the far north of New Zealand among the Tai Tokerau people, was an ordained Anglican minister but also attended a whare-wānanga. In a biographical sketch, Te Ahukaramū (Charles Royal) notes: Māori was raised in Awanui3 and while young he was selected by his elders to enter the whare wānanga, or tribal centre of higher and esoteric learning. Māori was baptised in various ceremonies and then became a student of the traditions of his peoples. These early experiences under the guidance of many tohunga prior to and after the Second World War were to maintain a powerful influence over his life and subsequent career. (Te Ahukaramū 2003: xi) 44

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The back cover of his selected writings asserts that because of this dual role, he “was uniquely placed to explore and explain the frontier between preChristian theology, understandings of divinity and the Māori worldview” (Marsden 2003: back cover). In 1975, Marsden contributed an important article entitled, “God, Man and Universe: A Maori View”, which appeared in Michael King’s edited volume, Te Ao Hurihuri: The World Moves On (Marsden 1975: 191–219). This was a landmark article in a book described by Jeffrey Holman (2010: 271) as a “seminal collection” which King, as editor, put together to give to “mature Māori voices” the opportunity to articulate a “new consciousness”. Marsden (1975: 191) begins his contribution to the book by situating himself as an “insider” to the Māori worldview, citing the fact that he was “a person brought up within the culture, who has absorbed the values and attitudes of the Maori”. As a result, he claims to possess a “subjective” perspective and dismisses socalled “objectivity” as “a form of arid abstraction” (ibid.). Marsden admits that as an indigenous person he could “only interpret his culture to another in terms of what the institutions, customs, mores and traditions mean to him” (ibid.). He tests his interpretation, or extends it beyond pure subjectivity, by considering “whether the same meaning is true for other Maoris” (ibid.: 192). Māori culture (Māoritanga), after all, is expressed as a “corporate view” of what “Maoris hold about ultimate reality and meaning” (ibid.). After defining a number of aspects of Māori cultural beliefs and practices, including, among others, mana (“spiritual authority and power”), tapu (“sacred” or “holy”), wehi (“awe or fear”), purification rites, tohi (literally meaning “to endue”, and referring to sacramental acts such as when mana or the life principle called mauri “is transmitted to humans”) (ibid.: 193– 202), Marsden moves to consider “the Gods and Creation” beginning with Io (ibid.: 209). He refers to Io as the “supreme God” and in a similar way to Best, draws attention to how Io is named according to his many attributes, the most important of which is that “he alone was pre-existent as Io-matuakore, the parentless” (ibid.: 210). This means that Io was “the first cause” or “the foundation of all things”. As the Supreme God, he was “infinite”, “eternal”, “omnipresent”, “all-seeing”, “all-wise” and “the glorious blinding countenance” (ibid.). Io contained passive and active elements, and through the interaction or communion of these two essences within himself he brought into being night and day, darkness and light, the earth and the water. Marsden announces: “Thus were the essential foundations of the universe laid” (ibid.). The world as we know it at this point in the creation story was still only potential being, since it had no “form or substance” (ibid.: 211). The seed was still gestating in Te Korekore, the passive state of Io. Then Io “activated” himself once more and things became differentiated into “night” and “light”, “the earth and sky and waters”, “the depths and heights”, “the expanse of the skies and borders of the seas” (ibid.). Through these acts of differentiation, the subtle relations between dawn and dusk were made and distinctions between 45

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“broad light” and the “night of unseeing” were instituted (ibid.). Eventually, the different realms were created, the highest being the abode of Io and his assistants and lower regions became the dwelling places for the gods, the first of which were Rangi-awatea and Papa-tua-nuku, “the male and female principles out of which all was derived” (ibid.). Marsden then relates the story of creation largely as it had been recounted by Best. Rangi, the male principle as represented by the sky, and Papa, the female symbolized by the earth, united and conceived the gods, Tane being the first born. Because Rangi continued to cling to Papa, Io “stirred the children to revolt” (ibid.: 212). After many efforts, they pried Ranga and Papa apart, flinging Ranga to the skies. Tane was summoned by Io and given the task of completing the creation of nature, which he did with the help of his brothers. In this way, “they became the regents of Io”, each taking responsibility for parts of nature (ibid.). For example, Tangaroa became the god of the sea and Rongo the god of vegetation. Marsden (ibid.: 213) concludes: “It was Io who laid the foundations and delegated continuous creation to the offspring of Rangi and Papa”. The Māori worldview thus portrays Io as “the first cause from which all things originated” (ibid.: 215). In this cosmological scheme, the universe is at least a “two-world system” reflecting the interpenetration of the spiritual with the material, but more likely it is a “three-world” system comprised of “potential being … the world of becoming … and the world of being” (ibid.). Māori Marsden exercised an important influence over the thinking of the Catholic priest, Michael Shirres, who was a leading exponent of Māori cultural affirmation interpreted in a theological frame. In his book Te Tangata, the Human Person, Shirres argued strongly that the Māori High God, Io, preceded contact with Christian missionaries and European explorers. Shirres (1997: 25–9) begins his discussion of Io by relating the myth of Rangi and Papa, but in a manner which emphasizes a somewhat different interpretation of the story from the earlier accounts of Best and Marsden. Shirres asserts that the meaning of what it is to be human in a Māori cosmological scheme, which defines the central theme of his book, can be traced to the story of Rangi (the sky above) and Papa (the earth below). Since at the beginning there was no light due to the fusion of the sky and the earth, the children of Rangi and Papa plotted to kill their parents. One of the children intervened and said, “Don’t kill them; just separate them” (ibid.: 26). They wrestled them apart, causing the sky to disconnect from the earth thereby creating light.4 Shirres explains that on one level Rangi and Papa and their children are “personifications of the heavens and the earth and the key elements of the world we see around us” (ibid.). On another level, as atua,5 the children of Rangi and Papa are “distinct spiritual powers” (ibid.). Shirres notes that the children of Rangi and Papa are linked to normal human activities since “the everyday world” is seen “as coming under the influence of spiritual powers” (ibid.). In the Māori myth, some of the children of Rangi and Papa were aligned with various natural phenomena such as the sea, the forests, birds, winds and 46

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hurricanes. Others became associated with war and strife, while still others represented uncultivated foods and agriculture. Shirres explains that these stories indicate what being a human entails in the Māori worldview: We humans are called to identify ourselves with the different spiritual powers and to take part with them in the whole movement of the universe. … It is from the spiritual powers that we receive our worth as human beings, our intrinsic tapu, and it is from them that we receive our mana, to carry out our role as human beings. (Ibid.: 28) He notes that tapu, although frequently interpreted as “prohibited” or “forbidden”, actually refers to “being with potentiality for power” whereas mana refers to actual power (ibid.: 33). On this interpretation, every part of creation is linked to the source of power, Io, whom Shirres stresses is “the parentless one”, “the source of all” (ibid.). Shirres defines Io as the creator of all things, the ultimate reality, from which Rangi, Papa and all spiritual power emerge. The myths surrounding Rangi and Papa and their children, like all myths, were intended to make the mystery of creation accessible, to explain what it is be human and to reinforce the rules of society. Based largely on notes he derived from Māori Marsden, towards the conclusion of his book Shirres (ibid.: 114) draws parallels between Io and the Christian conception of God. He describes Io as Io Taketake, the “Root Foundation of all being”; Io Wānanga, the “Source of All Wisdom”; and the mauri, “the source of the material energy, the material life force … which forms and shapes and gives life to the material universe”. He further describes Io as the source of “mauri ora, the spiritual energy, the life-force which is the source of our life as conscious, knowing and willing beings” (ibid.). Io embodies the ultimate source of all that is, the knowledge of which fosters unity of the individual person with other people, of the individual with the cosmos and of the individual with God. Shirres’s final words in his book summarize his interpretation of Io as commensurate with Christian faith: “To be fully human is to be one with Io, be it in the ‘dark night’, or in the ‘dark light’ at the centre and at every part of the universe” (ibid.: 119). Most recently, the Māori Catholic priest Henare Tate has discussed Io in an appendix to his PhD thesis, submitted to the Melbourne College of Divinity in 2010 under the title “Towards Some Foundations of a Systematic Māori Theology”. Tate (2010: 269) explains that early Christian missionaries adopted the term Atua for God, but that the Māori themselves believed in Io, “a name that arguably goes back to pre-European and thus pre-Christian Māori tradition”. Like Shirres, Tate begins his discussion of the names for God by referring to the creation myth of Rangi and Papa, who “have a number of children who each exercise responsibility over their own department or sphere of creation” (ibid.). Each of these children is referred to as atua (in lower case) 47

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which can be translated as “spiritual powers or guardians or departmental gods” (ibid.). Tate then cites the writings of Elsdon Best who divided atua into four classes: the Supreme Being (Io), departmental gods, tribal and district gods, and family gods, although he qualifies this by noting that atua cannot be so neatly segmented, but rather operated with “different levels of meaning and emphasis” (ibid.: 270 fn). Despite the complexities of the term, the early missionaries selected Atua (in upper case) as the name for God and now, Tate concludes, this word “has established itself as the near-universal name for God used by Christian Māori” (ibid.: 270). Tate (ibid.: 271) then moves directly to a discussion of Io by distinguishing between what he calls “the existence of an Io tradition (or Io cult), and public use of the term Io” (original emphasis). In pre-Christian times the Io tradition was transmitted orally in whare-wānanga, which Tate defines as “houses of learning open to a selected few initiates” (ibid.). The initiates kept the tradition secret and were responsible for preserving its esoteric knowledge. It is in this context that the Io cult needs to be understood. Knowledge of Io would have been reserved to those initiated into the whare-wānanga, who alone could participate in the Io cult and perform rituals to the High God. Nowadays, this has all changed and Io has been adopted by some groups in rituals, public speeches and in the recitation of karakia (traditional prayers or incantations). Although Tate concludes that Io pre-dates Christian influence, the public use of the name today has changed its initial intent. It is for this reason that he prefers to retain the term Atua for God, since it is more widespread and commonly practised today among Christians than Io, which has lost its original meaning (ibid.: 278). THE EVIDENCE OF THE prO-IO SCHOOL

As we have seen, the primary source for Elsdon Best’s description of Io as the Māori Supreme Being was through notes provided to him by Te Whatahoro and through Percy Smith’s translation of Te Whatahoro’s The Lore of the Whare-wānanga. Best also cites briefly other evidence obtained in the nineteenth century from white New Zealanders, which points towards the antiquity of the Io tradition. In volume one of Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist, Best refers to a few remarks by John White, the noted nineteenthcentury Māori translator, collector of traditional stories and government official. White had been commissioned by the New Zealand government to write a history of the Māoris, which he did in six volumes under the title Ancient History of the Maori (1887–90). Best ([1925] 1972: 1026) notes that White included a few remarks on Io in his second volume, including this important phrase: “The principal god is Io, he who made the earth and the heavens.” Best then cites a genealogy produced by W. G. Mair, an officer in the New Zealand military and later a Judge in the Native Land Court, which 48

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listed as the first name on the Māori cosmological scheme, “Te Ahau o te rangi (the Ahau of the heavens) or Io, whose offspring were Rangi and Papa, or Sky and Earth” (ibid.). Best also notes that the Wesleyan missionary, T. G. Hammond, referred to an ancient Māori belief in a Supreme Being, although he does not call this Being Io. Best then cites C. O. Davis’s 1876 volume, The Life and Times of Tatuone, the Celebrated Ngapuhi Chief, and notes that Davis reported hearing from the chief that the Māoris “recognised the existence of a Supreme Being, whom they called Io” (cited by Best [1925] 1972: 1026). Apart from these scattered sources, as we have seen, Best refers to Tutakangahau, who refused to provide any information on the Io cult, and to Te Whatahoro, whom he credits as his primary source for knowledge of the Io tradition. In his important article published in 1975, Māori Marsden does not indicate any sources for his account of the Māori myth of creation. Instead, he appeals to his “insider” status as a Māori. In contrast to what he calls “the seemingly facile approach of foreign anthropologists”, Marsden asserts that only a “Maori from within the culture” can adequately “describe the main features of the consciousness in the experience of the Maori” (Marsden 1975: 218). The Western approach, which utilizes “abstract rational thought and empirical methods”, cannot through these methods attain an understanding of the inner meaning of how a Māori experiences God, humanity and the universe (ibid.). A genuine grasp of the Māori view of the world is much more likely to result from something akin to “poetic imagery” than it is “from the empirical approach of the social anthropologist” (ibid.: 219). In the end, Marsden appears to be suggesting that knowledge of Māori culture, including its esoteric cult of Io, can only be gained intuitively by those who have been born and brought up in Māori society. Eight years after Māori Marsden’s groundbreaking article appeared, the Pākehā scholar, James Irwin, who served as Dean of Māori and Polynesian Studies at Knox College in Dunedin, published An Introduction to Maori Religion, which did much to popularize the idea that the ancient Māori believed in a Supreme Being called Io. At the beginning of his book, Irwin (1984: 3) illustrates what he calls the “pre-European” Māori cosmology by creating a diagram showing the relationships between “the realm of Ultimate Reality” in which are located Io, the Supreme Being, and the myth of Rangi and Papa-tu-a-Nuku, the realm of the human consisting of mana, tapu and noa,6 and the realm of the dead as told in the myth of Hine-nui-o-te-po. Irwin claims to have based his cosmological scheme on oral traditions transmitted over the generations through myths and legends, for the content of which he depended largely on Elsdon Best. He also refers to names and the arts as important indicators of Māori cultural traditions. Myths, he explains, carry the people’s “religious interpretation of the cosmos”, whereas “legends relate how the people came to terms with the natural world” (ibid.: 8). Names of individuals, places and the natural environment are connected with the 49

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collective memory of the people and thus have historical roots. The arts as expressed in songs and dances are often related to rituals and are enacted in the meeting houses. Although these sources are quite different from written accounts more recognizable to Western audiences, Irwin concludes that they convey “the living past and the rich historical inheritance of the people” (ibid.: 9). Irwin was not uncritical in his presentation of Io as the Māori Supreme Being. He admits that Elsdon Best did much to make the notion known widely within New Zealand and internationally, but he also acknowledges that Io was unknown to Europeans until the 1860s “when, in a special wananga (house of sacred learning) convened by the chief informant Te Matorohanga, a number of informants revealed the lore of Io” (ibid.: 33). Irwin, of course, is referring specifically to Smith’s translation of Te Whatahoro’s The Lore of the Whare-wānanga. Despite his reservations, Irwin (ibid.: 34) affirmed the idea that “the cult of Io remained to the last the privilege of the tohunga ahurewa (highest class of priestly adepts) and was denied to the ordinary people”. He cites as his source for this Sir Apirana Ngata (1874–1950), who was a prominent Māori politician and parliamentarian, but whose contribution to Māori culture arguably can be attributed to his collection of traditional songs, chants, traditional ritual incantations (karakia) and poetry, which did much to promote Māori cultural pride (Sorrenson 2012a). For knowledge of Io and the karakia directed to the Supreme Being by the highest class of priests in the whare-wānanga, Ngata would have relied on Best, Best’s chief informant, Te Whatahoro, and on Smith’s translation of Te Whatahoro’s manuscripts. Among the scholars I have cited as supporting the Io hypothesis, Michael Shirres has made the greatest effort to establish grounds for the pre-Christian idea of Io by referring to nineteenth-century evidence, in addition to that supplied by Best and S. Percy Smith through Te Whatahoro. It is important at this point to consider Shirres’s claims in detail. It was precisely because he was aware of conflicting opinions about the alleged antiquity of the Io tradition that Shirres gave such attention to developing a case in support of the argument for the authenticity of a pre-Christian Io tradition. He refers initially to S. Percy Smith’s translation of The Lore of the Whare-wānanga and to some of the writings of Elsdon Best, beginning with Best’s article entitled “The Cult of Io”. Shirres (1997: 107) notes that Smith’s and Best’s sources were derived from the writings of Te Whatahoro, who based his material on a series of lectures delivered in 1865 among the Kahungunu people in a whare-wānanga by “two eminent tohunga experts … Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu”. Shirres then recounts that the lectures were developed and expanded by Te Whatahoro over the next forty years resulting in a text that was approved by the Tane-nui-a-Rangi Committee in 1907 “as an agreed expression of genuine Ngaati Kahungunu tradition” (ibid.). Shirres admits that Whatahoro’s writing “does not necessarily represent tribal tradition in 1865” but he contends that “it is an oral tradition approved by a responsible body of elders” (ibid.). 50

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Shirres then cites evidence from the records of the Rev. Richard Taylor, who wrote in his notebook dated May 1852 that the Māori in Whawharua, “deep in the Waikato”, believed in a “chief god” called Io, who was “the creator of heaven and earth” (ibid.: 108). Shirres points out that Taylor inserted this note into his records thirteen years before the lectures given among the Kahungunu by Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu. Shirres follows this with a reference in the biography of King Potatau Te Wherowhero written by Pei Te Hurinui Jones in 1960 who in reference to the Tainui priesthood claims: “At the outset the declaration is made in the Io religion that the world evolved from Io, the Supreme Being; and his dwelling place is at the apex and centre of Creation” (cited in Shirres 1997: 109).7 Another source of early evidence for the existence of the Io tradition is traced by Shirres to Judge Frederick Maning, a resident of Hokianga, who documented in manuscripts knowledge he had obtained of the Io tradition. Citing from a recorded talk on “The Cult of Io” delivered in 1950 by Apirana Ngata, Shirres (1997: 110) notes that Maning was “the only Pākehā who made a complete study of the Cult of Io” and was even initiated into it. Due to illness, in 1882 Maning returned to London for treatment, but was diagnosed with incurable cancer. On his deathbed, he recorded the karakia related to Io and other esoteric ceremonies, but his conscience got the better of him. Since he had been sworn to secrecy as an initiate in the whare-wānanga, Maning ordered his manuscript burned. Shirres continues by listing other evidence for the Io tradition including references to Io in the book referred to by Best written in 1876 by C. O. Davis on the life of the Ngāpuhi chief Patuone, citations about belief in Io in the Hokianga district by the French missionary Catherin Servant in 1842, writings of accounts acquired by Heeries Beattie in 1920 about the creation story and extensive information on the oral traditions given personally to Shirres by the Rev. Māori Marsden in 1975 (ibid.: 110–13). These sources led Shirres to conclude not only that Io incontrovertibly constituted the Māori High God before contact with Europeans, but that Io had many of the attributes of the Christian God. THE wIDESprEaD aCCEpTaNCE OF THE IO THESIS

This brief review of some important recent scholars writing on Io points to the fact that nowadays the notion that the ancient Māori believed in a Supreme Being from which all that exists originated (or emanated) is so widespread that it frequently is taken for granted in public discourse. For example, James Irwin’s diagram depicting the three layers in Māori cosmology has become so well known that it is displayed within many schools throughout New Zealand as an easily grasped, visual explanation for pupils as to what constitutes a traditional Māori worldview. Jane Simpson (1997: 52) confirms this observation: “Walk into many a classroom in New Zealand 51

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today, and you will find up on the wall Irwin’s compelling diagram, which neatly stratifies Māori religion, with Io inhabiting the realm of ‘Ultimate Reality’.” Irwin’s description of Māori cosmology was further reinforced within university teaching by Douglas Pratt (1987b: 27–40) of the University of Waikato in an article entitled “Pre-Christian Maori Religion: An Essay in Contextual Understanding”. Pratt, who drew much of his information about Io from Irwin, reiterated the idea for an academic audience that Io as Creator and Supreme Being inhabited the highest realm of the universe in traditional Māori belief (see also Pratt 1987a: 11–26). A book that is currently used widely within schools and universities carries the title Ki te Whaiao: An Introduction to Māori Culture and Society (2004). The first entry in the book, written by Michael P. J. Reilly, Professor of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies in the University of Otago, is entitled “Te tīmatanga mai o ngā atua: Creation narratives”. Reilly (2004: 1) admits that “Io, the supreme atua is controversial” because “a respectable body of scholarship argues that information about this ‘god’ has been at least influenced by the introduction of Christianity during the first half of the nineteenth century”. Reilly argues nonetheless that the doctrine of Io draws “deeply from the Māori world-view” and thus the belief in Io as an “atua” was quite likely maintained at least among some groups “before contact with Europeans introduced new ideas” (ibid.). Reilly then relates the details of the Māori understanding of Io citing as his primary sources Māori Marsden and Te Whatahoro. He draws on Marsden’s seminal article to which I referred, first published in 1975 in Michael King’s edited volume and then reprinted in the collection of his writings in 2003. He then cites Te Whatahoro’s account of Io in the 1913 volume translated by S. Percy Smith, The Lore of the Wharewānanga. From Reilly’s descriptions of the actions and attributes of Io, which largely repeat what we have already summarized according to Marsden and Best, we learn nothing new. It is important to underscore that Reilly presents his account of Io without expanding on the controversy to which he referred initially nor does he contextualize his informants by drawing attention to their backgrounds and possible motivations. He concludes his discussion of Io, prior to recounting the well-documented myth of Rangi and Papa, and its variations in the South Island, with the words: “The Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Kahungunu traditions describe a world brought into being out of nothingness by the powers of Io. Having created Rangi and Papa, Io is removed from an active creative role, which is taken over by these primal parents and their offspring” (ibid.: 3). Since Ki te Whaiao is an introductory text on Māori culture, it is understandable why the editors of the volume presented Io in such an uncritical manner, but it does confirm Jeffrey Holman’s observation (2010: 229) that a “theology of Io” is now so widespread that it is assumed as fact by “almost every student at secondary and tertiary level”. Reilly is cited by Holman as a chief culprit in promulgating this one-dimensional attitude towards the 52

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pre-Christian belief in Io among the general public, since Reilly takes for granted the authenticity of his sources by ignoring the fact that both Māori Marsden and Te Whatahoro, in Holman’s words, “have strong Christian influences in their backgrounds, and in Te Whatahoro’s case, no mention is made of the midwifery of Smith, or Best” (ibid.: 230). THE CrITIqUE OF THE IO TraDITION: TE raNGI HĪrOa (SIr pETEr BUCk)

Te Rangi Hīroa, also known as Sir Peter Buck, who was a contemporary of Apirana Ngata, became a leading voice expressing opposition to the view that the entirety of the Io tradition preceded Christian influence. He thus rejected the idea that the ancient Māori believed in a Supreme God that could be fitted comfortably into the Christian doctrine of creation. Te Rangi Hīroa was the son of William Henry Buck, who was of Irish descent, and a Māori mother, who died shortly after his birth. He was trained as a medical doctor, but became known as a leading anthropologist and interpreter of Māori culture. He held the position of Professor of Anthropology in Yale University and was also Director of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii (Sorrenson 2012b). Although he was known widely as Peter Buck, he often used his Māori name when discussing the beliefs and traditions of indigenous peoples. For that reason, I will refer to him by this designation in my review of his theories about Io. In his book, The Coming of the Maori, first published in 1949, just two years before his death in December 1951, Te Rangi Hīroa (1950: 437) developed a case against Io as it had been presented in what he called the “Matorohanga school”. He begins by noting the uncanny likeness of the Māori story of creation as related by Te Whatahoro to the biblical account, particularly the emphasis on the separation of light from darkness and the division between the water and the land. He comments: “The sequence of events bears an interesting similarity to the cosmogony described in the first chapter of Genesis” (ibid.: 438). The story of the wrenching apart of Rangi (the sky) from Papa (the earth), however, does ring true not only among the Māori, but in many parts of Polynesia. “From the wide distribution of the story”, he observes, “it is evident that the pushing up of the sky belongs to a very old myth” (ibid.: 440). After a lengthy discussion of the various stories of the departmental gods (atua) and other myths as related throughout Polynesia, Te Rangi Hīroa returns to consider the evidence offered in support of the Māori belief in Io as the Supreme God. He observes that “the only complete story concerning Io was derived from the Matorohanga manuscript” as relayed by Te Whatahoro and translated by Percy Smith (ibid.: 532). He then considers, just as Elsdon Best had done, other sources for the Io belief, but with different conclusions from those reached by Best. He refers to the manuscript of John White, who “recorded four pages of text concerning Io”, without any knowledge of the 53

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teachings of Matorohanga (ibid.). Although White heads the section “the God Io”, Te Rangi Hīroa observes that among the Ngati Ruanui, a people located on a small section of the west coast of the North Island and about whom White was writing, “muscular twitches are termed io”, but “every time a twitch occurs in the text, it is spelt with a capital letter (Io)” (ibid.). This leads to Te Rangi Hīroa’s conclusion: “White supported a page of a god Io with three pages of twitches (io), but capitalization does not convert a muscular twitch into a god” (ibid.). Te Rangi Hīroa then turns to consider what he calls the “pseudo-evidence” given by C. O. Davis (ibid.). In his account of ancient Māori prayers, Davis claimed that these were addressed to Io, the Supreme God. Te Rangi Hīroa argues that Davis based this conclusion on a mistranslation of the phrase “Whakaturia to whare, Me ko Te Maru a Io”, which Davis put into English as “Establish there thy house (temple), As though it were (beneath) the maru (shadow, or shelter, or sacred headship, or protecting care) of Io” (ibid.). Te Rangi Hīroa indicates that Me ko Te Maru a Io should have been written “Me ko Te Maru-aio” which conveys an entirely different meaning from that assigned to it by Davis. He explains: “The word aio means calm or peace, maru means shelter, and Te Maru-aio meant The Shelter-of-peace. Davis, by breaking up the name into ‘te maru a Io’, committed a serious mistake which eliminates the poem as evidence of Io” (ibid.: 533). Another source cited by Te Rangi Hīroa as an early reference to Io is found in a translation of an account of Māori cosmogony which appeared in the Journal of the Polynesian Society in 1907. The text was given some years before its publication to Colonel Walter Gudgeon, who was Elsdon Best’s brotherin-law and a founding member of the Polynesian Society (see Holman 2010: 90), by Tiwai Paraone, described in the introduction to the journal article as coming from “the Maru-tuahu tribes of Hauraki” (Paraone 1907: 109), which is located east of Auckland along the Firth of Thames. The publication was printed in Māori with a translation into English by Hare Hongi (Henry Matthew Stowell), whose mother was of Ngati descent and his father was a Pākehā engineer who settled near the headwaters of the Waitangi River at the Bay of Islands (Chapman-Taylor 1944: 107). We will see shortly that Jonathan Z. Smith attributed great importance to the translation, particularly to its references to Io, but Te Rangi Hīroa (1950: 533–4) rather dismisses the account claiming that the contribution of Tiwai Parone (“or whoever gave the address”) regarding Io “is confined to the name and the acts which could have been borrowed from Genesis”. He then notes that “the rest of the document is the widely spread popular version of Rangi and Papa with their children” (ibid.: 534). Te Rangi Hīroa (ibid.: 535) concludes his discussion of Io by suggesting that some parts of the tradition must be authentic and have represented a “local development” which “originated with the Ngati Kahungunu tribe”, located on the east coast of the North Island, from which Te Matorohonga 54

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originated and where Te Whatahoro attended the whare-wānanga. He adds that the “elaborations on the popular version over the period after the birth of the family of Rangi and Papa were composed in the Ngati Kahungunu houses of learning” (ibid.). But other elements associated with the Io belief certainly did not pre-date contact with Christianity. These elements include the “cosmogony of separating light from darkness, the waters from the dry land and the suspension of the firmament” (ibid.: 536). Any suggestion that there is a judgement after death so that the “righteous” are depicted as going “through the east door to ascend to supernal realms and sinners through the south door to the Underworld, is contrary to the Maori and Polynesian concepts” and “too closely allied to the Christian teaching of heaven and hell to have originated in an ancient house of learning before European contact” (ibid.). From Te Rangi Hīroa we learn that indeed Māori schools of learning existed and that upper class priests must have attended these. Whereas the traditions concerning Rangi and Papa and the numerous departmental gods (atua) are also supported by the evidence, the cosmogony associated with the Io tradition at best is highly questionable and most likely the result of Christian influences. JONaTHaN Z. SmITH’S arGUmENTS aGaINST THE IO TraDITION aS prE-EUrOpEaN

Jonathan Z. Smith, who is a highly acclaimed historian of religions and the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities in the University of Chicago, addressed the question of Io as a pre-Christian Māori Supreme Being in a collection of essays published in 1982 under the title Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. He focuses his attention on Io in his essay entitled “The Unknown God: Myth in History”, in which he begins by analysing in detail the text published in 1907 in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, which (as we have just seen) was attributed to Tiwai Paraone, with an English translation by Hare Hongi. The English translation is reproduced in the appendix to Smith’s book. Smith (1982: 71) asserts that this text is the “earliest extensive source of information on Io” (original emphasis) and for that reason, it “takes on peculiar importance”. In order to establish the background to the text, Smith observes that almost nothing is known about its alleged source, Tiwai Paraone, although he was listed as a “corresponding member” of the Polynesian Society from 1894 until 1913 (ibid.: 68). He then comments on Colonel Gudgeon, whom he describes as “captain of the native constabulary, under secretary of defense, commissioner of police for the dominion, and a judge of the Native Land Court” (ibid.: 69). As we have noted, he was also the brother-in-law of Elsdon Best and a founding member of the Polynesian Society. Smith’s most uncomplimentary comments are reserved for Hare Hongi, whom he calls “an 55

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exceedingly eccentric and often unreliable scholar” (ibid.). This comment is probably unfair given that Hare Hongi up until 1920 made twenty-five contributions to the Journal of the Polynesian Society, which in part reflected his efforts to collect traditional stories and lore beginning when he worked on a surveying team in the northern part of the North Island. Later, he served as an interpreter in the Native Land Courts of Taranaki on the west coast of the North Island. His obituary, which was printed in volume 53 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, notes that when still a young man working on the surveying party, he “was singled out as one worthy to be told the inmost secrets of the northern whare-wananga, and was allowed to reside for about fifteen months with the famous tohunga, Nga-kuku-mumu” (Chapman-Taylor 1944: 107). The translation by Hare Hongi of “A Maori Cosmogony”, as it is printed in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, begins with a declaration about Io: “Io dwelt within breathing-space of immensity. The Universe was in darkness, with water everywhere. There was no glimmer of dawn, no clearness, no light” (Paraone 1907: 113). This opening pronouncement is followed by a description of the creation of light and its separation from darkness, which occurred from the word of Io who said: “Darkness, become a light-possessing darkness” (ibid.). It is then affirmed: “At once light appeared” (ibid.). As Te Rangi Hīroa observed, the parallels between this account and that described in the Genesis story of creation in the Bible are striking. The editorial comment, which precedes the text in the journal article, confirms this when it notes that the narrator credits “the great (and almost unknown) god Io with the creation of the Heavens and Earth from Chaos” (Paraone 1907: 109). Jonathan Z. Smith does not so much analyse the manuscript itself as raise numerous questions relevant to the context out of which the narrative emerged. He begins by posing what he calls “preinterpretive” questions, such as: What was the purpose of the recital? Was it intended to form part of a ritual? To whom was it addressed? What is the role of the narrator? Frequent “asides” are noted in the printed text. To whom were these intended? Smith concludes that these questions “make the text difficult to interpret insofar as they raise fundamental issues as to the nature and extent of the text which is to be exegeted” (J. Z. Smith 1982: 70). But that is not the end of the “frustration” experienced by anyone trying to understand the significance of the creation account. Further problems can be cited, including the status of the text in Māori tradition and the reliability of the source, given the assumption that its secrecy would have been closely protected by the elite priests in the whare-wānanga. If the source was Tiwai Paraone, additional questions emerge: “Was he a priest of Io or a member of the cult? Was he fully initiated? Was he a learned, native outsider?” (ibid.: 71) And we need to ask what his motives were in revealing the secrets of Io? Was he a disillusioned Māori who believed “his culture is breaking apart?” (ibid.) Or was he perhaps a convert to Christianity who believed “the teachings of the cult were false?” (ibid.) 56

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Another possibility is that the narrator regarded ancient Māori traditions as being under threat and wanted to preserve what Smith calls “their valued spiritual heritage” (ibid.). None of these questions can be answered from the evidence available, but without such knowledge it becomes virtually impossible to assess the authenticity and significance of the manuscript. Since it is impossible to determine the circumstances surrounding Hare Hongi’s translated text published in 1907, Jonathan Z. Smith (ibid.: 72) directs his attention to 1913 noting that this “must be taken as the creative year in Io scholarship” (original emphasis) because in that year both Elsdon Best and S. Percy Smith published information provided to them by Māori informants “alleged to be a secret Maori ‘college’ of tohungas (priests skilled in ancient lore)”. Smith challenges the authenticity of the claim that Io is the ancient Māori Supreme Being, particularly as it was presented in Best’s seminal article, by casting doubt on the primary source of Best’s information, Te Whatahoro. Smith rehearses the claims, just as earlier scholars had done and Michael Shirres later repeated, about the role played by Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu in relating ancient traditions about Io to Te Whatahoro who served as their scribe. Smith observes that these teachings were transmitted over a period exceeding a decade and maintained over forty years by Te Whatahoro before they were sanctioned officially as authoritative by an intertribal committee. So far, Smith and supporters of the Io thesis offer corresponding stories about the development of this tradition, but Smith raises serious questions about the reliability of the accounts as they were allegedly recorded by Te Whatahoro. He describes Te Whatahoro as “a baptized Christian halfbreed who had lived most of his life in European style and whose skill in the Maori language appears to have been deficient” (ibid.: 72). He notes that Best privately distrusted Te Whatahoro as a dependable source and makes the correct observation that the committee which authenticated the material presented to them by Te Whatahoro failed to substantiate precisely the section dealing with the Io tradition (ibid.: 73). At this point, Smith concurs with the judgement of E. W. G. Craig (1964: 168; J. Z. Smith 1982: 73) who in his biography of Elsdon Best asserts that “it is impossible to say” how much of the information on Io “stemmed from the original teaching of Te Matorohanga, and how much from Whatahoro’s fertile imagination”. After reviewing other sources, some of which we have already noted had been cited by Best in support of the ancient Māori belief in Io, including the report in 1876 by C. O. Davis in which he mentions Io, the reference to Io by John White in 1887, and a definition in Edward Tregear’s Māori–Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, which was published in 1891, of Io as “God, the Supreme Being” (cited by Smith 1982: 76), Smith concludes that many of these references are made in passing without any critical reflection or they are based on material obtained long after exposure to Christian missionary influence. This leads Smith to conclude that “Io, as a ‘High God’, is a post-European phenomenon” (Smith 1982: 78), probably developed in the 1880s but created 57

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in the 1850s in the Taranki-Waikato region, deliberately “as a Maori parallel to the biblical tradition” (ibid.: 80). The development of an Io system of beliefs and rituals, therefore, is best understood as “an instance of Maori syncretism” (ibid., original emphasis). This does not discredit the importance of Io as “an interesting new religion” (ibid., original emphasis), but it does eliminate another support beneath the dubious search by European scholars and historians of religion for an original High God among archaic societies. wHy ELSDON BEST aND S. pErCy SmITH EmBraCED THE aUTHOrITy OF TE wHaTaHOrO

In 1997, Jane Simpson, who at the time was a Lecturer in Religious Studies in the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, wrote a detailed and comprehensive historical critique of the claims promulgated by Best and Percy Smith that belief in Io pre-dates Christian influence. Much of what Simpson outlines with respect to Io as the Māori High God reiterates the arguments, sometimes in greater detail, as those presented by Jonathan Z. Smith and earlier by Te Rangi Hīroa, but she does so in order to demonstrate how “Io is constructed through text and how a corpus is created” as part of what she calls “the continuing intellectual colonization of the Māori through European texts” (Simpson 1997: 54). Her article does not consider in any detail the discussions of Io as they were developed in the period after Best, for example by James Irwin or Michael Shirres, since, she argues, such writing “either rests on an uncritical acceptance of the Polynesian Society orthodoxies” or creates “new interpretations” (ibid.: 55). As part of her analysis, she draws attention to the ways in which the Io debate reflected and fuelled the international discussions about primitive monotheism, which I detailed in Chapter 1. She notes, for example, that “Andrew Lang’s theory of the ‘high gods of low races’ and of ‘savage supreme beings’ called for evidence”, which Best’s 1913 landmark article on Io appeared to substantiate (ibid.: 74). Simpson declines to enter into the substance of the primitive monotheism debate by refusing to “locate the ‘true Io’”, since her aim is to show how Elsdon Best and Percy Smith, and others closely associated with the Polynesian Society, were part of a “colonizing culture” largely unconcerned with “the colonized” (ibid.: 55). Simpson claims that Best drew freely from Percy Smith’s translation of Te Whatahoro’s The Lore of the Whare-wānanga in his article “The Cult of Io”, without acknowledging it as his primary source. She repeats the sceptical attitudes towards the reliability of Te Whatahoro that had been expressed by Te Rangi Hīroa and Jonathan Z. Smith and underscores that Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu, the two principal tohunga who allegedly provided Te Whatahoro with his manuscript, were themselves trained in mission schools. Simpson’s point is that Elsdon Best by 1913 chose to overlook his earlier distrust of Te Whatahoro and embraced the Io doctrine uncritically. The 58

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reasons Best did this, according to Simpson (ibid.: 75), included his “own disenchantment with colonial Christianity” which “undoubtedly disposed him to romanticize Māori religion”. This is compounded, according to Simpson, by the fact that Best failed to understand fully that “the Māori view of the past was malleable and dependent on present conditions” (ibid.). This argument corresponds to Jonathan Z. Smith’s contention that the Io tradition developed out of circumstances in colonial New Zealand which witnessed the birth of mid-nineteenth century syncretistic Māori prophet or protest movements, such as the King Movement, which Smith (1982: 83) argues “provides the most proximate context for the development of the Io cult and for the understanding of the 1907 Maori cosmogony” (original emphasis).8 Both Simpson and Smith agree that Elsdon Best and S. Percy Smith minimized the historical circumstances in the nineteenth century out of which the Io tradition developed because of their desire to preserve Māori traditions and to present them in an elevated position with respect particularly to Christianity and in the context of the European debate between primitive monotheists and evolutionists. Simpson (1997: 80) confirms this when she argues that “Best made ‘the Maori’ understandable in terms of a universal quest for meaning in life”. Citing Best’s ten-page booklet, Christian and Maori Mythology, published in 1924, Simpson draws attention to Best’s stated purpose in promoting the case for Io as showing, in Best’s words, “how closely many Maori myths and beliefs resemble our own … and many of their concepts are the equal of our own” (cited by Simpson 1997: 80). In his book on Elsdon Best and his relationship to his Māori informants, principally Tutakangahau and Te Whatahoro, Jeffrey Holman sheds further light on the authenticity of the Io tradition and its primary exponents, Elsdon Best and Percy Smith. Holman (2010: 224–5) provides much more background to the life of Te Whatahoro than is recorded in either Michael Shirres’s or Jonathan Z. Smith’s writings. The fact that by 1900 Te Whatahoro had been baptized into the Mormon Church is missed both by Shirres and Smith. He also became a corresponding member of the Polynesian Society in 1907. Holman (2010: 225) notes that Te Whatahoro by virtue of his commitment to written sources actually mirrored Best’s own approach to field studies. Nonetheless, the reliability of Te Whatahoro was originally questioned by Best who reported in one of his notebooks that “great caution” is needed when obtaining information from the field (Holman 2010: 225). Best records that some of the material obtained from Te Whatahoro was contradictory and, as Jonathan Z. Smith correctly noted, he complained that he was deficient in the Māori language (ibid.). Te Whatahoro hardly fitted the description provided to Best when in 1909 he was introduced to him by Augustus Hamilton, Director of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, which Best was about to join as a resident ethnologist, as “an aged and learned Māori chief … having passed through the Whare-kura, the Māori College, in olden days” (cited by Holman, ibid.) Holman implies that Best suppressed his reservations 59

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about Te Whatahoro publically in order to preserve his reputation and to retain his place at the Museum. It was only after he joined the Museum that Best, in Holman’s words (ibid.: 226), converted “to the Io doctrine”, which he expounded first in his 1913 article on the Māori cult but expanded extensively in part 1 of Māori Religion and Mythology (Best 1924) and in volume 1 of Tuhoe: The Children of the Mist (Best [1925] 1972). In his analysis of the Io debate, Holman (2010: 230) agrees with the opponents of the Io school that “there were only a small number of Io occurrences” apart from the manuscript Te Whatahoro delivered to S. Percy Smith and on which Elsdon Best relied for most of his conclusions about Io. Holman (ibid.: 231) also confirms that the group of indigenous leaders charged with determining which parts of Māori mythology could be regarded as authentic, the Tanenuiarangi Committee, approved as genuine what Te Whatahoro delivered to Smith , “except in the case of Chapter II, which contains the Io material”. Holman concludes: “Much of the authority in the collection … rests in our trust of Te Whatahoro and his methods” (ibid.). This leads to the critical question as to why Best became such an advocate for the idea that the ancient Māori possessed a belief in a Supreme Being. In the light of Jane Simpson’s claim that Best distrusted Christian missionaries and opposed their attempts to convert the Māori, it seems contradictory that Best described Io in terms favourable to the Christian idea of God and described Māori religion as ethical according to global religious criteria. Jeffrey Holman offers an explanation for this that bears on the wider international debate between supporters of the primitive monotheism thesis and those embracing theories of cultural evolution. Holman argues that Best, as a “Māoriphile”, wanted to promote Māori religion as a way of demonstrating that at its highest level traditional Māori beliefs were in some senses more ethical than Christian concepts of God and certainly should not be regarded as inferior to Christianity. Holman explains: “Best’s Io might be a somewhat ethereal and remote figure, but one who nevertheless had the significant advantage that, while he inhabited the highest heavens, he presided over no hell of fire” (ibid.: 230). Although he promoted the notion that the ancient Māori believed in a Supreme God, Best did not accept the proposition that the Māori over time had lost this belief and had degenerated into polytheism and animism. Best was convinced on the basis of Te Whatahoro’s authority that the Io tradition had persisted even after contact with Europeans, although this was not apparent to outsiders because it operated as part of the secret, esoteric teaching transmitted in the whare-wānanga by a select group of religious specialists. And, of course, Best opposed evolutionary thinkers who depicted traditional (primitive) Māori culture as at an elemental stage in human development, and, as a consequence, was bound to be overtaken by higher, more advanced societies. According to Holman (ibid.: 231), this cast Best into a “twin role”: he was a “defender of Māori against the missionaries” and equally opposed 60

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to a kind of Darwinian determinism. It was primarily because of what he saw as the pressing need to defend the Māori against the corrosive effects on traditional culture exercised both by missionaries and evolutionists that Elsdon Best, after initial misgivings, embraced the authority of Te Whatahoro’s testimony and promulgated the Io doctrine so widely and uncritically. THE pOSSIBLE SIGNIFICaNCE OF TE wHaTaHOrO’S CONVErSION TO mOrmONISm

We will recall that Jonathan Z. Smith (1982: 73) referred to the comment made by E. W. G. Craig in his biography of Elsdon Best that “it is impossible to say” how much of the information on Io “stemmed from the original teaching of Te Matorohanga, and how much from Whatahoro’s fertile imagination”. In this connection, it is important to consider the possible impact of Te Whatahoro’s conversion to Mormonism (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often abbreviated as LDS) on the content of the notes he delivered to Best and the manuscript he provided to Percy Smith. Of course, it is impossible to determine if Te Whatahoro consciously inserted Mormon doctrines into his accounts of Māori creation stories, but clear likenesses can be found between what Te Whatahoro indicated he had learned in the whare-wānanga and Mormon teachings about revelation and creation. In a recent article discussing the relationship between traditional Māori culture and the Mormon Church, Robert Joseph, who is a member of the Faculty of Law in Waikato University and a practising Mormon, makes the claim that LDS missionaries, who first arrived in New Zealand in the 1880s from the South Pacific Islands (Mullen 1967: 271), “discovered that they had much in common, including a common heritage, spiritual beliefs, customary traditions and hope for the future” (Joseph 2012: 44). He then adds the telling comment: “Many of the religious beliefs of these two peoples paralleled each other in surprising and initially inexplicable ways” (ibid.: 44). If a link between Te Whatahoro’s conversion to the Mormon Church and the information he conveyed about Io to Smith and Best can be established or at least shown to be plausible, the parallels may not be so “inexplicable” after all. I referred earlier to the reference in Best’s 1913 article on “The Cult of Io” where he specifically names Te Whatahoro as his source for the description of a large stone which was situated directly in front of Io in his dwelling place in the highest heaven. In order to see what was happening in the lower realms, Io would look at the stone and, in Best’s words, “could see, or know, all particulars of such events” (Best 1913: 101). Integral to Mormon teaching is the assertion that Joseph Smith, “the seer, translator, prophet and apostle” (Lippy 1981: 423) of the Mormon Church, on 21 September 1823 experienced a vision from the angel Moroni, who told him 61

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that gold plates on which were written new revelations about Jesus Christ had been buried on a hill near his hometown of Manchester, New York. It was reported by Smith that he was informed by the angel that under a large stone were “two stones set in a silver bow” (Bowman 2012: 14). These were fastened to a breastplate that “constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim” (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1981: no page number). It was by looking through the Urim and Thummim that Joseph Smith was able to translate the texts inscribed on the gold plates from what he called “reformed Egyptian” into English (Bushman 2008: 21). It was not until exactly four years after his first vision that Joseph Smith was permitted to uncover the plates, which he claimed had been deposited in a stone box, and begin the process of translation. The Introduction to the Book of Mormon attests to the result of Joseph Smith’s act of looking through the Urim and Thummim to decipher the text: The ancient record thus brought forth from the earth as the voice of a people speaking from the dust, and translated into modern speech by the gift and power of God as attested by Divine affirmation, was first published to the world in the year 1830 as the book of mormon. (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1981) The Book of Mormon tells stories of the lost tribes of Israel who came to reside in North America (Bowker 1997: 655–6). A principal part of the manuscript relates how, after his resurrection, Jesus Christ appeared and ministered to the Nephites, in the words of Terry L. Givens (2009: 30), by delivering a “discourse similar to the Sermon on the Mount”, giving “special power and authority to a chosen twelve” and blessing “the Nephite children”. According to Mormon teaching, Jesus Christ established on American soil what Richard Lyman Bushman (2008: 23) calls “a messianic kingdom of peace and righteousness”, but after two centuries one of the tribes, the Jaredites, died out and another tribe, the Lamanites began warring with a faithful tribe, the Nephites. Only two humans survived, Mormon and his son Moroni. Mormon wrote down his revelations on the gold plates and buried them on Cumorah Hill near the present-day town of Palmyra in upper New York State. The gold plates purportedly contained God’s message about the restoration of the true church in America. An explanation about the Book of Mormon, which appears in a version authorized in 1981 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, states that “in or about the year A.D. 421, Moroni, the last of the Nephite prophet-historians, sealed the sacred record” and “in A.D. 1823, this same Moroni, then a resurrected personage, visited the Prophet Joseph Smith and subsequently delivered the engraved plates to him” (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1981: no page number). It is likely that Te Whatahoro, who had worked with Mormon 62

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missionaries by translating the Book of Mormon into the Māori language over twenty years before delivering his manuscript to S. Percy Smith, would have adapted the Mormon story of revelation to the secret and esoteric knowledge conveyed to him in the whare-wānanga by Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu. The circumstances surrounding the gold tablets translated by Joseph Smith and Te Whatahoro’s text purporting to relate teachings of ancient Māori stories bear such a close resemblance that it is unlikely to be coincidental. Further evidence that Te Whatahoro was influenced by Mormon teaching and that he incorporated it into his interpretation of Io is found by examining the Mormon doctrine of creation. According to Mormon theology, matter is eternal. In the words of C. H. Lippy (1981: 424), in Mormon thinking, “God is a self-made, finite deity with a material body”. God did not create “out of nothing”, but the creation occurred as an emanation from God, who used eternal matter to make himself and all that exists on earth and in the heavenly realm. Even “spirit” is regarded as matter, since the idea of “immaterial matter” is a contradiction in terms (O’Dea 1957: 120). Some parts of matter are invisible, just like oxygen or hydrogen. This is the case with intelligence, which like all matter is uncreated and indestructible. In his explanation of the Mormon doctrine of creation, Thomas O’Dea notes that “the uncreated world of intelligence and matter is not a static but a dynamic one”, in which intelligence acts to replace “chaos” with “order” (ibid.: 121). Paul Copan and William Lane Craig explain that Mormon theology holds that since “matter requires something to activate it”, God is best described as “the Organizer and Activator of matter” (Copan & Craig 2002: 104). This, of course, contrasts sharply with Christian orthodoxy and its teaching that God created “ex nihilo”, a fact that has pitted Mormon theologians against mainline Christian teaching, and has resulted in orthodox Christians, including members of some evangelical groups, labelling Mormonism as a non-Christian movement (Beckworth et al. 2002: 268). Te Whatohoro no doubt would have reflected on and absorbed Mormon teaching about creation after his conversion and, as part of his commitment to Māori culture and in line with Mormon belief that God had established a new revelation to correct orthodox Christian errors (Mullen 1967: 15), would very likely have made Io similar to the God described in Mormon theology. As part of eternal and uncreated matter, God brought order out of chaos by forming matter into all that exists and, as Best argued, Io, the Māori Supreme Being, became immanent in all things. This conclusion supports the argument of Jonathan Z. Smith that the belief in Io represents a form of syncretism, but through Te Whatahoro, the resulting fusion of Io with a foreign religion was not in response to mainline Protestant and Catholic Christianity but with Mormonism as it was transmitted into New Zealand in the 1880s by missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. 63

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CONCLUSIONS

If the authenticity of the principal source for the Io belief as spread widely by Best and Smith during the first thirty years of the twentieth century can be discounted, the entire framework for the current rather uncritical acceptance of Io as the primordial Māori creator crumbles. We are left instead with sources, such as Māori Marsden, who appealed to his “insider” status as a Māori for his assertions about Io and discounted “rational” investigation as distorting and spurious. Or we must rely on more recent descriptions by those like James Irwin and Michael Reilly who have translated the Io idea for students and the general public based largely on the testimony of Te Whatahoro, the writings of Elsdon Best and the “intuitive” insight into Io claimed by Māori Marsden. Justifications for the ancient Māori belief in Io are brought back penultimately to Best and Smith, but ultimately to their source, Te Whatahoro, whose objective role as a scribe of ancient traditions has been shown to be highly dubious. Since the time Best was writing, Christian theologians have developed positive interpretations of pre-Christian Māori culture as a way of combining support for traditional values with theologies of inculturation. Holman (2010: 230) notes the irony of this: “Best might well be surprised were he to return today and find scholars, Māori divines – and contemporary missionaries – all to the fore in promoting Io as an authentic Māori Supreme Being.” Michael Shirres, as a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican order, is one to whom Holman is referring, since Shirres clearly wrote from a theological perspective and sought to demonstrate the consistency between the Io belief and Christian teachings for the purposes of translating the Christian message into indigenous Māori patterns of thought. Shirres supported the recovery of Māori spirituality and, in the words of John Charlot of the University of Hawaii, saw in his writings a way to promote a “rebirth of indigenous culture” (Charlot 2006: 25). Charlot argues that Shirres believed that traditional Māori religion “is based on an authentic ‘revelation’ given to the Māori by God”, which is “as legitimate a basis as the Bible for a Christian theologian” (ibid.). This theological description of Io as a Māori High God as filtered through Christian lenses is not enough in itself to discredit Shirres’s claim that Io was the name in an ancient Māori tradition for the Supreme Being, but it makes transparent that Shirres’s theology was based on the presupposition that God was actively revealing himself among the Māori long before they ever heard of Jesus Christ. When the Gospel was preached to them, they recognized the Christian God in Io, who could now be understood as universally available to all people, not just to those initiated into a secret, high class society. James Irwin’s theological motivations are more veiled than Shirres’s stated aim, but in the conclusion to his Introduction to Maori Religion he asserts that “there was a genuine religion among the Maori people”, which “enabled them to develop … Maori Christian insights leading towards an indigenous 64

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Christianity” (Irwin 1984: 73). His aim in his book (at least in part), as he states in the conclusion was to encourage “Maori and Pakeha theologians to sit down and listen to each other” (ibid.). Douglas Pratt, to whom I have referred only briefly in this chapter, in his 1987 article on “Pre-Christian Maori Religion”, concludes by revealing his underlying aim in the article: “Doing theology in the New Zealand context … requires us to take careful cognizance of both the Christian heritage that has come to these shores and also the spiritual heritage already inherent to the land and its peoples” (Pratt 1987b: 39). Then, echoing Irwin, Pratt adds: “In the meeting of these two realities there is the prospect for an authentic New Zealand theology to emerge” (ibid.). We have seen that the Roman Catholic theologian Henare Tate has suggested that whether the ancient Māori actually believed in a Supreme Creator called Io may not matter significantly to contemporary Māori Christians. Tate regarded the debate over the pre-Christian belief in Io as purely academic and mostly irrelevant to living Christian communities, since, even if the reports of secret Io priests and rituals addressed to him are correct, they no longer function in that way. So, for Māori Christians, the accepted name for God is determined more by convention and practice than by theological constructs. Hence, Atua is be preferred, not because the spiritual powers in the tradition correspond to the Christian God, but because this has become a new tradition now accepted by the majority of practising Māori Christians. The relationship of the Io tradition to Māori cultural renaissance, however, into which the concerns of all the members of the pro-Io camp can be fitted, needs to be addressed. Does the existence of an authentic pre-Christian belief in the Supreme Being, the one God Io, affirm that indigenous Māori culture stands at an elevated place in human intellectual development, as Elsdon Best believed, and Michael Shirres and James Irwin reiterated later in the twentieth century for somewhat different reasons? Or, to put it in other terms, does the belief in Io confirm that Māori traditions can be regarded with the same respect accorded any other world religion? These questions are fraught with difficulties, including the idea that values can be attached to religious traditions, some being rated at higher levels than others, according to a monotheistic measure. If Māori cultural pride depends on the existence of a pre-Christian monotheistic belief, this borders on a form of reverse discrimination: a Māori worldview is acceptable only in so far as it can be shown to conform to European ideas of what constitutes “proper” religion. This is precisely what Jane Simpson (1997: 85) meant when she alleged that “the very texts that exalted and deified Io to a supreme position within the Māori pantheon at the very same time dehumanized the Māori”. This brings me back to where I ended Chapter 1. Although the debate over Io has clear implications for New Zealand theologians, both Māori and Pākehā, and is relevant to understanding groups intent on preserving (and in some cases restoring) pride in Māori culture, it is of principal concern to 65

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those who, either for ideological reasons (as expressed, for example, by Best and Percy Smith) or from Christian theological motives, find it necessary to “invent” a God with attributes similar to the Christian deity by locating him in ancient indigenous traditions. In either case, the endorsement of a preChristian Māori High God is not done for its own sake, but for veiled and at times surreptitious purposes, which makes an alleged Māori belief in a Supreme Creator incidental to the predisposed underlying motives of those promoting the idea.

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chapter 3

makING mwarI CHrISTIaN: THE CaSE OF THE SHONa OF ZImBaBwE

Today, in Christian churches among the Shona-speaking people of Zimbabwe, Mwari is used as equivalent to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme Being, God the Creator. Roman Catholics have used Mwari for God for over forty years, but mainline Protestants employed the term regularly long before this (Creary 2011: 207–8). Mwari, who might be called an indigenous god, thus has been taken over into Christian circles and has been elevated to the position of the highest source of all faith. This applies also to the African Initiated Churches, who frequently refer to Mwari Wokudenga (the God of Heaven) or Mwari Baba (God the Father) (see Daneel 1987: 189, 219). For the new Pentecostal or Charismatic churches, which stress transnational ties and reverse mission, this local application for the universal deity becomes more problematic (see Maxwell 2006; Ojo 2007). Certainly in the mainline churches today, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, Mwari is the accepted word for God. Adopting Mwari as the name for the Christian Supreme Being in Zimbabwe has not always been straightforward. Jesuit missionaries, for example, in the1890s banned the use of Mwari as a name for God and instead insisted on employing the term Yave (YHWH) or Jehovah. In 1890, the Jesuit Francis Richartz argued that using Mwari as the Christian equivalent for God would confuse the “natives” since they only honour ancestral spirits and do not worship God (Creary 2011: 208). By the 1960s this attitude had changed and Mwari was generally endorsed by Roman Catholics as the Shona name for God (ibid.: 220). In his study of what he calls “the Mwari controversy”, Nicholas Creary reports that, in contrast to the Jesuit missionaries’ early reluctance to adopt the name Mwari for God, “Anglican, Methodist, Catholic Mariannhill, and American Board Mission missionaries almost exclusively used Mwari for the name of the Christian god from as early as 1898” (ibid.: 206). Equating Mwari with a universal God has expanded beyond church circles and has spilled over into numerous academic writings. For example, the 67

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Zimbabwean historian Nwagi Bhebe suggests that the Shona had a longdeveloped “cult” centred on the High God Mwari, who in Bhebe’s words “had created the universe and everything in it and was governing it with his laws” (Bhebe 1979: 19). Or consider a book prepared to introduce the study of African Traditional Religions into the secondary school curriculum in Zimbabwe, published in 1992 under the auspices of a joint project between the University of Utrecht and the University of Zimbabwe. The editors, Gerrie ter Haar, Ambrose Moyo and S. J. Nondo, assert: The indigenous religions of Zimbabwe share a common faith in the existence of a Supreme Being who is believed to be the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. That Supreme Being is known by various names. These names include Mwari, which is widely used among the Shona people. (Ter Haar et al. 1992: 7) An example of how Mwari has been magnified to a position equivalent to a universal Supreme Being struck me when, upon first arriving to assume my academic post as Lecturer in the Phenomenology of Religion in the University of Zimbabwe in 1989, I was ushered into the office of the Head of Department, Ambrose Moyo, who was also a Lutheran minister and later a Bishop in the Lutheran Church of Zimbabwe, and one of the editors of the book to which I just referred. Behind his desk, covering the wall was a large chart, in the centre of which appeared the prominent word “God”. Branching off this were various expressions of God or the ultimate in the world religions: Brahman Atman, Nirvana, Tien, Allah, Yahweh, God the Father of Jesus Christ. This is a notion quite consistent with liberal Christian teaching, but I was surprised to discover that Mwari was also included on the chart. What Moyo was affirming by this visual representation was that Mwari, a traditional deity of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, operates equally as an expression or manifestation of the universal God as is found in any great religion of the world. In his study of spirit mediums in Zimbabwe, the anthropologist Peter Fry (1976: 19) quite correctly observes that whether or not it was suitable originally to equate Mwari with a universal Supreme Being and the Christian God, “Mwari is now regarded by most people as a universal High God, the supreme moral authority who created the world and is ultimately responsible for all that happens in it”. In this chapter, I investigate the process of “making Mwari Christian” by referring to empirical evidence based on oral traditions, historical records, linguistic analyses and cultural practices. I approach this by first setting the historical and social contexts necessary for understanding the pre-colonial belief in Mwari. I then consider the problematic question as to who Mwari was in the pre-colonial period and review how Mwari is construed in contemporary Shona society. Finally, I evaluate three interpretations offered by Zimbabweans from theological, linguistic and Christian 68

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cross-cultural perspectives, each of which promotes the thesis that the traditional Shona belief in Mwari can be made fully consistent with the Christian idea of God. SETTING THE CONTExT

Before I can deal with the issue of Mwari as a theological invention, I need to make three preliminary points of explanation to set the context. First, I need to say something about the ethnic groups and their languages in contemporary Zimbabwe. The two main ethnic divisions in Zimbabwe are the Shona and the Ndebele peoples, terms which refer to the languages spoken by each group, both of which form part of the extensive Bantu linguistic family, and at the same time are used to designate their distinctive cultural identities. The Shona comprise the majority of Zimbabwe’s population, approximately 80 per cent of the now nearly 13 million inhabitants, but they are broken into various groupings distributed largely throughout the northern, eastern and central regions of the country, including the Korekore in the far north, the Zezuru in the north-central region around the capital, Harare, the Manyika and Ndau in the eastern regions, and the Karanga in the south-central portion of the country. The other main Shona-speaking group is the Kalanga, located in the extreme southwestern area along the border with Botswana (see Berens 1988: 40–41). Today these groupings are referred to collectively as the Shona, but, according to the Zimbabwean anthropologist Michael Bourdillon, its general application to all those speaking a similar dialect was introduced by the British during colonial rule (Bourdillon 1987: 17). The majority of the people in the southwestern region, called Matebeleland, speak Ndebele, which is an Nguni language closely associated with the Zulu spoken in South Africa, with its characteristic “clicking” sounds. A second point I want to make at the beginning is to note that the traditional social organization still in force today in Zimbabwe consists of a hierarchy extending from a chief, who has responsibility over a designated region, through headmen within a particular chieftaincy and who are responsible for a village consisting of numerous extended families, to elders in a specific extended family and then to others within the family ordered by strictly delineated communal functions. This social organization is mirrored exactly by a corresponding hierarchy in the spirit world, with the chief ’s ancestor spirits interacting with communities within his chieftaincy, followed by the spirits of headmen and those of members within the extended family. I will return to this point later, but now I want to underscore that the spirit world and the social world are understood by the people as parallel to one another, with each influencing the other. A third preliminary point is historical. The Zimbabwean historian, D. N. Beach (1984: 24), refers to pre-colonial Shona states; elsewhere they are called 69

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dynasties or kingdoms (see, for example, Mutswairo 1996: 16–39). Beach (1984: 24) defines a state as one that was able to exact tribute from other territories over a wide area over a long time, and many constructed what he calls “prestige” stone buildings such as those at Great Zimbabwe. These were similar to European feudal states, where a central authority exacted tribute from lesser chieftaincies in exchange for protection and stability. The first state was the Great Zimbabwe State (thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries), which at its height established control over extensive regions from what is now Botswana to the coast of present-day Mozambique and from the Limpopo River in the south nearly to the border of the current Malawi and Mozambique. In the early 1400s, Shona groups formed a state separate from Zimbabwe under the Mutapa dynasty, which by the sixteenth century had accrued impressive power and wealth. The Portuguese traders arrived from the east African coast in the early sixteenth century and eventually weakened the Mutapa State. Although the Mutapa State continued until the late nineteenth century, it had lost its extensive influence by the middle of the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth century a new dynasty emerged in the wake of the decline of the Zimbabwe State, called the Torwa State, which in most ways can be regarded as a continuation of the Zimbabwe State under a different ruling dynasty and lineage group. In the 1680s it was conquered by another Shona group, which had migrated from the Mutapa State in the northeast, called the Rozvi, under the Changamire kinship line. The Changamire Rozvi did not destroy the Torwa State but adapted to it. They continued as a strong military force and encompassed Great Zimbabwe up until the mid-eighteenth century and extended towards the southwest. The Nguni invasions began in the early nineteenth century. These were comprised of South African communities which had rebelled against the Zulu leader Shaka. They fled northward conquering other tribes as they travelled north. One Nguni group invaded the southeast of Zimbabwe in the 1820s establishing the Nguni-speaking state of Gaza, which was short-lived, lasting only until 1890. The final invasion was to the west in the 1840s, where the Ndebele, under their leader Mzilakazi, conquered the Shona, thereby dealing a final blow to the Rozvi dynasty and carving out a territory that is now roughly equivalent to Matebeleland. Beach (1984: 24) explains: “The last three of these states [the Rozvi, Gaza and Ndebele] were ‘conquest’ states that involved large-scale immigrations of newcomers who, in the cases of the Changamire Rozvi and Ndebele, simply took over the states that existed there before.”1 wHO waS/IS mwarI?

With these preliminary comments in mind (the different ethnic groups comprising the Shona; that social and spiritual hierarchies are mirror images 70

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of one another; and the changing dynastic orders from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries), I turn now to discuss who Mwari was in traditional Zimbabwean culture and who Mwari is in contemporary indigenous religious contexts. These two facets, past traditions and present practices, should not be opposed to one another, but described as a continuum extending from pre-colonial and pre-Christian understandings of Mwari to the present representations of Mwari. One of the clearest explanations of who Mwari was and how Mwari is currently understood can be found in Michael Bourdillon’s authoritative work, The Shona Peoples, first published in 1976, with several revised versions following. Bourdillon, who has now retired as Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Zimbabwe, conducted the majority of his fieldwork among the Korekore ethnic group in the far north of Zimbabwe. Since his own research was limited largely to a specific location, he is careful to draw his readers’ attention to regional variations, particularly around the term Mwari. Bourdillon explains that the Shona people use numerous names for what he terms the High God, including Nyadenga or Dedza (owner of the sky); Musikavanhu (maker of people); Chikara (one inspiring awe); Dzivaguru (great pool); Mutangakugara (one who existed at the beginning); and Mwari, whom he claims is a personal name. Bourdillon adds that Mwari was spread as the name for God by missionaries familiar with the High God shrines located in southwest Zimbabwe, and now, he confirms, Mwari is explicitly associated with Christianity (Bourdillon 1987: 277). In the northern regions, where Bourdillon conducted his research, traditionally, the High God played little or no role in religious observances; rather, cults focusing on lion spirits, or Mhondoro, predominate. These are territorial spirits, normally associated with a chief ’s ancestral lineage. Hence, when problems affect a chief ’s region as a whole, such as drought, the Mhondoro spirits are consulted, usually in a ritual, where a medium becomes possessed by one of the chief ’s ancestor spirits. Bourdillon (ibid.: 253) explains that the Mhondoro refers to the “belief that certain powerful spirits, particularly the spirits of departed chiefs, take the form of or take possession of young lions” and later either grow into or take possession of “a young maneless lion, which wanders about in the bush until it decides to enter a medium”. Bourdillon’s research among the Korekore revealed that the people believe a hierarchy of Mhondoro spirits exists, with senior territorial spirits being traced ultimately to the founder of the chief ’s lineage, and in the case of the most important, all the way back to Mutota, according to tradition, the founder of the Korekore people (ibid.: 254; see also Garbett 1977: 58–62). The Mhondoro spirit at any level, just like its corresponding living chief, concerns itself with the needs of all those who fall within its territorial jurisdiction. Among the Korekore, appeals are still made to senior lion spirits, who are related to regions beyond current chiefs, obviously as a remnant of the period when there existed a kingdom or dynasty, with a 71

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senior or paramount chief ruling over lesser chiefs. The pre-colonial Shona states would have placed the king at the top of the pyramid. Aided by his ancestor spirits, he assumed broad responsibility for the welfare of the whole state. Lesser chiefs followed the same pattern, concerning themselves with more restricted territories, until finally the hierarchical structure reached families, with elders and subordinates being ordered according to seniority. In every case, the world of ancestor spirits followed a similar hierarchical pattern from those of the paramount chief (senior Mhondoro spirits) down to the level of the family ancestor spirits (midzimu). Clearly the destruction of the Mutapa State in the north and the Rozvi State in the southwest during the nineteenth century has reduced the scope of chiefs, and, their roles have become intertwined with various colonial and government administrations over the years. Nonetheless, the basic pattern correlating social to spiritual hierarchies persists to this day, as noted by the anthropologist Marja Spierenburg, who calls the Mhondoro a spirit of “royal ancestors” and claims that “all present-day chiefs [among the Korekore] claim to descend from one of the Mhondoro” (Spierenburg 2004: 33). In his authoritative work on the role of spirit mediums in the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, David Lan, whose research was also among the Korekore, centres his discussions on Mhondoro spirits and their mediums. Lan (1985: 74) outlines how the hierarchical structure works within the spirit world among the Korekore by drawing attention to the persistent need throughout the area for regular and reliable rainfall, although in reality the rains often are sporadic and undependable resulting in frequent droughts. Since this problem affects a wide area, it defines a central concern of territorial spirits. This means that in many regions among the Korekore, the Mhondoro is associated with bringing the annual rains, or, if for some reason the Mhondoro is offended, is credited with preventing rain until the particular grievance has been identified and rectified. Lan discovered that although annual rituals for rain are made at the shrine of each Mhondoro, the appeals for rain within each chieftaincy are conveyed by the territorial spirit upwards until eventually it reaches the founding ancestor. “The request must be sent up a chain of mhondoro until it reaches the most senior, the mhondoro which is in charge of the realm as a whole” (ibid.). The link to past dynasties in this case appears incontrovertible, since as Lan notes, requests for rain are sent through “the genealogy of the chieftaincy which links the present chief to his most distant ancestors” (ibid.). Bourdillon notes that the Mhondoro system, which is maintained in the northern and central regions of Zimbabwe (including groups other than the Korekore, such as the Zezuru near and around the capital Harare), is quite different from that operating in the southern regions, where chiefs from a wide region (up to 400 kilometres around) pay tribute at the Mwari shrines in the Matopos Hills (Bourdillon 1987: 279–80). The fame of these shrines has been spread by scholars like the Oxford historian Terence Ranger (1999) 72

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and the missiologist M. L. Daneel (1970), but also by anthropologists, such as Richard Werbner (1977) of the University of Manchester and his student, Leslie Nthoi (2006). Ranger writes about what he refers to as the “wideranging oracular cult of the High God, Mwali [Kalanga dialect for Mwari]” (Ranger 1999: 21), located in the Matopos Hills of southwest Zimbabwe. One of the most authoritative descriptions of the Mwari shrines was written by Daneel, in his book The God of the Matopo Hills (1970). Nthoi has described the power struggles for leadership in the Mwari shrines in his 2006 publication, Contesting Sacred Space. Nthoi (2006: 1) refers to Mwari as “southern Africa’s cult of God Above”. The most notable shrine of the regional cult devoted to Mwari is located at a hill called Matonjeni. It consists of hereditary officials and various messengers. Bourdillon reports that the principal officials are a high priest and priestess (a brother and sister who inherit their positions), a keeper of the shrine and the “voice” (an elderly woman married into the high priest’s family). Bourdillon explains further that the shrine is located in a cave from which the voice of Mwari speaks its oracles. Representatives from wide-ranging chieftaincies consult the voice about various matters such as the appointment of a new chief, the acceptance of a new spirit medium, drought or some other communal disaster. The representatives will have collected money, organized by each chief through his headmen, and will deliver this to the keeper of the shrine. The “voice” of Mwari speaks, but in an ancient dialect which must be translated into the language of the clients (Bourdillon 1987: 279–80). The current working of the regional cult relates in part to the pre-colonial period when tribute would have been paid to the paramount chief from outlying regions in exchange for protection and services. D. N. Beach makes it clear why I am discussing Mwari in connection to the prior states or dynasties that existed in Zimbabwe. He indicates that in the north and northeast of the country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the religious life of the people had been “based on ancestor spirit cults, with particular emphasis on cults based on the ancestors of the ruling lineage” (Beach 1984: 50). This, as we have seen according to Lan and Spierenburg, is preserved to this day in the Mhondoro spirit cults. Beach then observes that Mwari was a specifically Rozvi High God, who was a combination of sky god and ancestral spirit (ibid.). The Rozvi, as I noted, emigrated from the northeast and conquered the Torwa State in the southwest. According to Beach, they took Mwari with them, who in time syncretized with the older cave cult of the Venda people of the northern Transvaal region. This created a modified version of the present-day Mwari cult, by now based on mediums operating from caves, and was re-exported to the Matopos Hills in the early nineteenth century. Beach concludes: “For the rest of this century and well into the next, this cult, which now appealed to a large number of people who had no connection with the Rozvi, spread rapidly over the southwest and south” (ibid.: 50–51). 73

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pUTTING THE pIECES TOGETHEr

The traditional Shona states operated mirror images of the spirit world with the world of the living. This of necessity involved ritual focus on ancestors, at the highest level, the ancestors of the ruling lineage. In addition, there was a connection in the spirit world to rain, and hence, the name of the sky god made reference to this, such as nyadenga (“owner of the sky”) and dzivaguru (“great pool”). There was also a connection drawn between ancestors and rain, in that senior ancestors were responsible for bringing rain or for withholding it. Mwari was originally associated with the Rozvi in the north as a kind of sky god or powerful ancestor, but was brought south to combine with already operating cave cults. The traditional tribute system whereby the king received payment in exchange for ruling over a wide area has been preserved to this day in the Mwari shrines. These factors support Beach’s conclusion (1984: 50) that Mwari was “a combination of sky-god and ancestral spirit”. This would make Mwari something like a fertility deity in the sense that the senior ancestor spirit is seen as the source of the lineage or kinship group, who continues to care for his children by producing rain that causes the crops to come to fruition and the cattle to prosper. This interpretation fits very well into the way traditional rituals are practised today throughout Zimbabwe. From rituals in honour of senior ancestor spirits (Mhondoro) to family ancestor spirits, in every case beer is brewed by putting rapoko or millet seed into a cave to germinate, or the seed is placed into a large jar or container that is allowed to ferment. After the brewing process is completed, the beer is then offered as libations to the ancestors in a ritual of honour or in petitions for needs within the community (Bourdillon 1987: 209–14). As Lan (1985: 74) notes, this is done to Mhondoro today frequently in attempts to ensure that rains come in sufficient amount to secure a bountiful harvest, or, if a drought is persisting, to find out why the ancestor has withheld rain and what needs to be done to rectify the situation. This is a point also supported by M. L. Daneel, one of the few white men ever allowed into the Mwari shrines, who refers to Mwari as the “God of crop Fertility” and therefore as “first and foremost … the rain-giver” (Daneel 1970: 16, original emphasis). The connection of Mwari to fertility can be seen further by noting that a fundamental belief of the Shona people is that they are blessed and protected by the ancestors. An optimal life occurs when a man has many wives, numerous children, plenty of cattle and bountiful crops (Bourdillon 1987: 47–9). This produces a long and happy life with minimal misfortunes. One of the greatest misfortunes to occur in Shona society is the inability of a man or a woman to produce children (Gelfand 1973: 175). This is often interpreted as interference by witches or as a result of activities of other ill-intentioned spirits. Ultimately, ancestors are responsible for protecting and guiding their families, and thus, when bad things begin to occur, the final explanation is 74

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that the ancestor for some reason has permitted these misfortunes by withholding ancestral protection against nefarious spirits. The traditional understanding of Mwari as a fertility deity and original ancestor has been transformed by contemporary Zimbabwean Christians, as I noted at the outset of this chapter, into the now nearly universal acceptance among Shona-speaking churches that the term Mwari can be used interchangeably with God the Creator, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In order to understand how and why this transformation has occurred, I look at three sources: 1. the case for Mwari as the precursor to the Christian God as developed by the Zimbabwean liberation theologian, Canaan Banana; 2. the argument in favour of interpreting the biblical God as Mwari, based on an analysis of language use by indigenous Bible translators; and 3. an analysis as to why the Roman Catholic Church changed from rejecting Mwari as equivalent to the Christian God to their current advocacy for this position, including assimilating traditional death rituals into Christian liturgies. Immediately following my description of each position, I will offer a critique of the theological contentions advanced by its promoters based on conflicting interpretations that do not depend on Christian assumptions. a CHrISTIaN INTErprETaTION OF mwarI: THE CaSE OF CaNaaN BaNaNa

A leading exponent of translating Mwari into Christian terms among mainline Protestant Christians was the late Canaan Banana, who was an ordained Methodist minister and the first President of Zimbabwe, serving in this capacity from the establishment of an independent Zimbabwe in April 1980 until 31 December 1987. After he stepped down from his position as President, he was appointed Honorary Professor of Theology in the University of Zimbabwe. In his book Come and Share, Banana sets out a theological argument for equating Mwari, or other pre-Christian indigenous names for the Creator, such as Musikavanhu (creator of people), with the Christian God (Banana 1991). In chapter 4, which carries the title “From Mwari to the Triune God”, Banana recounts a well-known creation myth, which was popularized by George Kahari, a scholar of African literature, in his book Aspects of the Shona Novel (1986). The myth, as told by Banana (1991: 44–5), describes Mwari as the creator of the first man called Mwedzi (the moon), whom Mwari placed initially in a pool. Mwedzi soon became bored of life in the pool and implored Mwari to release him to earth. Mwari warned Mwedzi that the earth was a lonely and desolate place, but Mwedzi insisted. After a short while on the 75

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earth, Mwedzi discovered that Mwari’s warnings were accurate and Mwedzi returned to Mwari begging him for a partner. Mwari agreed and gave Mwedzi the morning star (Massassi) as his partner. When they arrived back on earth, in the evening they made a fire to keep warm. Mwedzi had with him a medicine horn (ngona), from which he drew oil and placed it on his index finger. He touched Massassi with his finger and she became pregnant. She gave birth to trees, grass, cattle, goats and herbivores. After two years, Mwari took Massassi back to his pool making Mwezi lonely again. Mwedzi then petitioned to Mwari for another wife and was given Morongo, the evening star.2 Mwedzi again put oil from the medicine horn on his index finger, touched Morongo, who became pregnant. She gave birth to the first boys and girls, then to wild animals, like the lion, and finally to the snake. Morongo soon copulated with the snake, which Banana calls an act of incest. Mwedzi, who by this time had been elevated to the position of a king (mambo), was bitten by the snake and became ill. His illness caused widespread suffering including drought, starvation and death. Mwedzi’s sons consulted hakata (divining sticks), which instructed them to perform a ritual to restore life to normal. In his interpretation of this myth, Banana (ibid.: 45) argues that the story confirms that the Shona people “have a God by the name Mwari”. He explains that Mwari is composed of the noun prefix “mu” and the noun stem “ari”, which translates as “He who is” (ibid.). Banana concludes: “Since he is similar to the God of Moses who identified himself as being ‘he who is’, Mwari can rightly be equated or translated to God” (ibid.). The Mwedzi story also confirms that the Shona God is the creator of the universe, who “created man” and gave him “authority to rule”. In fact, the story describes man as having been “created in the image of Mwari” and as having become “a co-partner of Mwari in the act of creation”. This explains the significance of the medicine horn, which “reflects the fact that creation is an on-going process”. Because God is described as creating everything in the world out of the union of the male and the female, this demonstrates that “the Shona believe that all history is influenced by God” (ibid.: 46). According to Banana, the Mwedzi myth also shows that the Shona always had a concept of sin. After Morongo copulated with the snake, thereby committing incest, and when the snake bit Mwedzi, misfortune followed. This shows that Mwari punishes offences. But likewise Mwari provides a way out of retribution by responding to a ritual of penance in which the people ask him to release them from their suffering. Central to this ritual is the act of honouring Mwari by brewing beer in remembrance of the ancestors. Banana contends that in practice the rituals are made to the ancestors, but these actually are always directed towards Mwari through a line of ancestral intercessors who carry the petitions of the people finally to God. Banana concludes that “the ultimate reality is Mwari” (ibid.). For Banana, myths, such as the story of Mwedzi, represent an African equivalent to the Old Testament. For Western Christianity, which he says 76

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derives from “the Judeo-Christian heritage”, the two most important sources of mythology are obtained from the Greek and the Hebrew traditions (ibid.: 36). Due to its “ethical nature”, the Hebrew tradition has exerted “a much deeper and more widespread influence” globally, but this does not take away from the myths of other cultures, including those found in Africa. In particular, African myths point to the importance of community and to the social group (ibid.). Building on this thesis, in 1991, Banana delivered a paper in the University of Zimbabwe which was later published under the title, “The Case for a New Bible”, where he claims that the Bible should be “re-written” (Banana 1993: 17–18). His underlying argument was that, for African Christians, African myths should replace the Hebrew Scriptures to form an African Old Testament. He argued that the tales of the forebears of the Jewish people were largely irrelevant to Africans, but they can serve as a model for how the myths of pre-Christian peoples act as a preparation for the full revelation in Christ as recorded in the New Testament. By implication, this means that in Zimbabwe stories like the Mwedzi myth should be compiled to form a Shona Old Testament with the same status for the Zimbabwean church as the Hebrew scriptures have been accorded in the history of Christianity in the West. Banana’s call for the Bible to be re-written proved highly controversial. In response to popular reactions in churches and in the media to Banana’s criticism of the Bible as employed by missionaries in Africa as an instrument of oppression, lecturers in the Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy in the University of Zimbabwe wrote articles from various disciplinary perspectives to raise the level of the discussions, which at times had proved highly emotive (Mukonyora et al. 1993). This resulted in the publication of Banana’s paper followed by contributions written by eight scholars representing biblical studies, religious studies, theology, history and missiology.3 What appears not to have been addressed in the series of articles produced by the academics working in the University of Zimbabwe is how loosely Banana had re-told the Mwedzi myth and how his interpretation stood in sharp contrast to that provided by George Kahari, from whom he derived the story. Kahari’s telling of the myth contains numerous elements that Banana chose to ignore. It is clear from Kahari’s account (1986: 117–19) that Mwedzi’s second wife, Morongo, the evening star, explicitly understood the sexual relationship entailed by sleeping with her husband. When Mwedzi began to put ointment on his index finger, as he had done previously with his first wife, Massassi, the morning star, Morongo rebuked him saying she is not like Massassi. She implored him to “smear your loins with ngona (gona) oil” and also to smear her own loins with the oil. She then commands him: “Now couple with me” (ibid.: 118). This happened for four nights. Each morning, Morongo gave birth to new forms of life, until Mwari sent a thunderstorm to frighten Mwedzi, causing him to stop coupling with Morongo. But Morongo 77

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thought of a plan to foil Mwari by closing the entrance to the hut so Mwari could not see that they had slept together again. The result of the forbidden coupling was the birth of dangerous animals, including lions, leopards, snakes and scorpions. Mwari responds by saying to Mwedzi, “I warned you” (ibid.: 119). The next night Mwedzi wanted to sleep again with Morongo, but she refused telling him to sleep instead with his daughters, who by now had become grown women. The story does not condemn this act, but follows by noting that by coupling with his daughters, Mwedzi fathered so many children that he “became the Mambo (king) of a great people” (ibid.: 119). These important elements to the story do not accord with Banana’s telling of it. It is true that Morongo decides to sleep with the snake, but this produces no offspring. Nor does Kahari’s version refer to the coupling between Morongo and the snake as incest. The snake bites Mwedzi only after he had approached Morongo and asked her to sleep with him. The snake, which was under the bed, rose up and bit Mwedzi. This resulted, as Banana indicated, in great misfortunes, including death for many people, and, again as Banana reported, Mwedzi’s children consulted hakata to determine what to do. According to Banana, a ritual was prescribed, but in Kahari’s account, the people learn from the hakata that Mwedzi must be returned to the pool out of which he first emerged, but he never arrives there because his own children strangle him and then bury him. They then chose a new man to be their king. Given the different accounts of the story as conveyed by Kahari and Banana, it is not surprising that Kahari provides a far different, non-theological, interpretation of the meaning of the Mwedzi myth. He calls the genre of the story “fantastic”, and in this case, explains that it has its roots in the annual harvesting festival observed by the Shona people (Kahari 1986: 120). During this ceremony, as is quite common in new year festivals, a liminal period occurs when normal social mores and customs are suspended. Kahari indicates that this often is displayed among the Shona by women airing their grievances, sometimes when they are grinding corn. Kahari explains: “The fantastic, therefore, assumes a carnival-like or carnivalesque tone where people’s imagination is allowed to run riot disrupting and fracturing a single or monological view of life” (ibid.) Kahari concludes that the myth is largely about social antagonisms being overcome and about how sexual intercourse is veiled in symbolic language. For example, he asserts that the fire which is built each night represents “sexual desire”, whereas the ngona or medicine horn represents the man’s testicles which are “responsible for the production of the human seed” (ibid.: 122). He then summarizes the main import of the myth which he says “is about the creation of the world and procreation of the VaUngwe people and possibly other adjacent people in the neighbourhood” (ibid.). In other words, the principal aim of the Mwedzi myth is social. It tells how the people originated and came to be where they now are, how they are related to one another and finally how they depend on their ancestors for 78

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their continued well-being. In this sense, we see evidence of Mwari serving as the progenitor of a specific people, bound to a particular place and identified as being inseparable from ancestral traditions. It is clear by comparing Banana’s version and interpretation of the Mwedzi myth with those of Kahari that Banana was playing very loosely with the facts. In particular, his claim that the hakata had prescribed a ritual to restore life to normal nowhere appears in Kahari’s account, and certainly Kahari does not imply that the entire story ultimately focuses on Mwari as creator. As I have argued above, the myth primarily conveys an image of Mwari as the originator of a people who is closely involved in setting in motion acts of procreation out of which life as we know it emerges. In symbolic language, this confirms the notion that Mwari is both an original ancestor and a fertility deity, who continues to influence the life of the people who trace their beginnings to him through a line of ancestors. Even if Banana is correct that the messages addressed to ancestors are carried ultimately to Mwari, this only confirms my interpretation that Mwari as an original deity of fertility stands at the pinnacle of a long line of ancestors whose collective presence ensures the stability and perseverance of the people. It is at this point that the relevance of the explanation of the meaning of Mwari by Herbert Aschwanden becomes evident. Aschwanden was a Swiss medical doctor working in southern Zimbabwe from the 1970s well into the 1990s. He wrote three important books: Symbols of Life (1982), Symbols of Death (1987) and Karanga Mythology (1989). He utilized nursing sisters as fieldworkers and compiled an impressive amount of detailed information about the way the southern Shona, particularly the Karanga, interpret the world. Aschwanden (1989: 16–21) recounts a cosmogonic myth that was obtained during the fieldwork conducted by his nursing sisters, which bears a close similarity to the Mwedzi story found in Kahari’s work. In Aschwanden’s version, a figure called Matangakugara (he who was the first) becomes the agent for making everything that exists on the earth. The story relates how Mwari, who lived in the sky, said to Matangakugara: “You have been very good to me, and I shall reward you for it. Take my walking stick (tsvimbo), with it I will lower you into the big water beneath the sky. There, the stick will fulfil all your wishes” (ibid.: 16). When he was dropped into the water below, there was no light and no land. Although the myth is quite long and detailed, what followed was the act of creation that occurred by the stick diving into the water and emerging with an egg, which Matangakugara broke producing, in the first instance, the land. This occurred two further times until the land was covered with grass, flowers, plants and animals. The fourth time the stick descended into the water, it brought up an egg, which when Matangakugara broke it, a “most beautiful girl emerged” (ibid.: 18). Matangakugara asked the stick what he should do with the girl, and he was told: “‘sleep in her lap’” (ibid.). The next day, she had a baby. For a period of time, the couple and their children were happy, but as the family grew, they began to quarrel with each 79

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other and even began to question the authority of the walking stick. The story ends with the world very much like it is today: “Thorns began to grow, the animals ate each other and also attacked the human beings. The rain stopped falling, and the land dried up” (ibid.). In his interpretation of the myth, Aschwanden associates Mwari with the walking stick, citing another name for the stick, “tsvimbo yaMwari, the stick of God” (ibid.: 19). But he also draws attention to the stick as the symbol of a penis. At this point, the connection of this story to sexual intercourse and to fertility becomes obvious. Aschwanden observes that “man is … creative through his phallus, with which he begets new life” (ibid.). Mwari creates the world and all that is in it through the stick. This confirms that according to this story, just as we saw in the Mwedzi myth, Mwari is the god of fertility and procreation. Aschwanden concludes: “When God’s stick is dipped into the water this is seen on a biological level of interpretation as the entry of the penis into the woman’s vagina” (ibid.) It is important to note that the tsvimbo is a ubiquitous symbol today in Zimbabwe. It is used by chiefs to represent that their authority is derived from their ancestors. It always is carried by spirit mediums in various rituals, who in most cases are possessed by ancestors. The tsvimbo in the broad sense of fertility as representing the male organ stands for the lineage of the kinship groups either at the family level or more widely within chieftaincies. It has also been employed as a symbol that the nation of Zimbabwe derives its authority from the ancient ancestors. For example, a tsvimbo was frequently carried by Joshua Nkomo, the nationalist leader, who normally appeared in public with it in his hand. I saw him at the national stadium in Harare, when he was Vice-President of Zimbabwe, walk onto the pitch of an international football match as part of the opening festivities. He walked carrying his tsvimbo, a sign that he was representing a long line of authority legitimated by the ancestral traditions. In the light of Kahari’s interpretation of the Mwezi myth and its closely associated story of Mutangakugara and the tsvimbo as related by Herbert Aschwanden, Canaan Banana’s motivations for referring to the Mwedzi myth are shown on the basis of empirical evidence to be theologically, or even ideologically, inspired. His aim, as he puts it in “The Case for a New Bible”, is to demonstrate that “while the Bible is an important source of God’s revelation to humankind, it is by no means the only source” (Banana 1993: 27). African traditions, leaders and prophets can be inserted in place of those told about in the Old Testament, which are primarily relevant to the Jewish people. Only Christ must remain constant for Christians. In fact, according to Banana, Christ must be liberated from the Bible and allowed to speak to all peoples and cultures in ways that reflect their traditions (ibid.: 26–7). This is precisely where Mwari becomes relevant to his argument. As the Shona “Creator”, Mwari can be fitted precisely into the place that the God of Israel occupied in the Old Testament accounts. Christ completes the whole picture so that, 80

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just as he did for the Jews, for Africans he reveals the fullness of God. Banana puts it this way: “The emphasis on Christ denotes a Supra-Christ, God incarnate superseding any and all forms of human limitation” (ibid.: 28). As a human being, however, Jesus “could have been born among Asians, Africans, Europeans”, which means that “the humanity of Jesus is only important as a matter of convenience” (ibid.: 27). Based on these theological assumptions, it becomes clear why Banana so freely interpreted the Mwedzi myth and why he was not concerned to relate it to what empirical sources might have been available to him, as Kahari had done. His rendering of the Mwedzi myth, as is his entire accounting of the correlation of Mwari to the pre-Christian understanding of God, can rightfully be called an “invention”. CHrISTIaN INTErprETaTIONS BaSED ON SHONa LaNGUaGE aNaLySIS

Quite recently, an interdenominational team of indigenous biblical translators in Zimbabwe, led by the Roman Catholic priest Ignatius Chidavaenzi, justified translating God as Mwari in Shona versions of the Bible based on an analysis of how the word is constructed in the Shona language. The translators have put forward two interpretations of Mwari: (1) that it is a contraction of muwari, which in Shona means “to spread” (as a blanket on grass), which suggests that Mwari “is the being that has put in the world everything we see”; and (2) that Mwari is a contraction of muari, derived from the verb “to be”, and suggests that Mwari can be translated as “the one who is”, a phrase that is comparable to the Hebrew word YHWH, usually translated as “I am that I am” (cited by Creary 2011: 204).4 As we have just seen, this second explanation of the meaning of Mwari was also advanced by Banana. In a report on the findings of the biblical translators, as related by Nicholas M. Creary (ibid.: 204–5), the team preferred not to adopt a single word for God when translating the Bible, but argued that the meaning most appropriate to the context of the verses in question should be used. They note that more than one word is used for God in the Hebrew scriptures, such as Elohim, which simply means “God”. For this reason, rather than reducing God in the Shona Bible to Mwari (Muari – the one who is), the translators suggested that Muwari should also be employed on occasions where the text refers to God as the Creator, the one who caused things to be. Thus, when God is referred to in the scriptures by the personal name, Muari should be used, but when God’s attribute as Creator is implied, Muwari is more appropriate. The biblical translators concluded that, leaving biblical contexts aside, it is more likely that the traditional Shona term Mwari is derived from Muari than from Muwari. This is based on an analysis of how Shona is spoken. Creary explains that the translators drew attention to the fact that “the tone patterns of ‘Muwari’ and ‘Mwari’ were different in ChiShona, which like most Bantu languages, is tonal (the former being low-low-low and the latter being 81

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low-high), and did not conform to ChiShona’s ordinary rules of contraction or patterns of sound change” (ibid.: 204). Further corroboration of this is noted by the translators when they explain that Muari “has the same tone pattern, and follows ChiShona rules for contractions and patterns of sound change, as well as rules for denoting a personal agent”. This suggests that it is most likely that Mwari is Muari, “the one who is”, and is “derived from the third person singular of the irregular verb ‘to be’” (ibid.: 204–5). Creary reports that the translators drew attention to the theological significance of interpreting Mwari as Muari: “There exists a very interesting similarity between the name which God gives Himself in Exodus 3:14, and the name which the Shona people give to God” (ibid.: 205). Although they do not conclude that Mwari is incontrovertibly equivalent to Muari, admitting that “even if the reasons given for thinking that the word Mwari comes from the verb ‘to be’ were not persuasive”, they maintain that “we should still adopt muari to translate yahweh” (cited by Creary, ibid.: 205). This is clearly based on theological presuppositions, for which it is highly convenient that a word in Shona could be interpreted so closely to the Hebrew personal name for God. The report of the translators confirms this conclusion: “Some of the translation committees in East Africa envy us for having even the possibility of such a name” (cited by Creary, ibid.: 205). The translators do not make any attempt to relate their rendering of Mwari as “I am that I am” to cultural or historical contexts, but, as we have seen, relied primarily on linguistic interpretations to confirm their Christian theological presumptions. Whether by design or omission, they do not refer to a third interpretation of Mwari, which much more closely conforms to Shona cultural values and ritual practices than does the insistence that Mwari correlates to the biblical notion of Creator and to the personal name of the God of the Israelites. This third interpretation has been suggested by Herbert Aschwanden in his third volume, Karanga Mythology. According to Aschwanden (1989: 206), the word Mwari is a contraction of mu and hari, which means “to be in the jar”. As applied to the cave in the Matopos Hills, he notes that “the cave with the pool (or river), from where God’s voice can be heard, is compared with a jar filled with water. As God’s voice is heard from inside the cave he is called ‘he who is in the jar’” (ibid.). As I noted earlier, it is typical for seed out of which traditional beer is made for use in rituals to be placed in a cave in the side of a mountain, or in a jar. Aschwanden asserts: “In the same way as the uterus (jar) of the woman is the giver of life so God himself is too, and in the jar of the woman (muhari) there is the amniotic fluid (pool) where the embryo (also called Mwari) lives’ (ibid.). Aschwanden concludes that “Mwari is the God of fertility” (ibid.). Put in other language, Mwari is associated with the function of original or senior ancestors, that of providing rain and ensuring the continuation of the lineage. Citing a praise poem to the deity of fertility recorded in 1935 by F. W. T. Posselt, 82

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Aschwanden (1989: 207) draws attention to the link between fertility and rain: “Rain-maker, you have poured oil all over the earth from the sky.” FrOm yaVE TO mwarI IN rOmaN CaTHOLIC THEOLOGy aND DEaTH rITUaLS

Nicholas Creary (2011: 204–21) has outlined the historical development of attitudes towards Mwari within the Roman Catholic Church in Zimbabwe from the time the Jesuit Francis Richartz founded the Chishawasha Mission in the early 1890s among the Zezuru, near the present-day Harare, until 1961 when Mwari was accepted generally into the Catholic liturgy. Creary (ibid.: 208–9) observes that the early Jesuit missionaries maintained that Mwari did not convey an unambiguous idea of God among indigenous peoples, and that they would form a clearer idea if a new word Yave (from the Hebrew YHWH) were introduced into the language. It also gave the Jesuit missionaries control over how God was presented to the new converts. Richartz wrote in 1923: “By introducing Yave the Natives were dependent on our explanation and were convinced that we gave the highest Being other qualities of which they had not heard before – like Creator, Preserver, Saviour, and especially an almighty, eternal omniscient Judex [judge]” (cited by Creary, ibid.: 209, original emphasis). For Richartz, a central problem with using Mwari as the Shona word for God was that the indigenous people confused God with ancestors and associated him with rituals aimed at producing rain. Creary provides details of a split among the Jesuits in Chishawasha over the use of Mwari as the term for the Christian God, which became highly divisive in the 1920s. As Creary (ibid.: 210) notes, the Mariannhill Catholics in the eastern part of Zimbabwe had introduced Mwari regularly into the catechism and prayer books as early as 1910, but the prefects at Chishawasha had resisted all such attempts to use the vernacular word and contended consistently that only Yave should be used. The division was based more on practical arguments than on theological positions. The anti-Mwari faction contended that African Catholics had been introduced in the 1890s to Yave as God and had accepted this term. It would appear a retrogressive and confusing step now to introduce Mwari as the Shona name for the Christian God (ibid.: 214). Those in favour of establishing Mwari as the name for God pointed out that in other parts of the world local names for God had been accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. It would appear discriminatory in the case of the Shona to dismiss the vernacular word Mwari in favour of a foreign word, Yave (ibid.: 216–18). The Mwari faction eventually won the argument and, as Creary notes, in 1961 Bishop Aloysius Haene approved the use of Mwari in Roman Catholic liturgies (ibid.: 220). By 1963 Mwari was used almost everywhere among Roman Catholics for God. Insight into changes in the Roman Catholic attitudes towards indigenous practices is found in the Church’s move towards accommodating important 83

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Shona religious traditions into Christian liturgies. For example, a ritual that is still widely observed throughout Zimbabwe is called kurova guva, which is intended to bring home an ancestor spirit about a year after a person’s death so the ancestor can assume the traditional duties of guarding, protecting and caring for his or her descendants.5 Many Protestant churches have condemned the ritual as pagan, regarding it as ancestor worship, and instead have substituted a ceremony called “unveiling the tombstone”, which is also observed about a year after a person has died. What often happens is that both rituals are observed by Protestant Christians, although the traditional kurova guva ceremony is concealed from the clergyperson performing the Christian act of remembrance.6 The Roman Catholic Church, in contrast to mainline Protestant churches, has attempted to integrate the traditional kurova guva ritual into Catholic liturgies. The priest often participates by blessing the beer which is offered to honour the ancestors and leads prayers asking that the ancestor assume the role of caring for his or her family. The theological justification for this is based on the Catholic teaching about the “communion of the saints”, where saints are believed to intercede on behalf of those who make petitions to them, but on the understanding that the saint ultimately delivers the message to God (Bowker 1997: 229, 839). In the Catholic interpretation of this in Zimbabwe, ancestors assume the role of intermediaries who are close to their family members and thus can intercede on their behalf to God. The Catholic version of the kurova guva ritual simply confirms that a family member, who died after having lived a moral life, has been accepted back into the living community as part of the greater, universal communion of Christian saints. According to Paul Gundani, a Catholic historian who lectured first in the University of Zimbabwe and now is Professor in the University of South Africa (UNISA), this interpretation was endorsed in 1973 by a Roman Catholic Theological Commission set up to discuss the theological arguments surrounding a Catholic view of the traditional kurova guva ritual. Gundani writes: The Church teaches that Saints have communion with other saints and the living and intercede on behalf of the living to God. The majority members [of the Theological Commission] therefore viewed the status of the ancestor as comparable to that of the Saints since the spirit brought back home to protect the family is also expected to intercede to the madzitateguru (ancestors). (Gundani 1998a: 213) Gundani reports that in 1982 the Catholic Church renamed the christianized version of kurova guva as kuchenura munhu (to purify the person). The new name suggested that part of the aim of the ritual was “‘to achieve a purification of the departed spirit in harmony with that purification we believe 84

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purgatory to effect’” (ibid.: 216). The christianized version of the ritual nonetheless contained several elements obtained from the customary performance, including the blessing and presentation of rapoko grain out of which the beer used in the ritual is brewed and the sacrifice of a goat, in Gundani’s words, “for the purposes of purification and reconciliation between the family and the spirit of the deceased and the rest of the ancestors” (ibid.: 218). The primary aim of kurova guva and kuchenura munhu remained the same in one important respect: “the symbolic induction or reinstatement of the spirit into the family and in the ancestor world”, but in the Catholic version, the spirit is also understood to be inducted into “heaven” through the ritual (ibid.: 219). Gundani adds that in addition to the traditional feast which follows by sharing meat from the sacrificed animals and sadza (a thick porridge made from maize meal), the Catholic ritual includes the celebration of the mass. Gundani has also described the changes that occurred in Zimbabwean Catholic burial practices following the Second Vatican Council. He notes that before Vatican II “Catholic missionaries believed that a Requiem Mass replete with ceremony and ritual would equal the customary Shona practice” (Gundani 1998b: 82). They also thought that the Catholic burial practices would “eradicate the need to propitiate the ancestors” (ibid.). Gundani observes that these assumptions proved entirely wrong and, as in the case of the Protestant “unveiling the tombstone” ceremony, resulted in the traditional burial and kurova guva rituals persisting, sometimes covertly, alongside the Christian rites. At about the same time that Mwari began being used routinely in Catholic liturgies in the early 1960s, Gundani notes that the Catholic Bishops of Rhodesia established a committee “to prepare a draft of the Shona burial rite in Christian form” (ibid.: 83). It was adopted in 1966, and has remained essentially the same since. In Gundani’s account of the ritual, the deeply held conviction that the ancestors are at the core of traditional indigenous religious beliefs and practices is affirmed. The burial service begins with a “prayer” to the ancestors as follows: To all you ancestors who are with God. We are gathered here to present to you your child x. We ask you to accompany him/her on his/her journey. Receive him/her in God’s kingdom so that he/she will have the capacity to shield others from the misfortunes of the world and to intercede on their behalf. (Ibid.: 84–5) This clearly is a Christian form of the traditional ritual, which places God (Mwari) at the apex of the line of ancestors. The customary role of the ancestors nonetheless is preserved. They are to protect their kin from misfortunes and to intercede ultimately to Mwari on their behalf. There is little difference in the presentation of Mwari in this part of the ritual from how I have 85

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described the role of Mwari in traditional thinking. Mwari could easily be regarded as an original ancestor, one who brought the people to the land in the first place and who ultimately cares for their communal well-being. The Catholic liturgy does not end with ancestors, of course, since the next phase includes prayers directly to God asking him to welcome the deceased into his kingdom (Gundani 1998b: 85). It is here that the Christian and traditional worldviews appear inconsistent. In the traditional understanding, ancestors do not travel to another world, but remain very much a part of the community, just as they did when they were living. They assume the same role as when alive, but with greater powers. When the ancestors are removed from the present by four or five generations, they are no longer remembered by name, but are still acknowledged. Those who are remembered by name are asked to carry the message of their descendants to “those we no longer remember” and, in theory, ultimately to Mwari, or to whichever name is used by the people for the founding ancestor (Cox 1998: 235). Attempts to accommodate indigenous religious beliefs and rituals into Christian contexts need to be seen as an extension of the debate among Zimbabwean Catholics about Mwari as the preferred name for God as opposed to Yave. By incorporating deeply held traditional beliefs into Christian liturgical practices, the Catholic Church has sought to inculturate the Christian message into local contexts. Inculturation, which has become the accepted term for describing the relationship between Christian faith and culture among Roman Catholic theologians, indicates not simply the way Christian faith is expressed in culturally relevant ways, but is defined as a principle that transforms a culture by making it into something new. Inculturation was explained by Alfred Maravilla, a priest of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) order in the Philippines, in the following way: It is a theological term generally used to denote the process of “living exchange” or dynamic relationship between Gospel and culture; between the local Church and the culture of its people. The Gospel becomes inserted in a given culture transforming it from within by challenging certain values and cultural expressions. That culture, on the other hand, offers positive values and forms which can enrich the way the Gospel is preached, understood and lived thus enriching Christianity and the Church by interpreting and formulating anew the Christian message. (Maravilla 2003: 1) Frans Verstraelen, who was Professor of Religious Studies in the University of Zimbabwe in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, cited the 1994 statement of the Africa Synod of the Catholic Church as explaining the theological meaning of inculturation: “When He (the Word) takes up His due place in a culture, He awakens all the energies of the first creation which it expresses, 86

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investing them with the power of His redemption” (cited by Verstraelen 1998: 27). In the Zimbabwean context, Verstraelen argues that the Catholic position with respect to the indigenous religious practices is best described as “one of continuity, without denying that the Gospel challenges each culture and religion” (ibid.: 30). Referring to a statement made in 1994 by Bishop Ignatius Prieto of the Hwange Diocese of Zimbabwe, Verstraelen draws attention to what the Bishop referred to as the positive elements of “African Traditional Religions”: “Belief in the one God, wisdom and high ethical standards, high regard for ancestors and elderly people, respect for authority as something sacred, life as a sacred gift of God through the ancestors” (ibid.: 30). In the light of a theology of inculturation, it becomes evident that the decision of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe to equate Mwari with God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, is based on a non-empirical theological interpretation of pre-Christian indigenous beliefs and practices. The theologizing of Shona culture led to the next logical step of assimilating traditional understandings of the original ancestor and the original ancestor’s descendants into Christian liturgies. Inculturation in this theological sense proceeds entirely on Christian terms, that is, indigenous religious beliefs and rituals are regarded as useful for spreading the Christian faith only in so far as they can be made to fit into Christian theological doctrines, such as the communion of the saints and the purification of the soul after death. A theology of inculturation as it developed in the Roman Catholic Church in Zimbabwe conforms entirely to what I am calling a theological invention. The kurova guva bringing home ceremony, traditional burial rites and the name Mwari in indigenous Shona religion taken together convey a quite different worldview than they do when they are transformed into Christian language and are subjected to Christian theological interpretations. CONCLUSION

Based on the historical, social and religious contexts I have described in this chapter, and in light of the oral traditions conveyed in them and on the basis of at least another linguistic interpretation of the meaning of Mwari in Shona, it seems reasonable to conclude that Mwari was originally a fertility deity associated with the sky and also connected closely to the lineage system of ancestral authority as a remnant of times when pre-colonial states were still operating. This explains why we can find parallels for this in other parts of Zimbabwe, where the Mhondoro spirits play a central role in rituals and where more direct connections are drawn to the quasi-legendary stories of the founding ancestors than are found generally in the Mwari traditions as currently practised in southern Zimbabwe. This conclusion demonstrates that identifying Mwari with the Christian God has been done in the first instance by missionaries, followed by indigenous theologians, linguists and 87

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local church leaders, in order to construct an imaginary line of continuity between pre-Christian religious life and the Christian message. This connection now has become so generally accepted that, as I noted at the outset of this chapter, its theological roots are overlooked and it has been promoted as fact somewhat uncritically by many scholars writing in the field of religious studies.

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chapter 4

THE raINBOw-SErpENT IN THE raINBOw SpIrIT THEOLOGy

An important contemporary movement aimed at indigenizing the Christian idea of God in Australia is called the Rainbow Spirit Theology. In 1994 and 1995 two workshops were held near Townsville in northern Queensland among indigenous Christian leaders, later known as the Rainbow Spirit Elders. The workshops were facilitated by the non-Aboriginal Lutheran theologian, Norman Habel, with the assistance of his colleagues Robert Bos and Shirley Wurst. The principal aim of the workshop, in the words of Habel (2007: viii), was “to organise and record emerging ideas” of the Aboriginal participants “about an indigenous theology”. The Elders were drawn from the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Uniting Churches. During the first workshop, the Aboriginal leaders recounted their “beliefs, ideas and stories”, which were formulated into “statements of faith” (ibid.). These statements were reviewed and revised during the second workshop and eventually developed into a small book, first published in 1997 under the title Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology (Rainbow Spirit Elders 1997, 2007). In this chapter, before dealing directly with the Rainbow Spirit Theology, I review some important anthropological literature on the rainbow-serpent, which was obtained largely in the 1920s and 1930s by three foundational figures in Australian anthropology: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, A. P. Elkin and W. E. H. Stanner. I follow this by analysing the rainbow-serpent in light of an interpretation developed by the anthropologist L. R. Hiatt, who suggested that the rainbow-serpent represents a bisexual deity associated with rain and fecundity. I then turn to examine the Rainbow Spirit Theology itself by posing three fundamental questions: 1. Do the Rainbow Spirit Elders actually mean the rainbow-serpent when they refer to the Rainbow Spirit? 89

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2. If so, how do the Elders interpret the rainbow-serpent as being commensurate with the Christian idea of God? 3. Does the Rainbow Spirit represent a theological invention by artificially transforming a pre-Christian deity into an Aboriginal Creator God? The theological authenticity of the Rainbow Spirit movement does not depend on the answer to these questions, but research on the place of the rainbow-serpent in Aboriginal myths and rituals provides empirical evidence on which to assess the claims of the Elders and it enables us to evaluate the rainbow-serpent in itself as a mode of expressing Aboriginal religious and social ideas. THE raINBOw-SErpENT IN aNTHrOpOLOGICaL rESEarCH

The British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who assumed an appointment as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1926 and who first suggested the nomenclature “rainbow-serpent”, believed that the rainbow-serpent was a ubiquitous symbol found throughout Australia (Stanner 1989: 81). In his first published article on the rainbow-serpent, which appeared in 1926 in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Radcliffe-Brown asserted that “the rainbow-serpent is not confined in Australia to any particular ethnological province, but it is very widespread and may very possibly be practically universal” (Radcliffe-Brown 1926: 24). He based this conclusion not on any field studies he had conducted, but on reports from researchers working in various parts of Australia, including Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, and among central desert peoples. This survey of secondary sources led him to conclude that the rainbow-serpent “is characteristic of Australian culture as a whole and not of any one part or stratum of it” (ibid.). As explained by W. E. H. Stanner (1989: 81), Radcliffe-Brown thought the elements associated with the symbol he called the rainbow-serpent included: “(1) a conception of the rainbow as a huge serpent which (2) perennially inhabits deep, permanent waters, (3) is associated with rain and rain-making, and (4) is connected also with the iridescence of quartz-crystals and mother of pearl”. Stanner concludes that for Radcliffe-Brown the rainbow-serpent was a “sort of guardian-spirit” and because of its association with water “the aborigines conceive of it as The Spirit of Water” (ibid.). In its inaugural volume in 1930, the journal Oceania, of which RadcliffeBrown was the first editor, contained three articles dealing directly with the rainbow-serpent, one by Radcliffe-Brown (1930d: 342–7) himself, a short piece by Ursula McConnel (1930: 347–9) and a final submission by A. P. Elkin (1930b: 349–52), who was appointed Professor of Anthropology in Sydney when Radcliffe-Brown accepted an appointment to a professorship in the 90

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University of Chicago in 1931. In addition to his discussion of the rainbowserpent, in a separate article, Elkin (1930a: 257–79) provided an extensive analysis of research he had conducted in the Kimberley District in northwest Australia on rock paintings, in which the rainbow-serpent featured prominently. The two contributions to the journal by Elkin and the one by Radcliffe-Brown offer comprehensive discussions of Aboriginal beliefs about the rainbow-serpent, but they suffer from the fact that by 1930 the traditions about the rainbow-serpent were dying out and in many places were no longer remembered. As editor, Radcliffe-Brown introduced the inaugural issue of Oceania by describing this as a critical problem for anthropologists working in Australia: “The Australian Aborigines, even if not doomed to extinction as a race, seem at any rate to be doomed to have their cultures destroyed” (Radcliffe-Brown 1930a: 3). This fact added a sense of urgency to ethnographic research, which was “of the very greatest importance for a comparative science of culture” (ibid.). Radcliffe-Brown’s article on the rainbow-serpent in the first volume of Oceania took up the same theme as his earlier article on this subject. He repeated his claim that stories about the rainbow-serpent are distributed widely “in many parts of the continent” and that “this particular myth is one of the most important” in Australia (Radcliffe-Brown 1930d: 342). In this case, however, Radcliffe-Brown had attempted to do some primary research on the subject by making a short research trip in 1929 through parts of New South Wales. He concluded that “the rainbow-serpent as it appears in Australian belief may with some justification be described as occupying the position of a deity, and perhaps the most important nature-deity” (ibid.). Of course, this belief has specific local variations. In some places, the rainbow-serpent functions as “part of a totemic cult”, in others it is associated with rites of initiation (ibid.). Generally, the rainbow-serpent is the source of what RadcliffeBrown describes as “the magical powers possessed by medicine men” due to the connection between the rainbow-serpent and quartz crystals, which “are amongst the most important of the magical substances used by the medicinemen” (ibid.). None of these conclusions, however, could be substantiated in the research he conducted in 1929, which he describes as adding just “a few further scraps of information” to that which we already know, because it was “unfortunately now too late to study the belief in any detail in the surviving tribes of South-east Australia” (ibid.). In both articles on the rainbow-serpent, Radcliffe-Brown based his conclusions on material that had been collected from various sources, mostly in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In his article contributed to Oceania, he describes an initiation ceremony in southeast Australia called “the Bora” in which a serpent is represented “in the form of a sinuous mound of earth up to forty feet or more in length” (ibid.: 343). During the Bora, “the beliefs about the rainbow-serpent were explained to the younger men” (ibid.). Radcliffe-Brown does not cite any source for this information, although it was 91

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described in detail by R. H. Matthews in 1896 in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (Hiatt 1975: 148). In the next paragraph, however, he refers to a legend related by Matthews in his 1899 book Folk-lore of Australian Aborigines about Kamilaroi, “a snake-like monster of enormous proportions” (Radcliffe-Brown 1930d: 343). Radcliffe-Brown then gives considerable attention to a publication by Mrs Katie Langloh Parker entitled Australian Legendary Tales (1897), in which she relates stories of “the karia” among the Yalari tribe in New South Wales.1 Although Parker refers to the karia as a “crocodile”, Radcliffe-Brown claims that this figure is really the rainbow-serpent, since Parker describes “the karia as one of the subsidiary totems of the black snake clan, and the rainbow, yuluwiri, as a subsidiary totem of the opossum clan” (cited by Radcliffe-Brown 1930d: 343). Radcliffe-Brown follows this discussion by describing beliefs about the rainbow-serpent among the tribes of Victoria, citing the work of R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria (1878, in two volumes). He concludes by admitting that “it is highly unlikely that we shall be able to obtain any more detailed information about the myth from the surviving remnants of the tribes of Victoria and New South Wales” but “it is clear … that the [rainbow-serpent] myth was an important element of the native beliefs in this region” (Radcliffe-Brown 1930d: 347). It is obvious that in this article Radcliiffe-Brown was adding little new information to the pool of knowledge on the rainbow-serpent, but this was not his aim. His primary intention was to reiterate his claim that the myth of the rainbow-serpent had been known almost universally across Australia and that it played an important role in the worldview of most Aboriginal groups before extensive contact with the white population. By placing the emphasis on the rainbow-serpent, Radcliffe-Brown was offering an interpretation that had often been missed in prior analyses, such as was displayed in Parker’s descriptions. This was very much in line with what he had expressed in his opening editorial in the first issue of Oceania as the aim of contemporary anthropology: “It is the task of the field worker not only to record facts but also to discover by appropriate scientific methods their interpretation, i.e., their meaning and their function” (Radcliffe-Brown 1930a: 2–3). A. P. Elkin’s discussion of rock paintings in the Kimberley region takes a quite different approach to that of Radcliffe-Brown, since he was viewing art as a historical record of Aboriginal beliefs and relying in part on local interpreters to offer their explanations of the meanings of the paintings. Although this was not the same as observing living rituals, unlike Radcliffe-Brown’s research, it was current and field-based, and therefore intended to add new data to that which had been recorded earlier on the rainbow-serpent. Elkin describes in great detail three cave paintings, in which the most significant figure depicted is a human-like being called wondjina. This featured prominently in the caves partly because of its great size, in the first cave achieving 13 feet from the bottom to the top of the hair, and in the third cave 9 feet 9 inches long. The face of the wondjina always featured eyes and a nose, but 92

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invariably the face was painted without a mouth. This figure clearly was associated with rain and with fertility, since, according to Elkin’s informants, when the painting was touched up, it always produced rain, even in the dry season. During the wet season, again according to Elkin’s Aboriginal informants, “a man might ‘find’ or see a baby in the rain and lightning which is coming down all around him” (Elkin 1930a: 262–3). If the wondjina drawing is touched up “with ochre, charcoal or pipe-clay, women will have babies” (ibid.). Closely connected to wondjina is a snake-like figure called Ungud, which is variously defined as “rain” (ibid.: 263), the long past creative time (likened by Elkin to “dream-time”) (ibid.: 276, 279), but perhaps most significantly, Ungud “is associated with its application to the rainbow-serpent who makes the rainbow and also the babies” (ibid.: 269, fn). Elkin further suggests that Ungud might be interpreted as “the mate or the totem of wondjina”, since often the snake is painted alongside the head of wondjina and in some paintings wondjina is depicted as a female, although this is at times ambiguous suggesting that wondjina, like the snake, symbolizes both genders in its person (ibid.: 276). Sometimes the term Ungud is used by his informants in place of wondjina, which leads Elkin to infer that wondjina “means rain and rainbow, that is, the rainbow-serpent” (ibid.). In other words, the central figure in the rock paintings, which is most conspicuous for having a face without a mouth, usually called wondjina, by its association with Ungud, is in fact the rainbowserpent. Although Elkin reports observing no rituals connected with the cave paintings, clearly visits were made to the caves by specialists to “touch up” the wondjina, an act which affected the weather, either stopping rain or initiating it. The rainbow-serpent could also produce an increase in animals like the kangaroo necessary for hunting and, as we have just seen, was associated with making babies. In his short article contributed to the 1930 edition of Oceania dealing directly with the rainbow-serpent, Elkin (1930b: 349–52) describes accounts relayed to him about the relationship between “medicine-men” and the rainbow-serpent. Although Elkin did not observe rituals dealing with the initiation of a “medicine-man”, he learned from his informants how a novice obtains knowledge from an experienced practitioner in order to perform acts which directly are aimed at influencing matters of concern to the community, such as curing illness, ensuring success in hunting and protecting against malevolent spirits. His descriptions of the initiation into the skill of a medicine-man were obtained from sources in the Forrest River District in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. According to Elkin’s informants (unnamed), a typical initiation occurs when an experienced practitioner assumes the form of a human skeleton and places the novice, who has been reduced to a small child, into a pouch. The “skeleton” ascends to the sky on the back of the rainbow-serpent with the initiate in the pouch. When they reach the sky, the experienced medicine-man throws the postulant out of the pouch, in Elkin’s words (ibid.: 349), “on to the sky, thus making him ‘dead’”. 93

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The medicine-man then inserts into the body of the trainee little rainbowsnakes, called brimurer, and some quartz crystals, referred to as ungur, which Elkin reiterates is “the other term applied to the rainbow-serpent” (ibid.). The novice then is carried back to earth in the same manner in which he went up in the pouch made by the medicine-man. When he is back, the medicineman inserts more quartz crystals into the novice through his navel and then wakes him up. The initiate returns to his normal size, and the following day ascends to the sky by himself on the back of the rainbow-serpent. When he returns on his own from the sky, he is able to perform the skills of a traditional medicine-man.2 It is clear that what Elkin refers to as the initiation of a new medicine-man has all the characteristics of shamanic initiations as described by Eliade (1964: 33–4), where the initiate experiences something like death and re-birth, leaving in one state (a child), dying and returning in a new state (one who is able to use mystical talents, usually on behalf of the community).3 From this description of a shamanic initiation and from Elkin’s prior accounts of the rock paintings in the Kimberley district, it is apparent that still into the late 1920s, the rainbow-serpent was regarded by many indigenous communities in northwest Australia as its guardian and caretaker, acting either through those who touch up the wondjina images in caves or through his intermediary, Elkin’s “medicine man”. Shortly after Elkin had reported his research findings in the Kimberley region, one of Radcliffe-Brown’s students, W. E. H. Stanner, began his field studies among the Murinbata people in a region northeast of Kimberley near Port Keats in the Daly River region in the far north of the Northern Territory. Stanner, who completed his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Sydney in 1931 with a first class Honours degree in anthropology, undertook this research beginning in 1932, in the words of Francesa Merlan (1989: iii), “to supplement Radcliffe-Brown’s survey of ‘The social organization of Australian tribes’”.4 Stanner returned to conduct field studies among the Murinbata intermittently until 1959, during which time he completed his PhD in 1938 at the London School of Economics under the noted anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and, after serving in World War II, had been appointed first Reader and then Professor of Social Anthropology in the Australia National University in Canberra. Stanner did not publish his findings on the Murinbata until he wrote about his research in a series of six articles which appeared in the journal Oceania between 1959 and 1963. These were republished in 1963 as number 11 in the Oceania Monograph series, under the title On Aboriginal Religion, and republished again in 1989 after his death as number 36 in the Oceania Monograph series under the same title. The 1989 edition contains an introduction by L. R. Hiatt, who notes that although Stanner visited the Murinbata over a span of twenty-seven years, the most critical period occurred during a two-month research trip in 1935 when he accompanied Roman Catholic missionaries from Darwin who were 94

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establishing a mission station at Port Keats. Hiatt observes that at the time the mission was initiated, “the ceremonial life remained vigorous” but by the time Stanner returned after World War II, the impact of Christian education had become “systematic” (Hiatt 1989: xix). This would suggest that the myths which Stanner discovered during his two-month stay among the Murinbata in 1935 reflect a period when Christian influence in the area was still at a reasonably early stage. During this critical phase of his research, according to Hiatt (1996: 113), Stanner made a “remarkable discovery”: “The Murinbata knew the Rainbow Serpent as Kunmanggur, conceived as a man of great size and superhuman powers”. In his article outlining the rainbow-serpent myth, Stanner (1989: 82) explained that the proper name Kunmanggur can be translated roughly as “The Oldest One, He Who Perennially Is-Acts, Is-Acts Now”. He also discovered to his surprise that the extensive myth which was related to him about Kunmanggur had no apparent correlation with any ritual that was currently being practised “now or recently” (ibid.). Just as Elkin had done, he reports finding cave paintings in which Kunmanggur is portrayed, but no living ritual was associated with the paintings. Stanner notes that “the sites of the paintings are mentioned in the myth”, but, unlike Elkin, he found that “the paintings no longer have any function in Murinbata life” (ibid.). Stanner’s evidence about the rainbow-serpent thus is restricted to the myths he was able to uncover during his research, which he later subjected to a rigorous structural analysis. Stanner does not provide details of how he obtained the myth but simply says that it “is told widely among tribes on the north-west coast of the Northern Territory” and that he “recorded the Murinbata version in detail” (ibid.: 81). He admits that his extensive analysis of the myth must not be taken out of context and treated as if it is a “univocal version” of the story. Like all oral traditions, “one is not dealing with dogmata or creeds”; there is no “authoritative” rendition of the story (ibid.: 84). This conforms to what generally is known about oral traditions: they vary according to the storyteller, the context in which the myth is related and the audience to which it is being performed (Finnegan 1970: 2–10; Cox 1998: 43–7). This leads to Stanner’s important qualification (1989: 85): “Unless one is able to compare versions of a myth given by the same individuals, or at least people of the same intimate group, at sufficient intervals, one cannot say with surety much about the status of a version recorded on a particular occasion.” This qualification is necessary in order to make clear that when he relates the details of the myth, the reader does not reify it by turning it into an unchanging or final version as if it contains the authority of written scriptures. He concludes: “Mythopoeic thought is … a continuous function of aboriginal mentality” (ibid., original emphasis). With these qualifications and clarifications in mind, Stanner relates the myth of the rainbow-serpent as told to him in 1935, by which time he says it 95

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was known only to “older people” (ibid.). Stanner’s own account is detailed and lengthy. For that reason, I have chosen to reproduce the summary of the myth as relayed by L. R. Hiatt in his introduction to the 1989 reprint of On Aboriginal Religion: The Murinbata know the Rainbow Serpent as Kunmanggur. In the beginning Kunmanggur was a beneficent culture hero, a man of superhuman size and powers who was transformed into a huge serpent associated with the rainbow. Kunmanggur had two daughters and a son (Tjiniman, the Bat). One day the daughters set out on a hunting expedition. Tjiniman followed them and proposed sexual intercourse. They indignantly refused, but, under duress, submitted to his rapacious demands. The following day the two sisters escaped and later enticed Tjiniman to climb after them up a cliff-face by rope. As he neared the top, they severed the rope and he fell onto the rocks far below. By magical means he repaired his injuries and returned home. Disgruntled by his experience, Tjiniman invited the people to a ceremony in honour of Kunmanggur (“The Old One”, “the Leader-Friend”). As the dancing drew to a close, the son speared his father in the back. He ran off, wondering what people would do, but no one took revenge. Kunmanggur, in great agony, died slowly, performing miracles before disappearing into the sea. (Hiatt 1989: xxiv) Stanner’s interpretation of the meaning of the myth suggests that it is replete with paradoxes and antinomies raising numerous questions about the intentions of the story. These paradoxes include the ambivalent attitude of the son Tjiniman towards his father Kunmanggur, the incestuous relationship between Tjiniman and his sisters, which Tjiniman appears to have forgotten the next day, and the failure of the father to rebuke the son for violating his sisters. For Stanner, perhaps the greatest puzzle is found in what he calls “Kunmanggur’s intent towards the world he is about to quit” (Stanner 1989: 100). Stanner suggests that “there is even a hint of suicide for, although mortally hurt, he walked purposefully into the sea”, an act which is “fathomless” until it is revealed in the story that “his death was not a death, for, transmogrified into The Rainbow Serpent, he ‘comes back’ to make his mark on the sky as a sign that he ‘looks after’ people” (ibid.). Stanner concludes that this myth, although without an associated rite, still “is one of great power” (ibid.: 83), full “of passion and imagination, not contrived for effect, but having effect nevertheless” (ibid.: 106, original emphasis). In this sense, the myth performs a similar function as the wondjina did in Elkin’s cave paintings by confirming that the rainbow-serpent is ultimately responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of the community, which remembers him through what Stanner calls “works of high imagination” and “artistic passion” (ibid.: 83). 96

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THE raINBOw-SErpENT aS a BISExUaL DEITy OF FErTILITy

L. R. Hiatt, who was Professor of Anthropology in the University of Sydney until he retired in 1991, wrote two important articles in which he summarized prior investigations on the rainbow-serpent and then offered his own interpretation of its meaning and significance. The first, “Swallowing and Regurgitation in Australian Myth and Rite”, was published in a book he edited in 1975 under the title Australian Aboriginal Mythology (Hiatt 1975: 143–62). The second appeared in a chapter titled “High Gods” in his 1996 publication Arguments about Aborigines (Hiatt 1996: 100–119). In both articles, Hiatt (1975: 144–9; 1996: 112–13) refers to the research conducted beginning in 1926 by the American anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner among the Murngin people in northeastern Arnhem Land. Hiatt (1996: 112) notes that Warner discovered a widespread myth about Yurlunggur, the rainbow-serpent, also called “Great Father”. Warner (1958: 255) referred to Yurlunggur as “the python”, which the Murngin people regarded as “the highest in the sky and the deepest in the well”. Warner’s telling of the myth centres on what Hiatt (1996: 112) calls “a cataclysmic meeting between Yurlunggur and two women known as the Wawilak Sisters”. The catastrophe which followed resulted when one of the sisters accidentally contaminated Yurlunggur’s waterhole with her menstrual fluid. This enraged Yurlunggur, who after taking water into his mouth and flooding the earth, swallowed the women and their two boys, regurgitated them, repeated this several times, until finally he retained the boys but turned the women into stone. Hiatt concludes: “The spirits of the Wawilak Sisters later taught men the songs and dances they have performed ever since in their mystery cults” (ibid.). Hiatt’s reference to the work of Warner is important, since it contains Warner’s accounts based on initiation rituals he personally observed in which the myth of the Wawilak Sisters was brought to life in ritual performances. Warner (1958: 290–311) referred to a figure called Gunabibi, described by Hiatt (1996: 112) as “an alternative name for the Rainbow Serpent”, which played a central role in one of the most dramatic ceremonies. On the concluding night of the ritual, according to Warner’s description, the boys were placed at the edge of a crescent-shaped trench called the kartdjur (Warner 1958: 301). Large figures representing the rainbow-serpent emerged from the dark and a bullroarer was employed to simulate the voice of the serpent. Dancing then followed featuring “a single man filled with sexual desire … and a man representing a single woman also sexually hungry and looking for a mate” (ibid.: 302). Neither are allowed into the kartdjur itself, but perform their dances, which “simulate copulation” (ibid.), at the entrance to the trench. Hiatt (1996: 112) interprets the kartdjur as “representing the generative organs of the Wawilak Sisters”. This is confirmed by Warner, who cites one of his Aboriginal informants as explaining: “The kartdjur is that head inside the woman’s vagina. It is all the same as her marn-bu (clitoris)” (Warner 1958: 302). 97

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This account, accompanied by other reports of a Mother-Goddess figure in northern Australia, which Elkin discovered in 1939 (Hiatt 1996: 113) and Stanner had described in his first article in Oceania (1989: 4–5) as Karwadi, “The Mother of All” or “the Old Woman” whose emblem is the bullroarer, suggested to Hiatt (1996: 114) that the rainbow-serpent may in fact be bisexual or contain both sexes in one person. This accounts for what Elkin had noted in the rock paintings he described in 1930 in the Kimberley region, where, as we have seen, he reported that the rainbow-serpent was associated with rain, initiation and with making babies. The snake, of course, could be interpreted as representing the male generative organ, but because myths about the serpent contain references to swallowing, ingestion and regurgitation, this resembles the female function of receiving the seed and returning it with life. The rainbow-serpent thus could be interpreted as the ultimate symbol of fertility, possessing in one person both male and female generative functions. Hiatt surmises that this explains why the image of wondjina always was depicted with two eyes and a nose, but had no mouth. The nose is typically drawn in a vertical fashion extending downwards, similar to an erect penis, with a difference of colour at the tip of the nose. On this interpretation, the eyes on the face would represent the testicles and the fact that there is no mouth is explained by the fact that the penis is inserted into the female’s vagina. Hiatt puts it this way: It would be consistent with the description of Ungud as bisexual if the apparent facial configuration of the wonjina was meant in fact to represent the male genitalia (testicles and penis) inside the vagina. The horizontal segmentation of the ‘nose’ would then be explicable as a differentiation of the glans from the shaft, and the absence of a mouth would no longer be a mystery. (Ibid.: 115) R. M. Berndt, who was one of Elkin’s students in Sydney and later Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, began research in 1946 with his wife Catherine in western Arnhem Land. In a paper delivered many years later to the conference of the Australian New Zealand Society for Theological Studies, which was held in Sydney in 1979, Berndt confirmed that in Arnhem Land the rainbow-serpent could represent either sex, and was noted for swallowing and regurgitation. One story he discovered told how the rainbow-serpent, a female figure called Ngalyod, was disturbed by the constant crying of a child. The snake approached the camp where the child was crying, made the ground shake, the waters foam and the air bitterly cold. Berndt then relates that “she surrounded all the people camped there and swallowed them” (Berndt 1979: 22–3). The people in the region pursued Ngalyod and speared her, which caused her to vomit them out of her mouth, still alive. Berndt observes that “Ngalyod, the Rainbow Snake, is a key cathartic figure” and “may be referred to as male or female” (ibid.). One of the key 98

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forms the rainbow-serpent assumes is that of the “good Mother”, in which she becomes “an expression of human and environmental fertility” (ibid.). Berndt’s account, accompanied by Hiatt’s interpretation of the wondjina rock art paintings, confirms that throughout many parts of northern Australia the rainbow-serpent was a single deity, which took on many forms and in which both sexes functioned in the same being. This would explain why the rainbow-serpent is associated with the recurrent symbol of ingestion (a male to female symbol) and regurgitation (a female action). This also clarifies why so many stories told about the rainbow-serpent, including Elkin’s description of the initiation of the “medicine man”, involved a relationship to birth and infancy. In the case of the trainee described by Elkin, we recall that the novice was reduced to a small child while riding to the sky in a pouch on the back of the rainbow-serpent and reborn as an adult. More broadly, the sky, rain, the earth and waterholes, all of which are intimately associated with the rainbow-serpent, are suggestive of reproductive activity and in turn symbolize the persistence of ancestral traditions and societal well-being. THE rELaTION OF THE raINBOw SpIrIT TO THE raINBOw-SErpENT IN THE raINBOw SpIrIT THEOLOGy

As I indicated at the outset of this chapter, the selection of the central indigenous symbol to represent the Christian God at the consultations among Aboriginal Christians held in 1994 and 1995 in North Queensland was highly contentious. The decision to adopt the name Rainbow Spirit clearly represented a compromise between those who wanted to employ the apparent connection with myths known in the region about the rainbow-serpent, and those who saw the serpent as being too closely connected with what missionaries taught was a biblical symbol of Satan, and hence its association with pagan rites.5 This controversy is reflected in one comment by the Rainbow Spirit Elders (2007: 13) that the “Rainbow Spirit is often portrayed by Aboriginal artists as a powerful snake” which “early Christian missionaries … associated … with Satan and the story of the Fall in Genesis 3”. I was told by David Spanagel, the Lutheran Superintendent for northern Queensland, that one of the Aboriginal Elders from the Lutheran Church, George Rosendale, who played a leading role in the workshops and to whom I will return shortly, wanted to call it the “Rainbow Serpent Theology”, but that the Lutheran Church would never accept this term.6 As a result, the Rainbow Spirit was substituted for the rainbow-serpent as a significant Aboriginal symbol associated with the land and the sea and was described by the Elders as “the life giving power of the Creator Spirit active in the world” (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007: 31).7 This leads me to consider one of the central questions I am addressing in this chapter: Is the Rainbow Spirit as presented in the Rainbow Spirit Theology the same figure described in the anthropological literature 99

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as the rainbow-serpent? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to analyse precisely how the Rainbow Spirit Elders describe the Rainbow Spirit. Three sources are particularly relevant to answering this question. A principal place to begin is with the report of the consultations themselves, which as we have seen was published under the title Rainbow Spirit Theology in 1997, but was in such demand that it was reprinted in 1999, and issued as a revised edition in 2007. The second resource is a book entitled The Rainbow Spirit in Creation (Corowa & Habel 2000), which is subtitled A Reading of Genesis 1. This is a small book consisting of paintings by Jasmine Corowa, an Aboriginal artist from Queensland, which are set alongside a paraphrased text from Genesis 1. Norman Habel is listed as the “translator and editor” of the book “for the Rainbow Spirit Elders”. A third source is an article by a leading Rainbow Spirit Elder and an important Aboriginal theologian, George Rosendale, whose paper forms part of a training guide for Aboriginal Christian leaders, entitled Milbi Dabaar, which is used at Wontulp-Bi-Buya College in Cairns, Queensland. I begin by reviewing how the Rainbow Spirit is described in the actual report of the theological consultations held in 1994 and 1995. After setting the context for the consultations and providing background to the need for an indigenous theology, the Rainbow Spirit Elders make their first connection between the Rainbow Spirit and the rainbow-serpent in chapter 1, which is entitled “The Necessity of Rainbow Spirit Theology”. They write: “As the Creator, the Rainbow Spirit is often portrayed by our Aboriginal artists as a powerful snake who emerged from the land, travelled the landscape leaving trails of life, and returned to the land through caves, waterholes and other sacred sites” (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007: 13). Further evidence that the Rainbow Spirit is the rainbow-serpent is found in the reference to the swallowing and regurgitation of young people during initiation ceremonies: “The Rainbow Spirit swallowed young people and regurgitated them as young adults” (ibid.: 14). This is interpreted by the Elders as a re-birth. The act of being swallowed and regurgitated by the Rainbow Spirit symbolized a change of status in that “they died to youth and rose as adults” (ibid.). The Elders then proceed to offer a theological interpretation of the four cardinal directions by associating animals with each: the south is symbolized by the emu, the north by the sheep, the east by the kookaburra and the west by the kangaroo. What is significant in this, however, is that the sketch with which the directions are introduced depicts a serpent, wound in a circle encompassing all four directions (ibid.: 15). The Rainbow Spirit is also described as being closely linked to the land and the sea, since the Rainbow Spirit “emerges from the land and returns into the land” and in the process “left prints on the land” (ibid.: 30). The movements of the Rainbow Spirit are connected closely with the ancestors of the people, referred to as “spirit-filled”, who “wherever they walked, … left a trail of life-forces” (ibid.: 39). Like the snake, “they went into the ground” creating 100

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sacred sites (ibid.). The movements of the ancestors to and around these special locations are related to totemic symbols, which “establish kinship and connections with other members of the group” (ibid.: 40). The association between the land and the serpent is confirmed in a later chapter when the Elders describe one of “the most powerful and common” stories relating how “our ancestor spirits travelled the land and created the present landscape … depicts the Rainbow Spirit as a powerful snake who forms parts of the land, and gives life to the land and all living creatures” (ibid.: 56). These numerous references to the serpent confirm that for the Elders the Rainbow Spirit was indeed equivalent to the rainbow-serpent told in indigenous stories, brought to life in initiation rituals and embodied in the landscape itself. Further evidence that the Rainbow Spirit is the rainbow-serpent is found in the book The Rainbow Spirit in Creation (Corowa & Habel 2000). The artist, Jasmine Corowa, who is the daughter of one of the Rainbow Spirit Elders, the Rev. Dennis Corowa (a minister in the Uniting Church), attended the second theological consultation on the Rainbow Spirit Theology in 1995. The drawings, which are ten in number, are presented in colour alongside a paraphrased text from Genesis 1, which has been given headings to correspond to the drawings. The ten headings are: In the Beginning; Light; The Sky; The Land; The Bush; The Sun and Moon; Birds and Sea Life; The Animal; Human Beings; and Rest. A commentary on the paintings is printed at the back of the book under the title, “A Rainbow Spirit Reading of Genesis 1”. Although Norman Habel is listed as the “Translator and Editor for the Rainbow Spirit Elders”, the prominence he is given in the book, including his photograph on the inside of the sleeve jacket of the book, suggests that he was the author of the commentary. In seven of the ten drawings, the central figure is a serpent. In the eighth drawing, which accompanies the text relating the creation of animals, the serpent occupies an entire third of the page, with other animals depicted including a kangaroo, a goanna (large lizard), a crocodile and an emu, but these are diminutive by comparison with the snake. Drawing nine, which portrays the creation of human beings, features a person holding a baby in the centre, presumably the father who is standing beside the mother, with three children, two boys to the right of the father and a girl to the left of the mother. The serpent is not obvious in this drawing, although it could be interpreted that the background against which the family is pictured represents the skin of a snake. The final drawing, representing “rest”, places a snake in the centre, surrounded by six human figures, which are further surrounded by the same animals drawn in picture eight. It would appear that the humans and animals in the drawing are encircled by a giant serpent, although the head of the snake is missing, and may represent the colours of the rainbow itself. Nonetheless, because the colours are presented as enfolding all of life and in a texture resembling the skin of a snake, it is fair to conclude that the figure indicates the rainbow-serpent. 101

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In his commentary, Habel refers just once to the Rainbow Spirit as the rainbow-serpent, in painting 1, “In the Beginning”. He writes: “As the Rainbow Snake is still lying within the earth – and waiting – black and white adds to the mystery of the Creator Spirit still entombed.” Every other reference to the Creator is changed to the Rainbow Spirit, which he equates with the Creator Spirit. That the “Rainbow Snake” is the same as the “Rainbow Spirit” is made absolutely clear when, in his commentary on painting 2, “Light”, he writes that “the Rainbow Spirit is still entombed – waiting, ready”. In his commentary on painting 4, which depicts “Land”, quite obviously he is referring to a snake when he observes: “The Spirit is now awake in the land so it sheds its black and white skin and displays its living colors.” The final painting depicting “Rest” underscores the central place the Rainbow Spirit holds in creation, since the serpent is at the very core of the drawing. The sky is filled with the colours of the rainbow, which Habel interprets as “the gift of the Rainbow Spirit to the land and all that dwells within it” and as such it reflects “the very colors of the Creator Spirit at the center”. A third source for deciphering how the Rainbow Spirit is related to the rainbow-serpent is found in a contribution Aboriginal leader George Rosendale made to a resource book from Wontulp-Bi-Buya College in Cairns, Queensland, entitled Milbi Dabaar (Rosendale 2004).8 In his introduction to Rainbow Spirit Theology, Norman Habel (2007: viii) calls Rosendale the “impetus” behind the Rainbow Spirit Theology and the “true elder of the group”. The publication Milbi Dabaar is described on the title page as having been developed “for teachers, leaders, pastors and students for use in Christian ministry among Aborigines of Australia”, and forms part of materials used at the Wontulp-Bi-Buya College, which is an interdenominational training centre primarily for indigenous Christians working among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Rosendale’s contribution is entitled “Aboriginal Theology” and is based on a paper he delivered at the College on 22 October 1996, less than a year after the second consultation on the Rainbow Spirit Theology had concluded. Rosendale covers numerous themes in his paper, but of central concern to us are two sections he relates to Aboriginal Theology. One section considers Yiirmbal or Wandjina, which is the same figure Elkin described in rock paintings in the Kimberley region called wondjina, and which Hiatt defined as the rainbow-serpent expressed as a bisexual deity. The second important reference from Rosendale indicates how he understood the Rainbow Spirit as the rainbow-serpent. Rosendale’s article contains a drawing of Wandjina, which, just like the paintings Elkin described, has two eyes and a nose, but no mouth. The nose is elongated, precisely in the same manner Elkin noted and with the tip of the nose clearly distinguished from the remainder. Following Hiatt, I have suggested that this image depicts an erect penis with the glans distinguished from the shaft and having no mouth because the penis is inserted into the vagina. Rosendale, of course, does not give it this interpretation, but rather asserts 102

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that this is a picture of “God, the Creator”. Rosendale (2004: 5) interprets the fact that Wandjina has no mouth to symbolize that God “has given the teaching and the laws” but it is the elders who “are to speak and teach today”. It is clear that, like Hiatt, Rosendale associates the picture of the Wandjina with the rainbow-serpent, since his text follows immediately below the picture with a reference to the Rainbow Snake, “Milbijirr, the one that did the work in creating” (ibid.: 6). He then recounts how in North Queensland, among the Injinu people, it is said that the Rainbow Snake “came from the islands to the mainland” and “when he finished his work, he moved to the head waters of the Jardine”, where “he remains watching and caring for people and the land” (ibid.).9 Rosendale then returns to the question as to why the Creator is pictured with no mouth. He reiterates the same point he made earlier: “It is simple when you know the meaning – he has given the teaching, he has given the laws to the elders. He doesn’t speak any more, he’s in his sacred place resting, continually looking after the land, his creation, he doesn’t talk any more” (ibid., original emphasis). Rosendale (ibid.: 7) then moves on to address specifically the place of the rainbow-serpent in creation. He unequivocally identifies the Rainbow Spirit with the “rainbow snake”, who he says “made the world in creation” (ibid.). When the missionaries heard the story, “they rejected this story because it was the snake’s story” and “the snake in the garden of Eden was a very destructive snake” (ibid.). But the snake told in Aboriginal stories is not the biblical serpent, since in Aboriginal myth, “it was the snake who found holiness” (ibid.). Rosendale adds that “it is very interesting how this snake is connected right through Australia, the story may vary a bit, but it’s almost the same” (ibid.). He then relates how the myth of the rainbow-serpent is told among the people living in the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia, a large treeless land bordering the coast of the Great Australian Bight with the Great Victoria Desert to the north. He says the Creator in that region “must have been a very big snake because the Nullarbor Plain is so vast” (ibid.: 8). Now, the people believe that the rainbow-serpent resides in a cave below ground where he remains to this day, “still creating still caring for the land still providing for them” (ibid.). Rosendale concludes by arguing that the attitudes of the missionaries towards these ancient stories should be rejected since they said “these stories are no good, they only myths, they know nothing” (ibid.: 9). He then makes the central point, which it would be fair to say, following Habel, describes the “impetus” behind the formation of the Rainbow Spirit Theology: “These stories were teachings to our people – teaching about life, teaching about living in relationship with one another, about their creator being” (ibid., original emphasis). Rosendale finishes his paper with a challenge for his fellow Aboriginal Christians: “We have to get out of that little box that white people have put us in and be free to share God’s word in a way that we know best for our people” (ibid.: 13). 103

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From these three sources, which outline the main tenets at the core of the Rainbow Spirit Theology, it is evident that the Rainbow Spirit is the rainbowserpent as recorded in the anthropological writings to which I have referred. This is particularly clear when we note that George Rosendale’s drawing of Wandjina with eyes and a nose but lacking a mouth, and his description of Wandjina as one who ingests and regurgitates young men during initiation rituals, exactly replicates the descriptions of rock paintings by A. P. Elkin as he reported them in 1930 and conforms to the many accounts of the bisexual nature of the rainbow-snake. Rosendale unequivocally calls Wandjina the rainbow-serpent and equates this with an Aboriginal name for the Creator God. This conclusion is corroborated by references to the Rainbow Spirit as a snake in The Rainbow Spirit Theology and by the manner in which the Aboriginal artist Jasmine Corowa makes the snake dominant alongside the text of Genesis 1 in The Rainbow Spirit in Creation. THE raINBOw-SErpENT aT THE COrE OF aN INDIGENOUS THEOLOGy IN aUSTraLIa

Having established that the Rainbow Spirit Elders really mean the rainbowserpent when they refer to the pre-Christian Aboriginal Creator, the second question I am addressing about the Rainbow Spirit Theology asks: How do the Elders interpret the rainbow-serpent as being commensurate with the Christian idea of God? The answer to this is found near the conclusion of The Rainbow Spirit Theology where the Elders directly relate the Rainbow Spirit, now clearly established as referring to the rainbow-serpent, to Christianity and thus identify the core concepts at the heart of the Rainbow Spirit Theology. Their response to this question can be summarized in four points: 1. the rainbow-serpent is related to the land; 2. Christ is the incarnation of the rainbow-serpent; 3. the rainbow-serpent points towards a reversal in direction of the incarnation from descending from above to emerging from below; and 4. the rainbow-serpent reveals the healing power of an indigenized theology for cultural affirmation. I will address each of these points in turn. The first theological position adopted by the Rainbow Spirit Elders relates to stories about the formation of the land over which the serpent moved in the act of creation. The Elders explain: “One of the most common and powerful of these stories depicts the Rainbow Spirit as a powerful snake who forms part of the land, and gives life to the land and all living creatures” (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007: 56). In this context, they draw attention to their ancestors and make parallels with the Old Testament story of Israel as the oppressed people in exile returning 104

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to the “promised land”. In this case, the Aboriginal people are the oppressed who, like the Israelites, were dispossessed of their land. The Elders then argue that the Creator Spirit, who has been referred to previously as the “powerful snake” “gave this land to the Aboriginal peoples as a ‘promised land’” and filled it “with sacred sites” (ibid.: 58). Of course, for any theology to be Christian, it has to relate to the incarnation of Christ. The Elders address this by referring to the fact that Christ was made flesh in a particular culture in a specific historical period and, by implication, the Aboriginal peoples are just like the early Church, who used Hebrew thought forms and traditions to interpret how the Creator became flesh in Jesus Christ. For the Elders, applying this to the Australian context meant that the Creator was expressed “in our Aboriginal way of life and our ceremonies”, in which the rainbow-serpent played a particular and significant role (ibid.: 59). The “life-giving power of God” is seen in Aboriginal culture “as the lifegiving power of the Rainbow Spirit and of our ancestor spirits” (ibid.). The fearful stories related in the traditional culture about the rainbow-serpent, where the snake threatens the community, are transformed in the light of Christ, who reveals “the true nature of the Rainbow Spirit as a life-giving God of love” (ibid.). Just like the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament, “a similar mysterious and awesome presence of God, the Creator Spirit, has long been experienced by Aboriginal people in our sacred places and ceremonies” (ibid.: 60). And, just as in the biblical story, where the God of the Israelites was revealed in the person of Christ, the “awesome presence” which had been experienced by Aboriginal people in their sacred places and ceremonies “is seen in the person of Jesus Christ” (ibid.). On this reading, Jesus Christ is the rainbow-serpent incarnated, revealing the serpent’s true nature. A third point follows on from the analysis of the incarnation and from the association of the rainbow-serpent with the land. If Christ is the incarnation of the rainbow-serpent, who emerges out of the land and extends to the sky, the Elders write that the land can be related to the incarnation as “the life-giving spirit of the land” entering “human flesh” (ibid.: 61). This reverses the traditional Western way of thinking about the incarnation where God descends from above to earth, to the land, and becomes human. Rather, in the Rainbow Spirit Theology, God emerges out of the land, from the earth, and takes on human flesh making Christ “truly Aboriginal” (ibid.). This rendering of the incarnation from below “frees us to affirm our past culture, including our deep connections with our land and our ancestors” (ibid.: 63). Finally, the suffering of Christ is to be taken as symbolic of the suffering of Aboriginals at the hands of white colonizers and missionaries and as such shows that Christ “camps” among the indigenous people and at the same time leads the way to healing past wounds and “breaking down the barriers that divide Australian Aboriginal peoples from each other and from other Australians” (ibid.: 70). Earlier in the book, the Elders listed a “catalogue of crimes” which had been committed against Aboriginal people, including 105

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massacre of innocent people by official government parties, poisoning of waterholes, hunting Aboriginal people like animals, the forceful removal of women and children from their families, public humiliation of Aboriginal people, the sexual abuse of Aboriginal women, enslavement by imposing Western customs on the people, and “the vilification of Aboriginal spiritual life and worship as evil and barbaric” (ibid.: 48) In addition to their call for reconciliation and healing by referring to themselves as Christ-like sufferers, there is implicit in the affirmation of the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent as incarnated in Christ a cultural affirmation: “By becoming one of us, the Creator Spirit through Jesus Christ frees us to affirm our past culture, including our deep connections with our land and our ancestors” (ibid.: 63). The suffering of Christ is not the end of the story. His resurrection symbolizes that all things can be made new, “including our people” (ibid.: 64). This analysis confirms that for the Rainbow Spirit Elders the rainbowserpent is entirely commensurate with the Christian idea of God and it acts as a precursor among Aboriginal peoples to the full revelation in Christ. They draw a direct a parallel between the rainbow-serpent and the Old Testament where God is called by various names such as the Canaanite Creator El Elyon and the Israelite God, YHWH (ibid.: 31). The same Creator referred to in the Old Testament is the same Creator believed in by Aboriginal peoples and told in their ancient myths. When Christ is introduced, whether in the context of the Hebrew scriptures or in the myth of the rainbow-serpent, he makes the revelation of God complete by becoming the incarnation of the Creator Spirit, in this case interpreted as the rainbow-serpent. Although the Rainbow Spirit Elders do not go so far as Canaan Banana did in Zimbabwe by calling for the Bible to be “re-written”, the theological claim being made in both instances is the same. Pre-Christian indigenous stories about the Creator function like the Old Testament did for Christians who first came to faith in Christ through the Jewish traditions. This is confirmed in the comment by the Rainbow Spirit Elders that the “images in our stories are essentially the same as those depicted in Genesis 1:2 and 2:4” (ibid.: 29). No sense of inferiority of Aboriginal traditions in relation to European Christianity is implied in this theological position since the revelation which comes in Christ does not simply fulfil the pre-Christian apprehension of God among Aboriginal societies, but it does this for all cultures everywhere. THE raINBOw SpIrIT THEOLOGy: a THEOLOGICaL INVENTION?

The final question to which I now turn is the crucial one: is the claim of the Rainbow Spirit Elders that the rainbow-serpent is commensurate with the Christian idea of a universal Creator God best regarded as a theological invention? There are two main components implied within this question. The first addresses the universality of the rainbow-serpent throughout Australia, 106

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asking if it can serve as a unifying symbol for the pre-Christian idea of a Creator God. The second part of the question compares the empirical evidence about the rainbow-serpent as it is actually described in the anthropological literature with its presentation in the Rainbow Spirit Theology. L. R. Hiatt directly addressed the question of the universal nature of the rainbow-serpent myth among pre-Christian Aboriginal societies in his chapter on “High Gods” in his Arguments about Aborigines. Hiatt (1996: 116) asserted that even if, as Radcliffe-Brown thought, the rainbow-serpent is a ubiquitous symbol throughout Australia, “the accumulated evidence indicates that there is no constancy of form, powers or role among the mythological creatures who manifest themselves as the rainbow”. The snake reveals itself in different ways and for diverse purposes in various locations. Other creatures, such as “crocodiles, lizards, and amalgamations of various species” also figure prominently in certain Aboriginal myths (ibid.). In addition, the ritual significance of the rainbow-serpent is unevenly distributed: ‘sometimes the Rainbow Serpent is ritually important, sometimes inconsequential” (ibid.). In some locations, the most important deities have nothing at all to do with the rainbow-serpent. So, for Hiatt, what he calls “the High (or Highest) God of Terra Australis” cannot be summarized under one being called the rainbow-serpent (ibid.). A similar argument has been developed from a somewhat unexpected source. William (Bill) Edwards, who worked as a Presbyterian missionary for over thirty years in the northern part of South Australia in the western desert region among the Pitjantjatjara people, wrote an important review article on The Rainbow Spirit Theology for the Australian Religion Studies Review (Edwards 1998: 137–46). After commending the Rainbow Spirit Elders for their “attempt to further the exploration of ways in which Aboriginal Christians can interpret the Scriptures in the light of their own cultural understandings”, Edwards refers to “some serious problems” with the Rainbow Spirit Theology (ibid.: 140). The first problem relates to the lack of cultural specificity in the book, which is glaringly evident by the failure of the authors to pay adequate “attention to terms from Aboriginal languages” (ibid.). He then cites examples drawn from the Pitjantjatjara language which show the importance of relating broad theological ideas to local expressions of them, such as tjukurpa (“word, story, Dreaming”), walytja (“relation”) and kurunpa (“spirit”) (ibid.) Closely linked to this criticism is the fact that the rainbowserpent is a regional rather than a universal symbol, since it is more commonly spoken about “in the north than in some other regions” (ibid.) For Edwards this casts doubt on the assertion made by the Rainbow Spirit Elders (2007: 16) that the image of the Rainbow Spirit lies “at the centre of our Aboriginal culture”. Edwards (1998: 141) counters by arguing that whereas this may apply within some regions of Australia, “it is not so for many Aboriginal cultures”. Rather, “those of us whose experience has been in the desert areas, with the emphasis on localised ancestral spirit beings leaving their tracks as 107

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the physical features of the country, find little in these presentations to resonate with what we have been told and have seen” (ibid.). This same line of reasoning has been made by Max Charlesworth (1990: 1) in the introduction to his book Ancestor Spirits, where he draws attention to the fact that historically there were “profound differences between the various Aboriginal groups or peoples”. He notes that it has been estimated that at the beginning of European settlement in 1788 the Aboriginal population was at least 750,000, which consisted of some 500 different groups using over 200 distinct languages. For this reason, he says it is not possible to generalize about Australian Aboriginal society as a whole: “Recent research has shown that the various groups were much more diverse, economically, politically, socially and linguistically than was thought in the past” (ibid.). T. G. H. Strehlow, who knew the central desert peoples intimately and was even initiated into their secret ceremonies, came to the same conclusion when he referred to the rainbow-serpent as widely held in northern Australia (Strehlow 1966: 9), but insisted in his reference to the Arrernte that “there is no common system of religion which is embraced by the tribe as a whole” since “all legends and – hence all ceremonies … are tied down to definite local centres in each group” (Strehlow 1947: 1). These comments add further weight to Hiatt’s argument that the rainbow-serpent cannot be regarded as a unifying symbol for all of Australia. To be fair to the Rainbow Spirit Elders on this point, although, as we have seen, George Rosendale thought that stories about the rainbow-serpent were widely distributed throughout Australia, it is not uniformly maintained in the book that the Rainbow Spirit imagery applies to all regions of Australia. For this reason the authors draw attention to other names for the Creator employed by various Aboriginal groups, such as Yirmal, Baiame, Paayamu, Biiral and Wandjina (Rainbow Spirit Elders 2007: 31). From this list, of course, we have seen that Wandjina is the same as the rainbow-serpent and the Elders draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Yirmal refers to the Rainbow Spirit. Nonetheless, they acknowledge that “the various images of the Creator Spirit among different Aboriginal peoples are quite diverse” (ibid.). In an interview, Norman Habel told me that the choice of the Rainbow Spirit was not intended to apply to all regions of Australia, but primarily to those parts of northern Queensland and the Northern Territory where myths of the rainbow-serpent were widely circulated. Habel indicated that he has encouraged Christians in other parts of Australia to follow the lead of the Rainbow Spirit Elders by incorporating other names for God in Aboriginal traditions as a means of constructing relevant indigenous Christian theologies.10 Whether the rainbow-serpent myth is nearly universal throughout Australia and whether it was culturally relevant in northern Queensland where the Rainbow Spirit Theology originated are entirely different questions from asking whether the myths told about the rainbow-serpent can be made consistent with the Christian idea of God. We have seen that stories about the 108

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rainbow-serpent often relate to incest and murder, as in the case of Stanner’s account of Kunmunggur, and when these are translated into rituals and rock paintings, they are frequently associated with sexual or reproductive symbolism, and the bisexuality of the deity. Certainly, on Stanner’s interpretation, Kunmunggur appears not only to possess the powers of a great man who sacrifices himself without complaint, as a vicarious sufferer, but in suffering he is transformed into the rainbow-serpent who becomes the guardian and guarantor of the welfare of the people. Despite these apparent Christian allusions, Stanner nowhere called Kunmunggur a Creator God. In fact, he argued quite the opposite in his concluding article in Oceania (Stanner 1989: 138–9), in which he drew attention to the significant differences between the religion of the Murinbata and Christianity. His list of contrasts includes the important claim that the Murinabata “had no idea of god or gods that called life into being”. He adds that “many spirit-beings were supposed to exist and to intervene in men’s lives for good and ill, but nobody worshipped any of them”. Further differences can be noted between Murinbata religion and Christianity: the belief in the afterlife for the Murinbata was “shadowy” and bore no relationship to morality; there was no “first cause or final end” to history; no institution existed that could be regarded as comparable to a church; no religious specialists could be identified that operated like priests. If we add to Stanner’s conclusion the earlier evidence of rock paintings as described by Elkin, and supported by Warner’s direct observations, where the rainbow-serpent was associated with rituals of swallowing and regurgitation, sexual intercourse, reproduction, fertility and fecundity, the connection between the Christian idea of God as expressed in the Rainbow Spirit Theology and actual Aboriginal beliefs about the rainbow-serpent become more tenuous. George Rosendale draws attention to Wandjina as a figure invariably portrayed without a mouth, but his explanation that it referred to the transfer of responsibility for communicating God’s words to the elders is less than convincing. The figure of the wondjina as the rainbow-serpent, with its bisexual nature, symbolized in the image of unity of man and woman through the face without a mouth, was shown by Elkin to be associated quite literally in the rock paintings with the production of children. This supports my interpretation of the rainbow-serpent as a deity of fertility in the broadest sense by guaranteeing the persistence of identifiable social groups and by providing for their welfare. The fact that the ritual observations of the rainbow-serpent largely describe initiation ceremonies, in the examples I provided relating to life cycle rituals and the induction of a “medicine man”, confirms the close relationship of the rainbow-serpent with social identity and communal well-being. The Rainbow Spirit Theology refers obliquely to these factors when discussing land and ancestors, but it lacks any real context for these discussions and in fact, in Bill Edwards’s words, contains “only very generalised references to Rainbow Serpent stories” that are presented “as a rather romantic image which overlooks many of the features of these 109

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stories” (Edwards 1998: 141). The empirical evidence would suggest that the “Rainbow Spirit” in the Rainbow Spirit Theology is a highly decontextualized and deliberate re-interpretation of the rainbow-serpent and therefore is best regarded as an “invention”. TrEaTING aBOrIGINaL TraDITIONS IN THEIr OwN rIGHT

From the analysis I have provided in this chapter, we have seen that the rainbow-serpent was indeed traditionally a powerful image for many Australian Aboriginal peoples. Its selection as the symbol for the Creator God by the Rainbow Spirit Elders was taken in the full awareness of this cultural significance. Their primary aim was to find an appropriate indigenous symbol through which Christian theology could be interpreted in an Australian context. It should also not be forgotten that the many references in the publication by the Rainbow Spirit Elders to the history of oppression experienced by Aboriginal peoples since the arrival of the white colonialists, what they label a “catalogue of crimes”, indicates that the Rainbow Spirit Elders were writing in a context in which Australian Aboriginal religious beliefs had been treated with pejorative attitudes. I will return to this factor in my analysis in the concluding chapter. My evaluation of the Rainbow Spirit Theology as an “invention” is not intended to imply that the Aboriginal stories about the rainbow-serpent should not be treated seriously and with respect. On the contrary, I am arguing quite the opposite in a way similar to Stanner, who suggested that by contrasting Murinbata religion with Christianity he was not devaluing Murinbata beliefs. Rather he was reporting on Murinbata myths and rituals to promote understanding of them in their own right and not insofar as they could be regarded either as a preparation for or as antithetical to Christianity. According to Stanner (1989: 139), the “Murinbata rites were, at the most fundamental level, attempts to make social life correlative with the plan and rhythm of the cosmos”. Without understanding this, it would be easy for the outsider simply to dismiss the detailed story of Kunmanggur, the incest of the brother with the sisters, the murder of the father and the apparent suicide of the “Great One” as evidence of a low level of religious development far inferior to Christian values. A similar conclusion could be reached about the figure of the wondjina, which could be regarded simply as an uncouth drawing depicting an image of sexual intercourse. By interpreting the enigmatic figure without a mouth as a symbol linking the earth and the sky to rain and fertility, with the rainbow-serpent acting as the most potent point of contact between the two, we are able to appreciate the drawing in an entirely different light, which promotes an empathetic understanding. This was a point again upheld by Stanner (ibid.: 139) when he concluded that among the 110

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Murinbata “the appropriate occasions for rites … were ‘socially defined’ but the definitions were in terms of an inexorable cosmic cycle”. A similar analysis was offered by L. R. Hiatt (1996: 116), who referred to the “fleeting forms connected with the rainbow” as “a genre … through which the philosophers of Aboriginal Australia have sought to express the idea of an underlying reality”. In this sense, the indigenous people of Australia are like humans everywhere, struggling to express the inexpressible in language and symbol. Of course, at times the symbols can “lend themselves to vulgarization” and can be reduced to childlike stories, but when humans try to express “the concept of a cosmic One” they can do little more than give it a name, like Ungud, “and affirm its existence” (ibid.). At the highest reach of human expression, everywhere in the history of religions, people have called on “helpers, particularly art, music and dance” through which they “have reached towards the One and tried to become part of it and to make it part of themselves” (ibid.). This expresses Hiatt’s view that although the rainbowserpent cannot be regarded as a preparation for something greater and more complete in Christianity through which it finds its fulfilment, it quite rightly can be described as another example of the universal human quest for ultimate understanding. In this way, Hiatt treats the stories about the rainbowserpent as commensurate with the Christian God, but not in any substantive sense nor in a hierarchical relationship of inferiority to superiority, but as a similar attempt to fathom the unfathomable. In the last analysis, I have shown in this chapter that the Rainbow Spirit Theology is based less on what was actually believed by pre-Christian indigenous peoples in Australia as on the assumption that God nowhere left himself without a witness and through the rainbow-serpent was busy preparing the Aboriginal peoples for his fullest revelation in Christ. On this account, the Rainbow Spirit Theology is consistent, as I have noted in other cases, with a broad theological approach maintained throughout Christian history known as praeparatio evangelica. In the Australian context, by contrast and taken in its own right without any need for putting a Christian spin on it, we can best understand the rainbow-serpent myth as reflecting a common and widespread indigenous preoccupation with kinship and fecundity, both of which relate to the perseverance of localized societal traditions within a cosmic framework expressed pragmatically through rituals aimed at ensuring optimal health and well-being.

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chapter 5

aLaSka: ELLam yUa, THE pErSON OF THE UNIVErSE

In sharp contrast to the previous cases I have presented, where ethnologists, theologians and academics freely associated what they interpreted as a primordial belief in a High God among indigenous societies with a notion of God inspired by Christianity, in Alaska no similar movements have been developed. This may be explained in part by the powerful suppression of all indigenous cultural expressions by missionaries and teachers after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. The coordinated effort to replace one civilization with another can be traced to Sheldon Jackson, who, as a Presbyterian missionary, first arrived in Alaska in 1877. Jackson masterminded the Protestant comity strategy, which was agreed among denominational leaders in a meeting in New York in 1880, and was appointed the United States General Agent for Education in Alaska in 1885, a post he retained until 1907 (Cox 1991: 13–28). Jackson devised a plan to use government-paid missionary teachers to evangelize Alaskan Natives and to assimilate them into American culture. This included a massive effort to eradicate traditional housing, language, oral traditions, economy, marriage patterns and, of course, the practices of shamans and the apparel associated with them, principally masks (Anderson & Eells 1935: 111–23). In his first report to the Federal Office of Education as General Agent for Education in Alaska in 1886, Jackson (1886: 83) wrote: “As the people make progress, catch the spirit of civilization and come under the influences which emanate from the schools, they gradually begin to give up their old methods of living, and adopt the American.” The final attempt to assimilate fully Alaskan Natives into the wider American culture occurred with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, which, by creating Native corporations, converted traditional relationships with the land into shares that could be floated on the stock market (Cox 2007b: 72). Paradoxically, this had the opposite effect from what some of those who devised the scheme intended. In the 1980s, many 113

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indigenous leaders sensed the danger to their land rights and successfully lobbied the government to enact amendments to the Act which protected individual shares in Native corporations from being bought up by outside corporate interests (ibid.: 88–9). In a landmark publication, the Canadian Supreme Court Justice, Thomas Berger (1985: 96; Cox 2007b: 85–8), whose work was based on extensive hearings throughout the villages of Alaska coordinated by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, confirmed how central land was to indigenous identity. These events marked a revival among the people aimed at preserving or in some cases recovering traditional cultural practices. In this chapter, I consider recent re-interpretations of indigenous culture by focusing on the Yupiit of southwest Alaska. A detailed discussion of a Yup’ik belief in a universal spirit, called Ellam Yua, has been provided by the Yup’ik educator and academic Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, who until his death in 2011 was Associate Professor of Education in the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and by the Alaskan anthropologist, Ann FienupRiordan. Neither Kawagley nor Fienup-Riordan write from overtly Christian perspectives, which lends support to my observation that Alaskan missionaries and theologians largely have remained silent over the idea that a preChristian belief in an omniscient and all-powerful Supreme Being existed among the Yupiit. This in part reflects earlier missionary judgements, such as those expressed by the Moravian missionary, J. A. H. Hartmann, who is cited in 1886 by Sheldon Jackson as observing of the Yupiit: “They know nothing of an Almighty Creator, but imagine that all things come spontaneously into being” (Jackson 1886: 61). This view was reinforced some forty years later by two educational experts from Stanford University, H. Dewey Anderson and Walter Crosby Eells, who in their report on Alaskan Natives made at the request of the United States Office of Education, claimed that “the Eskimos possessed no concept of a supreme deity before the white man came among them” (Anderson & Eells 1935: 66). I have written previously in four places about Alaskan indigenous peoples. My first book, The Impact of Christian Missions on Indigenous Cultures: The “Real People” and the Unreal Gospel (Cox 1991) focuses primarily on the Methodist educational mission in Alaska that resulted in the founding of Alaska Methodist University in 1957. The first three chapters recount the early Protestant mission history and underscore the significant role played in it by Sheldon Jackson. In a later published article, I illustrate how traditional shamanism can be understood as a religion by referring to field studies I conducted in 1982 in the northern part of Alaska (Cox 1999: 267–84). More recently, I analyse the impact of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act on traditional understandings of the land in a chapter published in 2007 in a book edited by Timothy Fitzgerald entitled Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations (Cox 2007b: 71–92). My most comprehensive treatment of Alaskan indigenous religious beliefs and practices can be found in chapter five of my book From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study 114

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of Indigenous Religions (Cox 2007a: 95–117). In none of my prior writings on Alaskan indigenous religions have I focused primarily on beliefs about a Supreme Being, partly because references to such a belief are generally absent from early descriptions of indigenous traditions in Alaska and also because my aims in each of my prior publications were different from my current project. In From Primitive to Indigenous, I described the religious beliefs and cultural practices of the Yupiit to test the accuracy and practical application of my definition of an indigenous religion. CONTExT aND TErmINOLOGy

Before I begin my discussion of a Yup’ik idea of a Supreme Being, I need to draw the reader’s attention to the context about which I am writing and clarify some terminology. Alaska extends over 533,000 square miles (1,518,000 square kilometres) and crosses nearly 30 degrees of latitude. It is the largest of the fifty states in the United States, twice the size of Texas (the next largest state), and is over six times larger than Great Britain. Within this wide area, numerous indigenous peoples reside: the Aleuts, who inhabit the chain of islands extending into the Pacific Ocean in the direction of Asia; the Alutiiq, who are found along the Gulf of Alaska; the Yupiit, who occupy the southwest section of Alaska and comprise the largest number of Alaskan indigenous peoples; the Inupiat, whom Ernest Burch (1998: 3) calls the “Inuit-Eskimo speaking inhabitants of the northern part of Alaska and extreme north western Canada”; the Athabascans, an Indian group living in the interior regions; and Southeast Coastal Indians, primarily the Haida and Tlingit. Steve Langdon (2002: 4) notes that “these groupings are based on broad cultural and linguistic similarities”, but in a strict sense they “do not represent political or tribal units”. The anthropologist Norman Chance (1990: 18) explains that the linguistic differences between Inupiaq, which is spoken in the northern part of Alaska, and Yup’ik are “similar to that found in the romance languages of Europe”, sharing common roots but mutually unintelligible. In this chapter, I am using the term Yupiit when I refer to the people as a whole, since Yupiit is the plural and collective term of the singular and specific word Yup’ik. Variations of these usages are found in the literature. For example, Oscar Kawagley (1995: 160) prefers to use what he calls the “original” word Yupiaq, which, he explains, means “the same as the modern term Yup’ik”. The anthropologist Wendell Oswalt (1999: 233) observes that indigenous people who “lived along the coast and adjacent riverine sectors of Alaska from near Bering Strait to the north Pacific rim” call themselves “Yuit”, which is another form of “Yupiit” and carries the same meaning. Ann FienupRiordan uses the terms in the way I am employing them by using Yup’ik when referring to the language, members of the group and their culture and 115

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social practices, but using Yupiit in the plural and with respect to the collective whole. This way of designating the people is also supported by the anthropologist Steve Langdon (2002: 48). Although the term “Eskimo” is still used in some writings, it is generally not employed by the people to describe themselves. This is because, as Wendell Oswalt notes, the word “eskimo” means “eaters of raw flesh” and was used “by Algonkian-speaking Indians in eastern Canada, probably as a derogatory label rather than a neutral term of reference” (Oswalt 1999: 6–7). Indigenous peoples in Alaska employ the word “Native” as a collective term of self-designation, but Native is always capitalized. In all cases, the root meaning of Yupiit (“yuk” in the singular and “yua” in the plural) refers to “person”, “personhood”, or in its plural form “people”, plus what Ann Fienup-Riordan (1994: 10) calls the “postbase – pik, meaning ‘real’ or ‘genuine’”. Thus, the term Yupiit, just like its related word Inuit (singular: Inuk), which is a more generic category referring to related indigenous peoples living in Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland, is often translated to mean “the real people”, or as Edwin Burch (1998: 3) suggests, “authentic” or “special” human beings. The idea of personhood as applied to Ellam Yua is important in understanding the discussions of a Yup’ik idea of God as interpreted by Kawagley and Fienup-Riordan. We will see that nascent attempts to identify Ellam Yua as the “person or spirit of the universe” (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 54) with the Christian idea of God reflect largely local and village-led efforts to integrate indigenous spiritual beliefs into Christian teaching, whereas the major churches working in Alaska largely have ignored Ellam Yua as a potential link between ancient traditions and a natural theology. aNGayUqaq OSCar kawaGLEy aND THE yUp’Ik wOrLDVIEw

Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley was born in Bethel in 1934. He was brought up as a Yup’ik speaker, but was enrolled by his grandmother in English-language schools. He was the first Yup’ik pupil to graduate from Bethel High School. Subsequently, he earned three degrees in education from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks before completing his PhD in 1991 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, writing his doctoral thesis on Yup’ik ways of knowing. Shortly after his death in April 2011, an obituary appearing in the Faculty and Staff Newsletter of the University of Alaska South East, credited him as being the first doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia “to use an Indigenous methodology of traditional stories and Indigenous ecological knowledge” (UAS 2011). He revised portions of his PhD thesis into a monograph published in 1995 under the title A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit. This important book outlines the main elements within a traditional Yup’ik worldview. It would be correct to conclude 116

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that Kawagley saw his role as that of interpreting in a clear and simple way indigenous ways of life in order to instil pride among Alaskan Natives and to foster understanding of indigenous peoples within the wider Alaskan society. As part of his explanation of a Yup’ik worldview, he analysed the term “Ellam Yua”, which he translated as “the Spirit of the Universe” (Kawagley 1995: 15). Kawagley describes what he calls “the original Yupiaq” as basing “their philosophy and lifeways on maintaining and sustaining a balance among the human, natural and spiritual worlds” (ibid.). Yup’ik communities lived in villages during the winter, but in summer they occupied temporary camps that they used as a base for hunting and fishing. The animals they obtained from the land and the sea were a source not only of food, but also provided the material for heat, light, clothing and cooking materials. Kawagley asserts that “they made their winter and summer settlements a part of nature, disturbing the environment as little as possible” (ibid.). Annual rituals were observed “year after year” (ibid.), such as the “Bladder Festival” (Nakaciuq) in the midwinter, which honoured the spirits of the seals that had been killed the previous summer and whose souls were thought to reside in the bladders of the animals (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 266–98). A series of rituals was performed in connection with the Bladder Festival, which extended over a period of six or seven days, culminating in the return of the bladders to the sea through an ice hole and a fire ceremony aimed at purifying the community (Cox 2007a: 103–8). These and other rituals performed throughout the year led Kawagley (1995: 15) to conclude that “the balance of nature, or ecological perspective, was of utmost importance to the Yupiaq”. For Kawagley, the key to understanding the way the Yupiit traditionally unified all aspects of their lives is found in the word “ella”, a multifaceted term which, he says, “epitomizes Yupiaq philosophy” (ibid.). He notes that ella is a “base word”, the meaning of which is modified by the various suffixes attached to it. It has numerous applications, some of which are quite mundane and seemingly have no relationship to religious meanings. For example, “Qaill’ ella auqa?” simply asks, “How is the weather?”, whereas “Ellagpiim yua” is best translated as “Spirit of the Universe”. Kawagley notes that variations of ella, by adding different suffixes, “can be made to refer to weather, awareness, world, creative force or god, universe, and sky” (ibid.). The principal idea linking all uses of the word ella is “awareness, or consciousness”, which “is the highest attainment of the human being” (ibid.). Kawagley concludes that as a manifestation of their consciousness (their ella), the Yupiit “developed a body of values and traditions that would enable them to maintain and sustain their ecological worldview” (ibid.). Kawagley illustrates the Yup’ik worldview by drawing a diagram he calls a “tetrahedral structure” (ibid.). This is configured like a triangle, much like a tripod, which at the top, binding the three legs together, is the worldview, which in turn relies on the strength of the supporting legs for its stability. The base legs of the tetrahedral structure represent three realms: the natural, the 117

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spiritual and the human. It is essential for the worldview to function properly that “constant communication” among the three realms be maintained (ibid.: 16). This diagram symbolizes that humans must always place themselves in relation to the other realms, the natural and the spiritual, and thereby “check to make sure that the values and traditions are in balance” (ibid.). The metaphor of the tetrahedral structure displays the Yup’ik worldview as a coherent and solid framework that only becomes threatened when the three supporting legs are not in proper balance. This occurs if there is a breakdown in communication among the three base realms. According to Kawagley, the force ensuring that the three parts of the Yup’ik worldview are sustained in a proper balance is found in the transmission of tradition through “language, myths, legends and stories, science and technology, and role models from the community” (ibid.: 17). Kawagley emphasizes that this “cultural map” in the past was relayed from generation to generation through the oral tradition and by young people observing the rituals and behaviours of their elders (ibid.). Traditional stories were told in the qasgiq, the men’s communal house where Yup’ik social, religious and ceremonial activities took place, including the Bladder Festival and rituals involving shamans. In addition, informal community gatherings were held there, and it served as the location where men repaired their kayaks or prepared in other ways for hunting and fishing (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 34–6). The qasgiq, which, like all Yup’ik houses, was made mostly of sod and extended partially underground with an elongated entrance, quite efficiently utilized the earth as natural insulation. Normally, the qasgiq was situated near the centre of the village and often was built on the highest place so it could be seen from any vantage point (Cox 2007a: 99). The participants in the qasgiq engaged in numerous activities from simple storytelling to the elaborate mask rituals featuring shamans (see Cox 2007a: 110–15). The early Protestant missionaries regarded the qasgiq as a place where pagan ceremonies occurred and where communication with the devil took place. Sheldon Jackson (1880: 102–5) called it the “lodge or hut of the shaman”, where “the inspired demoniac”, evidenced in the shamanic trance, becomes “convulsive” and “utters loud cries”. Although there were exceptions, notably among the Moravian missionaries working in Yup’ik villages (Oswalt 1963: 70–71), most early missionary accounts condemn shamanic séances as being “frightful in their atrocity” (Jackson 1880: 102). As a result, they made the qasgiq one of the primary targets in their programme of cultural transformation. Certainly by 1930, the qasgiq, as well as traditional styles of housing, had disappeared from many Alaskan villages (Cox 1991: 82–9), although the qasgiq survived beyond this time in locations where missionaries were more tolerant of traditional drumming and dancing. Kawagley notes that according to Yup’ik tradition, stories of creation feature the Raven. Although he does not refer to sources for this assertion, accounts of a Raven creation story were reported by the ethnologist E. W. 118

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Nelson (extract in Anderson and Eells 1935: 451–64), who lived among the Yupiit from 1877 until 1881. In my book A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion, I summarize the creation story from Nelson’s lengthier version, as follows: The first man emerged out of the pod of a beach pea by straightening out his legs and bursting the pod. The man fell to the ground where he stood up a full grown man. He soon experienced an unpleasant feeling in his stomach and stooped down to drink some water from a small pool at his feet. When he looked up, he saw a dark, winged object approaching him. This was Raven who subsequently landed by the man. Raven lifted his wings, pushed up his beak like a mask, and became a human. When he saw the first man, Raven was astonished at the sight and asked where he had come from. The man pointed to the beach pod. Raven exclaimed, ‘Ah! I made that vine but did not know anything like you would ever come from it’. Raven then took the man to a hill where he formed other creatures: first mountain sheep and then a woman for the man. He then created fish, birds, and other animals and taught the man how to survive in his environment. Man and woman bore a son and a daughter who married and formed the first human family. When Raven had finished his creative acts, he returned to the beach pod from which the first man had originated only to find that three other men had emerged from it. Raven led one of these inland but he took the other two to the sea. Each was taught how to develop skills for survival including making fire and hunting or catching sea animals. (Cox 2010: 100) Kawagley interprets this widespread story, which would have been told in a much more detailed manner in the qasgiq, as indicating that, although the Raven is credited with the act of creation, in reality the Raven symbolized a greater force of creation. A Yup’ik explanation of the story, in accordance with Kawagley’s three interrelated realms of being, would emphasize that the “creative force took the form of the Raven … so that the Yupiaq would never think that they are above the creatures of the earth” (Kawagley 1995: 18). By the “creative force”, Kawagley is referring to Ellam Yua (ibid.: 23). Yup’ik communities, as the human realm, lived in tandem with the spiritual realm, which, according to Kawagley, included “a dynamic sense of sacredness” (ibid.). That these spheres within the overall worldview were also connected to the natural realm is supported by the way the Yupiit formed their hunting utensils out of natural material in order not “to offend the hunted animal” (ibid.). Communication among the three realms was formalized and dramatized in rituals and ceremonies, which on occasions featured masks crafted by the shaman or the shaman’s representative. Masks frequently depicted 119

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the spirits of animals or other natural forces like the wind (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 317). Through ceremonies during which a figure wearing the shaman’s mask played a pivotal role, the spirit of the animal or the natural forces came alive and the boundaries separating the realms of the human, natural and spiritual were lifted. Behind these activities and in one sense above them all stood Ellam Yua, to whom ultimately offerings of thanks were made allowing people, in Kawagley’s words, “to spiritually center themselves” (ibid.). Kawagley’s description of the Yup’ik worldview makes no attempt to synthesize its elements into a Christian theological framework or to contrast it, at least overtly, with a Christian interpretation of the world. Nonetheless, it is evident that he was writing against the backdrop of the almost universal acceptance of Christianity within Yup’ik villages today and against pejorative attitudes voiced towards traditional Yup’ik religious practices, particularly by Sheldon Jackson and some of the early Protestant missionaries who served alongside him. In the glossary to his book, Kawagley (ibid.: 159) clarifies that Ellam Yua, as “Spirit of the Universe”, is “equivalent to God, or the Great Mystery”. When he explains the reasons for Raven figuring centrally in Yup’ik creation stories, he implies a criticism of the traditional Christian theological position that subjugates nature to the stewardship of humanity when, as I noted above, he asserted that “the creative force took the form of Raven to make the world so that the Yupiaq will never think that they are above the creatures of the earth” (ibid.: 18). He follows this statement with the rhetorical question: “How can they be when their creator is a creature of earth?” (ibid.). Finally, after affirming that consciousness represents “the highest attainment of the human being”, he adds, in a barely concealed censure of earlier white attitudes asserting the supremacy of Western culture over the Yup’ik way of life, “we must remember that it [consciousness] is not attributable to any one race” (ibid.: 15). In these ways, Kawagley can be seen as an advocate for a traditional Yup’ik worldview, which he asserted in the face of many years of prejudicial treatment and denigration by the dominant white population of Alaska. aNN FIENUp-rIOrDaN: ELLam yUa aND THE EyE OF awarENESS

Ann Fienup-Riordan is an independent Alaskan anthropologist, who has worked in Yup’ik villages since the mid-1970s. She has published numerous books on the Yupiit, including descriptions of traditional Yup’ik patterns of living (Fienup-Riordan 1990, 1994) and the impact of missionary activity and Westernization on Yup’ik culture (Fienup-Riordan 1991, 2000). She has also served as a compiler of the thinking of Yup’ik elders and a facilitator for interpreting Yup’ik traditions within Alaska, as well as elsewhere in the United States and internationally (Fienup-Riordan & Meade 1996). She is frequently cited as a leading expert on Yup’ik culture, and has perhaps done 120

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more than any other person to foster understanding of Yup’ik ways of life to the outside world. She has acted as a conduit for the ideas of Yup’ik villagers about their culture, and thus serves as an invaluable resource for understanding traditional and contemporary views of God among ordinary Yup’ik communities. She has dealt in detail with Ellam Yua in her groundbreaking book, Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yup’ik Eskimo Oral Tradition (Fienup-Riordan 1994). In the preface to her book Eskimo Essays: Yup’ik Lives and How We See Them, Fienup-Riordan explains that her purpose in writing was “to bridge the separation between informed scholarship and popular concepts” in order to stimulate “the student of anthropology as well as the general reader to think about how indigenous peoples have been portrayed and how we perceive them” (Fienup-Riordan 1990: xiii–xiv). In a book published ten years later under the title Hunting Tradition in a Changing World (Fienup-Riordan 2000: 29–57), she includes a self-reflexive chapter in which she outlines her growing awareness of her responsibility as an anthropologist to the people among whom she works. She explains that in Boundaries and Passages she “quoted elders’ words at length, both to convey the quality and variety of Yup’ik oratory as well as to give readers, especially Yup’ik readers, access to the words of individual elders whom they knew well” (ibid.: 45–6). She adds that although she organized and analysed the comments of the elders, she tried to let them “speak for themselves on particular topics and describe their own experiences” (ibid.: 46). In light of her dual role as an interpreter in her own right of Yup’ik beliefs and practices and as a facilitator of the voices of Yup’ik leaders, whom she calls “orators” (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 23–4), in this section I will analyse how Fienup-Riordan presents the Yup’ik understanding of a Supreme Being and then in the next part refer to her accounts on the same subject by her Yup’ik informants. In cases where I examine the voices of the Yupiit, I am cognizant of the fact that the words are filtered through the writings of the anthropologist, but one who herself is fully aware of her own part in selecting and representing indigenous perspectives. In Boundaries and Passages, Fienup-Riordan outlines the ways clearly delineated rules governed every aspect of social relationships among traditional Yup’ik communities. Society was understood as being comprised not just of humans but included animals and their spirits, natural objects, weather conditions and relationships with the dead. The various dimensions of life required what Fienup-Riordan calls “passages”, such as occurred during the Bladder Festival, where the souls of the seals killed during the previous season were returned in the form of their bladders through ice holes after having been ritually entertained in the qasgiq for about a week. The rituals ensured that the participants observed rules connected with the passage of the spirit of the seals back to the water where they were believed to be reborn in new seals which, if they had been properly honoured by the community, would freely offer themselves for the hunt in the next year (Fienup-Riordan 121

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1994: 3–4). Other rituals had to do with reproduction, re-birth and death and often were symbolized by masks that were painted in such a way as to indicate the passage of the shaman on his journey to encounter spirits and his return to the community. The qasgiq also symbolized a passage from one realm to the other. For example, the inflated bladders were removed from the qasgiq through the smoke hole on the roof symbolizing the passage of the spirits of the seals back to the sea, and the shaman left on his journeys sometimes by exiting and re-entering the structure through the skylight on the roof (ibid.: 256). Fienup-Riordan’s point is that traditional Yup’ik life was ordered by rules, often dramatized in rituals, that regulated the ways society, understood in the widest sense as including humans, animals, nature and spirits, moved from one state of being to another. Fienup-Riordan (ibid.: 254) has drawn four diagrams depicting Yup’ik cosmology according to the way space was understood and utilized. The qasgiq is placed at the centre of each drawing, denoting the centre of the world. As we have seen, the qasgiq was the place where the seasonal rituals were performed, but it was also the place where the men and pubescent boys slept. Men visited their wives by passing from the qasgiq to the houses where the women, girls and young boys resided, and then returned back to the qasgiq. This social arrangement is mirrored in Fienup-Riordan’s second diagram, which portrays the seasonal movement from the permanent homes in the village, with the qasgiq in the centre, to the periphery of the world where temporary quarters were established during the summer hunting and fishing period. What Fienup-Riordan calls “universal space” in her third drawing connects the centre of the village to the four cardinal directions stretching to the edges of the earth, as well as in an upward direction towards the sky, the stars and the moon and downwards towards the underworld. It is from the qasgiq at the centre of universal space that the shaman travelled to perform essential functions for the community, including restoring souls that had been stolen from individuals by malevolent spirits, predicting the weather and ensuring that hunting and fishing each year would be productive. FienupRiordan calls the fourth diagram Ellam Iinga, which she translates as the “eye of awareness” (ibid.) and says represents the all-seeing vision of Ellam Yua, “the person of the universe” (ibid.: 262). It is drawn as if Ellam Yua is looking down through concentric circles until the circles reach the centre, the qasgiq, but also the vision extends to the ends of the world symbolized by dots at each corner of the outer circle. This suggests that Ellam Yua sees not only what is occurring in the life of the villagers, but oversees the passages which humans negotiate in village, seasonal and universal spaces. The idea of an ever-watchful person of the universe meant that people carefully performed not just major ceremonies as dictated by tradition, but also followed conventions that were believed to safeguard individuals or the community against adversity or to secure good fortune. Fienup-Riordan explains: “Ellam yua not only watched the world with boundless sight, but … observed 122

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transgressions and meted out punishment” (ibid.). For example, children were prohibited from taking their toys outside during the winter. If they did, Ellam Yua would see this and punish them by sending stormy weather. Or, to obtain good weather, a person might find a worm, turn it inside out and place a sharp stick through it in anticipation of this being seen by Ellam Yua, who would cause the sun to appear in order to dry out the worm (ibid.). FienupRiordan concludes that “Ellam yua possessed all the human senses – sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch” (ibid.). With such a belief in an all-seeing eye observing every human action, and in light of the rules governing the society, it becomes clear why the people meticulously adhered to societal expectations and why they endeavoured to influence Ellam Yua to act on their behalf, either through small personal acts or through elaborate communal rituals. Is Fienup-Riordan asserting that the traditional Yup’ik belief in Ellam Yua corresponds to a Christian idea of God, then? She admits that “recent descriptions of ellam yua have a Christian ring, reminiscent of a heavenly father and almighty, all-seeing creator” (ibid.: 263). The idea of an all-seeing person to whom prayers and petitions can be addressed, she admits, is of relatively recent derivation and developed under the influence of Christianity, but, she asserts, ella “is probably an ancient Yup’ik concept” (ibid.). As we have seen in Kawagley’s discussion of the Yup’ik worldview, ella refers to a number of things depending on the context in which it is being used. It can mean “outside”, “weather”, “sky”, “universe” or “awareness” (Fienup-Riordan 1994: 263). Fienup-Riordan explains that contemporary understandings of Ellam Iinga as Ellam Yua, although influenced by Christianity, reflect the way the Yupiit more generally tend to personalize many natural objects, such as the sun, the moon, the stars and those objects necessary for survival, such as hunting instruments. For example, the sun and the moon are “metaphorically” referred to as persons, and at the winter solstice, people say, “the sun has a parka ruff around it” (ibid.: 264). This means that, as Kawagley asserted (1995: 18), the world was not created in a Christian sense as if it were made “out of nothing”, but a universal consciousness which extends to the yua in all persons, animals and natural objects, oversees every aspect of life. In a Yup’ik cosmological scheme, Ellam Iinga, the eye of awareness, as the personified Ellam Yua, observes and responds to the various passages or transitions that dominate Yup’ik society. yUp’Ik VOICES ON ELLam yUa

Some village elders and indigenous Christians have tried to draw connections between the pre-Christian idea of an all-seeing universal consciousness and a Supreme Being, but these have been sporadic and localized. Ann Fienup-Riordan told me in an interview I conducted with her in Anchorage in April 2011 that in the villages people speak in their churches about how 123

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the old Yup’ik ways of life were consistent with many of the Christian teachings but this is not done in a formal, theological manner.1 For example, in Boundaries and Passages, Fienup-Riordan (1994: 190) cites one of her informants, Herman Neck, who described Ellam Yua as “one person … who watched all the people”. A similar view was expressed by Nastasia Kassell who told Fienup-Riordan: “That person up there is watching the people of that village. And [that person] is watching that whole village. And then when the people get too crazy and careless about living, [that person] makes them sick or have a great hardship, straightening their lives” (ibid.). In Hunting Tradition in a Changing World, Fienup-Riordan (2000: 88) relates the views of a leading Yup’ik elder, Paul John, who was born on Nelson Island in 1929, and “received his training from his father and uncles” in the qasgiq, which he described as being “like a school, like a college”. When Fienup-Riordan talked to Paul John about the arrival in 1888 of Catholic priests on Nelson Island, he claimed “their words had been acceptable in part because they were not new” (ibid.). He then asserted that “before the missionaries came, the Yup’ik people believed in Ellam Yua” who was “like God” (ibid.). Speaking to a Tribal Court Conference in Bethel in 1994, what FienupRiordan calls “an audience of peers”, Paul John referred to Ellam Iinga as that which guided “our forefathers” (ibid.: 101). He explained: “They would go to that person and make them aware of what they were doing wrong, with compassion” (ibid.). It is clear from these statements that Paul John, as a community and regional leader, was expressing the idea that the Yupiit always had maintained a belief in a figure comparable to the Christian God, who was recognizable in the message delivered by the first Christian missionaries. Paul John’s reason for doing this, however, was not to promote Christian evangelism among the Yupiit, but to assert the dignity of traditional culture both to indigenous Christians and to the wider non-indigenous public in Alaska and throughout the United States. An example of how Yup’ik elders and community leaders have interpreted their own religious traditions for the outside world as part of a wider Yup’ik cultural revival occurred in 1996, through a series of exhibitions displaying Alaskan indigenous masks. The exhibit was entitled, in Yup’ik, Agayuliyararput, which was translated into English as “Our Way of Making Prayer”. The story behind this exhibition has been edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan, and transcribed and translated by Marie Meade, who is Yup’ik and a Yup’ik language specialist, in a book carrying the same title as the exhibit but with a subtitle added, Yup’ik Masks and the Stories They Tell (Fienup-Riordan & Meade 1996). Fienup-Riordan explains that the title of the exhibit was derived from the Yup’ik root word agayu, which is usually translated in contemporary times as “to pray” or “to worship”, but originally simply meant “mask” (ibid.: xiv). She adds that “the verb phrase agayuliluteng” referred to “making masks” and involved requests to animals and plants that they would be “plentiful in the coming year” (ibid.). The idea for using masks to communicate 124

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the meaning of indigenous spirituality had been devised by numerous Yup’ik elders, with the assistance of Ann Fienup-Riordan and museum curators. Paul John (ibid.: 21) recalls as a young person that masks often represented animals, like a fox or a sea mammal “that were desirable to acquire … in the hunt”. Another community leader, Justina Mike (ibid.: 27), remembered that ritual performers “would dance using the mask representing desired things”. She added that in the rituals the people would ask the spirits “for animal and plant productivity”. Fienup-Riordan contends that the mask exhibition exemplified renewed efforts of indigenous peoples to affirm values they believed were inherent within their traditional cultural and religious practices. The exhibitions were displayed in three locations in Alaska, Toksook Bay, Bethel and Anchorage, before moving to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, then to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and concluding at the Seattle Art Museum. Fienup-Riordan (2000: 230) observes that “few exhibits in the continental United States and none in Alaska had ever begun in a village and then moved to New York”. The first exhibition was set up in the small village of Toksook Bay, a Yup’ik community of around 500 people located on Nelson Island at the edge of the Bering Sea. Fienup-Riordan describes how the first day of the exhibit in Toksook Bay began: While museum curators installed the masks in cases in the high school, forty planes touched down on the runway, doubling the village population in a single day. More than one thousand men, women, and children had come together to dance, give thanks, and celebrate. The exhibit … opened with drumming and dancing and the pride of seeing the Yup’ik past made present. (Ibid.: 209) The masks that were put on display had been collected from museums in Alaska and in other parts of the world. In the planning leading up to the exhibitions, Fienup-Riordan worked with community elders to try to recover some of the meaning associated for generations with the masks. She notes in particular that “elders spoke a great deal about past shamans, calling them the healers, professors, even biologists of their ancestors” (ibid.: 218). She admits that the “accounts were partial” which indicated not so much “facts about the past” as suggesting “how this past is presently remembered” (ibid.). The aim of the exhibition extended beyond recovering or even re-inventing ancient traditions, in Fienup-Riordan’s words, to promoting “global recognition of Yup’ik culture” as well as instilling cultural pride within “Yup’ik communities and homes” (ibid.: 243). The exhibitions described by Fienup-Riordan are particularly significant for my discussion in this chapter of a Yup’ik Supreme Being because ceremonial masks, even in their contemporary reconstructions, provide insight into 125

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traditional Yup’ik religion. Central to understanding the symbolism of masks and the overall worldview of the Yupiit is the shaman (angalkuk), whose role in linking the community with the world of spirits was critical. Yup’ik masks typically were decorated with circles and dots, and, at one level, symbolized Ellam Iinga as the “eye of awareness”. The circles and dots, on another level, referred to the interconnected parts of the human body, including the joints and muscles which bind the body together. This is especially important for understanding the initiation of shamans, whose body is often described in the literature as having been torn apart only to be reassembled after the newly recognized shaman assumed the role of intermediary between the community and the spirits (Eliade 1964: 35–7). Through their initiatory ordeals, shamans gradually obtained and eventually perfected their vision, which extended beyond ordinary human perception to an invisible world inhabited by various spirits. This was often indicated on the masks by feathers, depicting birds, which have the ability to see from great heights and distances. The anthropologist Wendell Oswalt (1967: 229) explains that masks used in traditional rituals set the performers apart from the audience. Ceremonial masks, which commonly were carved out of spruce wood, were used only once, and burned after each use. Oswalt (1999: 259) explains: “Artistic forms were made for specific purposes … most often to convey a visual image about the deeds of ancestors or the realm of supernaturals.” When they were used in rituals, the masks were intended either to influence the spirits (yua) of the animals to cooperate in the next round of hunting and fishing by giving themselves up freely to sustain the human community or to assist the shaman in contacting the spirit world. In the latter case, the masks often were painted with dark and light colours to symbolize the travels of the shaman to confront powerful and threatening spiritual forces, or they frequently depicted a distorted human face to represent the shaman’s helping spirit (tuunraq). According to Fienup-Riordan (1994: 304), the ritual most associated with masks and shamans among the Yupiit was called Kelek. Unlike the Bladder Festival, which honoured the animals that had already given themselves up in the previous hunting season, Kelek was performed “to please the spirits of game yet to be taken to supply the needs of the living” (ibid.). As such, Kelek was the final ritual performed in the annual ceremonial year and, due to its close association with the shaman, emphasized the role of masks. Prior to the ritual being conducted, the shaman carefully supervised the carving and painting of the masks. During the ceremony, the spirits of animals and the shaman’s spirit helpers, which were invisible to all but the shaman, were invited into the qasgiq and revealed to the participants through the masks. The masks possessed power, making them dangerous and requiring the community to treat them according to clearly defined ritual regulations. During the ritual, the participants were enabled to pass beyond ordinary boundaries and see for themselves what under all other conditions was reserved exclusively to the shaman in an ecstatic trance (ibid.: 315–20). 126

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The ceremonial masks and the central role of the shaman in community life gave the Yupiit a sense of control over events that directly affected their well-being. The Kelek ritual, which enabled the community to see through the eyes of the shaman into the worlds of the spirits, assured the community that so long as they respected the animals and followed the guidance of the shaman, they would achieve a bountiful harvest and survive throughout the long, dark winter. The rituals featuring the masks thus showed the interconnection between the community and the spirit world as being at once open and closed, transparent only to become shut again at the close of the ritual. Through the masks and mediation of the shaman, Ellam Iinga was transformed from a force regulating a rule-governed society to a person with universal consciousness, Ellam Yua. This is precisely why the organizers of the mask exhibition chose to interpret Yup’ik traditions for a wide non-Yup’ik, largely Christian, audience by calling it “Our Way of Making Prayer”. Although for many ordinary villagers the word Agayuliyararput carried Christian connotations, as confirmed by the Yup’ik writer Elsie Mather (Fienup-Riordan 2000: 218), who observed that the term was associated commonly with going to church and Christian worship, for the leaders and organizers of the exhibit, it was steeped in traditional Yup’ik culture. In the end, the mask exhibition communicated a sense pride in Yup’ik traditions not because they could be linked with Christianity, but for the value inherent in the indigenous worldview itself, which, according to Paul John, had been transmitted from generation to generation by the Yup’ik ancestors “since time immemorial” (Fienup-Riordan & Meade 1996: 11). SOmE CONTEmpOrary CHrISTIaN aTTITUDES TOwarDS INDIGENOUS aLaSkaN CULTUrE

As I indicated at the outset of this chapter, no major Christian theological works have been written that interpret ancient Yup’ik beliefs about Ellam Yua as equivalent with the Christian idea of God. Nonetheless, both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Alaska have made innovations in their worship services and liturgical calendars that are intended to “inculturate” the Christian message into traditional Yup’ik patterns of life, although the Protestant churches on the whole have been much slower to introduce cultural adaptations into their religious observances. As we saw in Chapter 3, inculturation not only has become the accepted term among Roman Catholic theologians for describing the relationship of the Gospel to culture, but describes a method of evangelism aimed at transforming a culture by making it into something new. Ann Fienup-Riordan has described her experience of the significant changes occurring in the Catholic Church’s interpretations of traditional Yup’ik ceremonies (2000: 109–41). She relates how in 1992 she was invited to 127

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attend a retreat for Yup’ik deacons at St Mary’s Mission on the Yukon River. She was surprised to see the extent to which the Catholic Mass was incorporating indigenous symbols into the liturgy. She observed that “contemporary Jesuits and Yup’ik deacons are making startling comparisons between Christian and pre-Christian acts … that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago” (ibid.: 111). These changes are marked, for example, by the introduction of drumming and dancing into the church services. Fienup-Riordan even observed a model of a qasgiq being displayed in the church as an acknowledgement of the importance elders played in transmitting traditional knowledge (ibid.: 139). She describes how some priests have applied Yup’ik symbols on their vestments and how villagers have carved wooden bowls on which the bread for use in the Eucharist is presented for consecration by the priest, simulating activities associated with the annual Bladder Festival. Labrador tea is now being used as incense to replicate the ancient practice of burning wild celery stalks during major festivals (ibid.: 126–7; see also Cox 2007a: 104). For some Yup’ik deacons these radical changes serve as signs, in Fienup-Riordan’s words (2000: 112), that “the Yup’ik people were ‘original Christians’”. Despite these obvious attempts to inculturate Yup’ik symbols into the Mass, references to theological interpretations of Ellam Iinga or Ellam Yua are notably absent from Fienup-Riordan’s descriptions of her encounters with Yup’ik Catholics. This would suggest that the Catholic leaders in Alaska are making creative attempts to use culturally meaningful symbols in liturgical renewal, but, by comparison, little effort is being made to reconcile pre-Christian cosmological ideas with Christian theology. According to Michael Oleksa, an Orthodox priest, former dean of St Herman’s Theological Seminary in Kodiak and probably the foremost Orthodox theologian in Alaska, from the inception of the Russian mission to the indigenous peoples of Alaska at the end of the eighteenth century, the Orthodox Church had always maintained a sympathetic attitude towards traditional beliefs and practices, including accepting the role of the shaman as a prophet and healer (Oleksa 2001: 283). Oleksa explains that the first missionaries to Alaska were “hieromonks” (monks ordained as priests) who had been recruited by the Russian American Company, which was a fur trading commercial enterprise. The monks arrived first on Kodiak Island in September 1794 and during their first year wrote descriptions of the religious beliefs and practices of the indigenous population (ibid.: 281–2). Oleksa contends that the monks’ “analysis of Native Alaskan spirituality was, on the whole, positive”, noting that they discovered a rich legacy of myths told among the indigenous peoples, which described “the creation of the world and its eternal structures, and contained the patterns for appropriate human conduct” (ibid.: 282). Clearly, following the lead of his fellow Orthodox scholar, Mircea Eliade, Oleksa claims that the people of Kodiak Island spoke of an earlier day when the people “had direct access to the gods” (ibid.). This original “closeness was disrupted or nearly lost by a cosmic catastrophe caused by human 128

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error, pride, or ignorance” but “the shaman has found the path back to communion with at least some of the spirits” (ibid.: 282). A somewhat less theological interpretation of this general belief held throughout many parts of Alaska is recorded by Fienup-Riordan (1994: 259) who reports that according to Yup’ik oral tradition originally it was not only the shaman who could encounter spirits readily, but because the earth was thin and permeable, the passage between the human and spirit worlds was accomplished easily. Since the creation by Raven, the earth’s crust has become increasingly harder making it difficult to pass from one realm to the other. Hence, there developed a need for specialists, who through much struggle and effort, could break through the barriers to the spirit world. In his major book outlining an Orthodox theology of mission in Alaska, Oleksa discusses two terms we have already met when he describes what he calls “the Alaskan Spirit” (Oleksa 1992: 13) with its “pre-Christian meanings” (ibid.: 192). These are “inua” (“yua” in Yup’ik) (ibid.: 15) and “agayun” (ibid.: 192). He defines “inua” as the “life force” within each living thing (ibid.: 15). For example, the inua of an eagle is that which makes it fly higher and further than most other birds (ibid.). Oleksa explains further that “the Inua implants within each member of a species an ability to communicate with others” (ibid.: 16). This is why it was so important for the community to respect the inua of the animals on which they depended for their survival since “speaking disrespectfully of an animal can jeopardize hunting success” (ibid.). Like the organizers of the Mask Exhibition, Oleksa associates agayun with traditional rituals where the mask played a significant part in linking the community with the spirit world. Oleksa calls agayun “the reality behind the mask, the force that animates and enlivens it” (ibid.: 192). Oleksa also recounts a version of the traditional creation story by Raven but he notes that no Alaskan group ever worshipped Raven or offered sacrifices to him. This is because “Raven does not control reality” (ibid.: 14). Still, Oleksa calls Raven “the Creator” and draws biblical parallels to a version of the myth of creation: “The Creator made living things from the earth and put life into them by forcing ‘air’ or breath into them” (ibid.). Despite these allusions to Raven as the originator of life, Oleksa concludes that the Yup’ik people “lack a concept of an omnipresent and omniscient Creator” (ibid.: 13). Citing the Orthodox Bishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, Oleksa defines a primary goal of an Orthodox theology of mission as “the ‘incarnation of the Logos of God into the language and customs of a country’” (ibid.: 11). This corresponds closely to what Roman Catholic theologians have called the ‘inculturation” of the Gospel into indigenous societies. In Oleksa’s case, this entails finding ways the Christian message can be communicated by incorporating into it pre-Christian concepts, principally inua, agayun and the creation story by Raven. And like the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church in Alaska has adapted traditional ceremonies to fit into Christian rituals. Oleksa (ibid.: 188–94) devotes a section in his book to describing one 129

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festival that he regards as a primary example of integrating a Christian activity into the ancient customs of the indigenous peoples of Alaska. This is a practice among Alaskan Orthodox Christians called “Starring”. Oleksa explains that towards the beginning of the twentieth century, a Ukrainian priest serving in western Alaska introduced the tradition of singing Russian folk carols during the Christmas and Epiphany seasons. Since this event occurred during the winter, which had been the peak time for indigenous ceremonies and festivals, carol singing was easily fitted into the annual cycle of rituals. This soon expanded into another eastern European celebration called, in Slavonic, “Selaviq”, translated by Oleksa as ‘Starring”, which has spread throughout many parts of Alaska and has been adapted to fit into local customs (ibid.: 188). Among the Yupiit of the Kuskokwim Delta region this involves three days and nights of singing with very little time allowed for sleeping. Preparations for Selaviq begin as early as the previous summer when berries are picked for use in the traditional dessert called akutaq, defined by Oleksa (ibid.: 190) as composed of “fruit, oil, sugar and in recent times, mashed potatoes”. In addition, the community purchases food goods and orders gifts well in advance of the festival. The word “Starring” indicates that the singers who perform during Selaviq follow a “star” based on the biblical story of the star of Bethlehem. The singers “follow the star” from house to house and enter each home singing “Glory to God in the Highest … sometimes in Slavonic, sometimes in Yup’ik” (ibid.: 191). Oleksa notes that the songs are frequently “followed by a sermon, either by a member of the household or by a special guest”, and conclude with a closing song from the Orthodox liturgy (ibid.). The singers and the family then have a meal, which culminates with a distribution of gifts before the singers and the members of the household move on to the next home. The events at each location last for several hours and, since the number of participants increases from house to house, Oleksa observes that “the amount of food consumed during the three day Selaviq in a typical Orthodox community is almost incredible” (ibid.: 192). Oleksa asserts that most people consider Selaviq a Russian tradition, “since the feast and the hymns are either Orthodox liturgical selections or Ukrainian carols”, and the custom of “following the ‘star’ also originated in Eastern Europe” (ibid.). Nonetheless, he contends that the feasting, sharing gifts and gathering of people constitute a “remnant of the ancient Yup’ik winter festival in Christian garb” (ibid.). In From Primitive to Indigenous, I describe the traditional Yup’ik “Messenger Feast”, which corresponds in some respects to what Oleksa describes as Selaviq (Cox 2007a: 103–6). The feast required great planning on the part of the hosts and the guests. Members of every community would store up valuable items to bring as gifts in anticipation of being invited by a neighbouring village to its Messenger Feast. The term “messenger” refers to the way the announcement concerning its timing was made and how the invitation was issued to nearby villages. Two young men 130

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were selected by the elders of the host village to deliver the invitation. This involved carrying a stick on which members of the village had carved marks indicating who was invited to the feast and what was requested as gifts from the guests. The messengers would travel to the intended village, would arrive without saying anything, and only would speak after they were well fed. The stick was placed in the centre of the qasgiq and the messengers would explain what was requested of them from the hosts. The messengers were then told by the elders of the invited village what they expected in return from the hosts during the festival. These demands were carved on a new stick and the messengers returned to their home village with the information. They then placed their new stick in the middle of their qasgiq and interpreted for their own elders the message that had been returned. When the actual festival occurred, numerous rituals took place over several days. At the conclusion, a great feast and sharing of gifts occurred. A major purpose of the Messenger Feast, according to Fienup-Riordan (1994: 335), was to defuse and resolve conflicts in “a safe context”. She adds that it allowed an “outlet to people’s aggressive emotions” and thus “helped to keep the peace” (ibid.: 345). It also provided an occasion where the values of the society could be passed on to the next generation through ritual performances, dances and games. Michael Oleksa (1992: 192) contends that what he calls the “cultural continuity between modern Orthodox observances and their pre-Christian counterparts”, as evidenced by the traditional Messenger Feast being transformed into the Orthodox practice of “Starring”, “nowhere indicates a superficial commitment to the Gospel”. He explains that “to communicate the Christian Gospel in any indigenous language requires the use of terms and concepts with which the people are familiar” (ibid.). Oleksa does not extend this to a discussion of an original belief in God among the Yupiit, although he notes without elaborating on it that the early Orthodox missionary, Iakov Netsvetov, used the term agayun for the deity. Oleksa (ibid.: 15) instead identifies yua, as the “life force” or “the intelligent ‘soul’ of each species”, with the Greek term, logoi, the plural form of logos, often translated as word, reason or rational force. He suggests that yua and its Greek equivalent logoi, operate as life forces in all parts of the created order. Oleksa’s version of Christian theology projects the multiple expressions of the logoi onto the logos, interpreted as the Divine Word or Christ, who is “the source and sustainer of life” (Oleksa 2001: 283). It would have been just one step further to have identified the Divine Logos with Ellam Yua, but Oleksa does not take his argument this far. The Protestant mission to Alaska, as I indicated at the outset, which developed under the guidance of Sheldon Jackson, embarked in the late nineteenth century on an active programme to replace all aspects of indigenous culture with American patterns of life. This overriding aim, although modified over the years since Jackson first developed his missionary strategy for Alaska, may explain why many mainline Protestant churches have been quite reticent to incorporate traditional cultural practices into their worship services. 131

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Clearly this is a broad generalization, but it is supported by an interview I conducted with the Rev. Mark Allred, Pastor of the Alaska Native Lutheran Church, which is housed in the Central Lutheran Church in Anchorage.2 At the time of my interview with him in April 2011, Allred was not yet ordained, but was anticipating becoming the only ordained Alaskan Native Lutheran pastor in a ceremony to be conducted in the summer 2011. Pastor Allred, who is Inupiaq from the Seward Peninsula region, told me that he believes that God was active among the indigenous people of Alaska before the missionaries arrived. This view is now being translated into the re-emergence among the people of traditional cultural activities, such as dancing and drumming. He indicated that in his church he has a dance group of about twenty people of all ages that meets during the week to learn and perform traditional dances, which are accompanied by the indigenous practices of drumming and storytelling. This dance, drumming and storytelling group has never attempted to integrate its activities into the regular Sunday morning service in the Central Lutheran Church. Pastor Allred told me this would not be accepted by the congregation. He does, however, hold meetings on Sunday evenings for Alaskan Native people, in which he has adapted parts of a provisional Lutheran Inupiaq liturgy for use in the worship service and has introduced a different hymnbook from the one normally used in the regular Lutheran church service. Many of the hymns that are popular among the Native Alaskans are about going to heaven, which he said, “the people like probably because they tell of a better life, better health and where they have no limits”. The resource book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America prepared for use in Alaska Native worship services, to which Allred alluded, outlines the liturgy in the English and Inupiaq languages and includes sections on the themes of “Holy Baptism”, “Marriage” and “Funeral” (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 2003). At the conclusion of the booklet is found a selection of hymns in English and Inupiaq. In some places in the liturgy, the English word “God” is inserted with no attempt to find an equivalent Inupiaq term, although in other sections the Inupiaq word Aŋaiyun is used. This word is related to Agaayun in Ipuiaq or Agayun in Yup’ik, which, as we have just seen, Oleksa indicated was a term some Orthodox missionaries translated as God. Fienup-Riordan and Meade (1996: 229) have produced a glossary of terms at the conclusion of Our Way of Making Prayer in which they define Agayu as a “Ceremony in which prayers are offered using masks” and note that the root term “agayu-” is best defined as “to beseech, to participate in a ceremony, to pray”. In the Lutheran Inupiaq worship resource booklet no mention is made of sila, which is the Inupiaq equivalent of the Yup’ik word ella (Oswalt 1999: 92; Fienup-Riordan 1990: 234), nor is any reference made to inua. Pastor Allred told me that so far as he knows, the people just use “God” when praying in Inupiaq and do not attempt to employ an Inupiaq translation. Although the case of the Alaska Native Lutheran Church in 132

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Anchorage by no means provides a comprehensive picture of all Protestant churches in Alaska, it does offer a stark contrast to the culturally relevant innovations introduced into the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches as described by Fienup-Riordan and Oleksa. CONCLUSIONS

The evidence I have provided in this chapter suggests that the ancient belief in a universal, personal consciousness among the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska did not correspond to a Christian understanding of a Creator prior to contact with Russian explorers, fur traders and missionaries and before extensive exposure to Protestant missionary-teachers and Catholic Jesuits. As Kawagley and Fienup-Riordan observe, the idea of ella with multiple meanings including weather, outside, sky and consciousness, is probably an age-old concept. The notion that a force inhabits all natural objects, animals, humans and spirits is also in all likelihood a pre-Christian belief. That this force has many manifestations, but is linked to an overseeing consciousness, would make sense in a society bound by rules, regulations and ritual passages from one state of being to another. This universal force would quite naturally have been personified, since all things possessed “yua” as their spirit or life force. It thus would have been logical for the Yupiit to have attributed the universal force (Ellam Iinga) with personhood or yua, and thus to have regarded a universal consciousness as Ellam Yua. That this is quite different from a Christian concept has been underscored by FienupRiordan (1994: 263), who notes that “rather than a deity in human form, ellam yua was a genderless, sentient force”, which “as a key concept in Yup’ik cosmology … epitomizes their transformational and interconnected view of the world”. Contemporary village Christians quite naturally have translated the traditional belief in Ellam Yua in terms that resemble the Christian notion of an all-seeing God, who watches over people, protects and guides them, and punishes them when they commit sins. In light of so many years of sustained attacks on the traditional way of life, this belief, now quite unconsciously absorbed into local Christian attitudes, would operate as a remnant of the pre-Christian worldview. Yup’ik elders, village leaders and academics, such as Oscar Kawagley, have deliberately interpreted Ellam Iinga and its personification as Ellam Yua as a way of communicating to the wider world the idea that before they encountered Europeans, the Yupiit already had a unified, ecologically friendly and sophisticated worldview, with the shaman as the conduit between the spirits and the human community. This was not recognized, particularly by American missionaries and teachers, who regarded the Yupiit as devoid of religion and as practising demonic ceremonies in the qasgiq (see Jackson 1880: 96–114). For contemporary indigenous leaders, 133

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describing the Yup’ik worldview as containing elevated concepts of a universal consciousness based on rules of respect between the human, natural and spiritual realms provides a way to counteract the many years of prejudice that dominated white attitudes towards Native Alaskans and undermined their collective self-image and sense of worth. Asserting an ancient belief in Ellam Yua provides one way indigenous leaders can restore pride in their own culture and its much debased values. It is significant that among the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant commentators I have reviewed in this chapter, Ellam Yua as the person of the universe is not mentioned as an indigenous word for God. Only FienupRiordan refers to this in the context of how local elders, villagers and leading exponents of cultural revival have conceived the traditional all-seeing force as a person on level terms with the Christian God. Person, in this sense, is not being used as it ordinarily is in Western culture as referring exclusively to humans, since, as we have seen, the traditional rendering of “yua” refers to “personhood” and is applied to humans, animals and natural objects, as well as to an all-seeing universal consciousness. It remains a puzzle as to why the noted Alaskan theologian Michael Oleksa, who admits that “all communication requires the use of mutually intelligible terms” (1992: 192) and who was intent on translating “the Logos of God into the language and customs of a country” (ibid.: 11), did not seize the opportunity of equating the postulated ancient Yup’ik belief in a universal and personal consciousness with the Christian idea of God. Instead, he emphasized that each species and individual within that species possesses a spirit or life force, what he calls yua in Yup’ik and logoi in Greek, without taking the next step of projecting yua, as limited human and natural expressions, onto a universal force, Ellam Iinga, and its personification as Ellam Yua, and then equating these with the Christian Divine Logos. The contemporary reconstructions of an indigenous worldview that I have discussed in this chapter fit into what I am calling an “invention”, including the missed opportunities by Christian theologians to find in Ellam Yua a Yup’ik version of the Christian God. The movement to restore pride in traditional culture as demonstrated in the Yup’ik mask exhibitions, the interpretations of shamans by elders like Paul John and the description of the original Yup’ik worldview as inherently ecological by Oscar Kawagley, each in its own way is a creation, dictated by the expansion of American ideas of civilization and moulded by the historical contexts which define the position of Alaskan Natives in today’s world. It is important to underscore in this context that interpretations of the traditional worldview by Yup’ik leaders, like Oscar Kawagley, do not represent a romantic quest to return to a pristine time before the indigenous way of life was decimated by European and American invaders, but suggest that traditions are dynamic and respond to new events, even when appeals to authenticity are made, as was done by Paul John, by referring to the practices of ancient ancestors. Fienup-Riordan (2000: 138) 134

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underscored this fact when she discussed the synthesis of the old with the new through the innovations in liturgical practices within the Roman Catholic Church in Alaska: “Both Yup’ik and Catholic ‘traditions’ of the present are not the same as past acts. They may have roots in the past, but their meaning is forged in the present in an effort to shape the future.”

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chapter 6

INVENTION aS CULTUraL HyBrIDITy

We have seen throughout this book that conclusions based largely on predetermined assumptions have triggered debates over an ancient belief in a Supreme Being among indigenous societies. This became particularly clear in my analysis presented in Chapter 1 of the dispute between nineteenthcentury evolutionists, following Herbert Spencer and E. B. Tylor, and the primitive monotheists, exemplified in the writings of Andrew Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt and later Mircea Eliade. We saw that these mainly academic discussions were played out in crucial real-life situations in Australia at the end of the nineteenth century through the contentious arguments between the zoologist and evolutionist Baldwin Spencer, and the missionary and linguist Carl Strehlow. In this chapter, after summarizing the empirical evidence I have provided throughout this book, I evaluate my conclusions through the conceptual category “cultural hybridity” and relate it to the idea of “the invention of tradition”. My aim is to disclose the motivations and underlying aims of those who have promulgated the God-idea in the societies I have reviewed. In my discussion, I contrast cultural hybridity with the related concept syncretism, which has been used widely as a term describing the mixing of religious beliefs. In the process, I indicate why syncretism provides a less satisfying tool for analysing the dynamic interaction among religions than cultural hybridity. Following my evaluation of each case using the categories cultural hybridity and invention of tradition, I return to the issues I raised at the beginning of this book by asking if my case studies can be generalized and applied more broadly to other inventions of God in indigenous societies. Finally, I draw conclusions that bear strongly on two fundamental criteria relevant to the academic and scientific study of indigenous religions within the field of religious studies as opposed to theology: a commitment to rigorous academic standards and a duty to fair play in scholarly research. 137

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SUmmary OF THE EmpIrICaL EVIDENCE

I begin my summary of the empirical evidence by returning to the case of New Zealand, where over the past thirty to forty years some important Christian theologians, both Pākehā and indigenous, such as Michael Shirres, James Irwin, Māori Marsden and Henare Tate, have equated the Māori idea of Io with the Christian God. Despite the relatively recent spate of theological interest in Io as the Māori High God, the early proponents of this argument, chiefly Elsdon Best and S. Percy Smith, were not theologically motivated but, as self-trained ethnologists associated with the Polynesian Society, were intent on rescuing Māori culture from threats to its survival posed by the process of colonization. I have shown that the primary source on which Smith and Best relied was Te Whatahoro, a convert to Mormonism, who filtered his interpretation of the teachings about Io conveyed to him in a Māori ancient school of learning (whare-wānanga) in ways that bore uncanny similarities to Mormon stories about a divine revelation inscribed in “ancient Egyptian” on tablets buried in a hill in upper New York State, which allegedly were discovered by Joseph Smith under the direction of the angel Moroni. Even the idea conveyed by Te Whatahoro that Io had created the universe and everything in it by a process of emanation rather than “out of nothing” can be traced to Mormon teachings. We have also seen that Te Whatahoro was initially distrusted by Elsdon Best, but after S. Percy Smith had translated Te Whatahoro’s The Lore of the Whare-wānanga, which contains written accounts of the postulated ancient belief in Io, Best became the leading international exponent of the pre-Christian Māori belief in Io. Although he did not write from a Christian perspective, Best argued that the secret teachings reported by Te Whatahoro about the esoteric Io cult centred in the whare-wānanga conveyed a concept of God every bit as sophisticated and complex as the Christian doctrine of a Supreme Being (Best 1913: 99). The argument that Te Whatahoro was an unreliable and probably biased source is not enough to discredit on empirical grounds the claim that the ancient Māori possessed a belief in a High God out of whom all that exists has emanated. Arguments against this idea have come from an examination of the oral traditions, linguistic usages and early historical documentation offered by leading scholars, such as Te Rangi Hīroa (Peter Buck), Jonathan Z. Smith, Jane Simpson and Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. The most convincing argument against Io as equivalent to the Christian God has been developed by Te Rangi Hīroa who by a careful analysis of the sources on which Best and Smith based their conclusions, in the words of Jane Simpson (1997: 51), has demonstrated “conclusively that Io as Supreme Being was a post-European creation”. Despite this, Simpson argues, “the mythmaking of the early Polynesian Society ethnographers has been extraordinarily pervasive” (ibid.). We saw that Te Rangi Hīroa confirmed that the only complete source for the pre-Christian Io belief was Te Whatahoro, whose evidence I have already 138

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argued proved to be highly untrustworthy. Te Whatahoro’s dubious reliability was later fully documented by Jonathan Z. Smith and corroborated by the extensive research conducted by Jeffrey Holman. Other evidence for the preChristian Io belief cited by Best, and later reiterated by Michael Shirres and James Irwin, has been shown by Te Rangi Hīroa to be so scanty and inconclusive that it must be discounted. For example, the references in the manuscripts to Io by John White are shown by Te Rangi Hīroa to have resulted from a mistranslation of “io” (lower case), which actually refers to muscular twitches, as “Io” (upper case), whom White called “God”. And the often cited evidence provided in a poem recorded by C. O. Davis is shown by Te Rangi Hīroa as having been based on a textual error in Davis’s translation, which changed the meaning entirely, leading Te Rangi Hīroa to eliminate the poem as providing any evidence whatsoever of an early Māori belief in Io. Te Rangi Hīroa admitted that the Māori concept of Io probably originated among the Ngati Kahungunu tribe on the east coast of the North Island, but its transformation into a God equivalent to a Christian Supreme Being has resulted from “post-European additions” (Te Rangi Hiroa 1950: 535–6). In Zimbabwe, through a large part of the twentieth century, missionaries and African Christian theologians insisted that a pre-Christian idea of God, known as Mwari and understood as comparable to the Christian Supreme Being, was the ultimate object of faith among the Shona people. The analysis provided by Swiss medical doctor, Herbert Aschwanden, who associates Mwari, not with the Christian God, but with a fertility deity, finds strong corroboration linguistically, culturally and historically. We saw that Aschwanden (1989: 206) contends that Mwari derives from the Shona prefix mu and the root base hari, which combined translate as “to be in a jar”. This refers to the manner traditional rituals are conducted throughout Zimbabwe where mature grains from rapoko grass are placed into a container or in a cave in the side of a mountain, allowed to ferment into traditional beer, which then is used in an array of rituals from those aimed at addressing family misfortunes to more widespread problems affecting a chieftaincy, such as persistent drought. The seed that is inserted into the container clearly represents male semen being deposited into the uterus (the jar). The resulting fluid, the traditional beer, is then poured as a libation to the ancestors with the remainder consumed by the participants. Further support for Aschwanden’s thesis is found in his description of creation stories, which often feature a tsvimbo or walking stick (Aschwanden 1989: 16–21). Stories are told of the tsvimbo plunging beneath a body of water and bringing forth life by breaking open an egg. In traditional rituals, the walking stick is always held by spirit mediums and other specialists who become the voice of the ancestors. Chiefs also carry walking sticks to indicate that they receive their authority from the ancestors. The walking stick quite obviously symbolizes the penis, which in the story of creation, enters into the fluid of the woman and brings forth life. Those who represent ancestors form 139

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part of a genealogical line stretching back to the original ancestor. Religious specialists become the “voice” for the ancestors through rituals of possession or in other ways, such as using instruments of divination to interpret the will of the ancestors. The future well-being of the community depends on ancestral communication and protection, which in turn ensures the persistence of the ancestors’ lineage. In this very broad sense, fertility lies at the core of community well-being in a traditional Shona worldview. The symbols associated with fertility are found throughout the ritual life of the people, as evidenced in placing seed in a container, fermenting beer, pouring libations and sharing in the drinking of the beer. Culturally, if a wife does not bear children, this is considered a great misfortune and ritual specialists are consulted to diagnose the crisis and offer a solution, usually including rituals intended to rectify the difficulty. In the light of the Shona emphasis on fertility, Mwari can only be regarded as a Supreme Being in the sense of occupying the position of the first ancestor, the one who brought the people into being, established them in the land and who ultimately oversees their welfare. The idea that family ancestors carry messages to more powerful ancestors and ultimately to Mwari fits nicely into this scheme and it corresponds to the way traditional authority is exercised even today in chieftaincies. It does not, however, confirm that Mwari is a Creator in the Christian sense, who is approached through Jesus Christ as an intermediary, and, at least in the Roman Catholic theology, through other mediators, such as the Virgin Mary and the saints, and by extrapolation, the ancestors. Mwari, if thought of as an original ancestor, is associated with a particular people or related lineage groups. This interpretation has been supported by the historian D. N. Beach who describes how hierarchical systems originated around the thirteenth century and persisted into the early nineteenth century, which saw paramount chiefs offering protection to regional chiefs and their headmen in exchange for goods provided to the central authority. Beach (1980: 248–51) argues that this ancient system has been adapted to the current “cave cult” operating as the Mwari shrines in the Matopos Hills of southwest Zimbabwe. As we have seen, representatives of chiefs throughout southern Zimbabwe travel with money collected from members of each chieftaincy, offer the money as a gift to Mwari and in turn the “voice” of Mwari, just like family ancestor spirits, responds to specific questions (in this case from the chief ) and offers directives which need to be followed if the people are to prosper. Although a great deal of overlap has occurred in recent times between Christian and indigenous understandings of ancestors and their relation to Mwari, historical and ethnographic evidence strongly favours the position advocated by Aschwanden and Beach that Mwari originally was a sky god associated with rain and fertility, and as such became closely aligned with an original ancestor who established the authority of paramount chiefs and through them ensured the welfare of the people as a whole. 140

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The Australian case presents a sharp contrast to New Zealand and Zimbabwe, since only relatively recently have Christian leaders found in the seemingly ubiquitous idea of the rainbow-serpent an Aboriginal counterpart to God the Creator. We have seen that the Rainbow Spirit Elders, a group of Aboriginal Christian leaders located in northern Queensland, over the past twenty-five years have developed a theological interpretation of the rainbowserpent by equating this central indigenous symbol with the Creator God as described in the Genesis story in the Hebrew Scriptures. My review of the anthropological evidence suggests that the Rainbow Spirit Elders, led by the Aboriginal Christian George Rosendale with the assistance of his non-indigenous theological colleague, Norman Habel, quite correctly have asserted that the rainbow-serpent is a widespread symbol reported throughout many parts of Australia. The anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1926: 19–25; 1930d: 342–7), writing in the 1920s and 1930s argued that stories about the rainbow-serpent were so generally known that the rainbow-serpent might be regarded as the central figure in Aboriginal myths and rituals. Further research findings as reported by later anthropologists, such as W. E. H. Stanner (1989), Ronald Berndt (1979) and L. R. Hiatt (1975, 1996) underscore that, although stories about the rainbow-serpent abound in many parts of Australia, the diverse ways the rainbow-serpent is conceived vary significantly in content and in relative importance. Of far more significance than the variations of belief and attitude towards the rainbow-serpent in assorted parts of Australia is the manner in which the rainbow-serpent is depicted and symbolized in art, myths and rituals. A. P. Elkin’s descriptions (1930a: 257–79), based on research he conducted in the 1920s on cave paintings located in the Forrest River area of the Kimberley region in northwest Australia and his interviews with local people about their meanings, strongly suggest that the rainbow-serpent was associated with fertility and reproduction. This is clearly demonstrated by the image of the wondjina, which was prominent in all cave paintings relating to the rainbow-serpent. The wondjina was always drawn as a face, with two eyes and an elongated nose, but never with a mouth. Elkin notes that the wondjina was associated with “making babies” in the minds of his interviewees, and even the touching up of the figure artistically was believed to influence conception. Some years later, L. R. Hiatt (1996: 115) explained that the wondjina was an explicit sexual symbol, with the eyes on the face representing testicles and the elongated nose depicting an erect penis. The lack of a mouth is explained because the figure portrays the penis inserted into the female vagina. In some of the paintings described by Elkin, the wondjina was surrounded by a snake or a snake could be seen nearby, suggesting that the wondjina actually stood for the rainbow-serpent. The sexual interpretation of the rainbow-serpent was also supported in the descriptions of initiation rituals described by the American anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner (1958: 290–311) in north-eastern Arnhem Land, and 141

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corroborated in the interpretations given of Warner’s descriptions by L. R. Hiatt (1996: 112). The leading Rainbow Spirit Elder, George Rosendale (2004: 6), gave a completely different interpretation of the wondjina figure, suggesting that the lack of a mouth indicated that the rainbow-serpent had devolved his message to the ancestors and their descendants. Although the message originally came from the Creator, it was up to humans to continue to uphold and preach his word and maintain the traditions that were passed on from generation to generation. This interpretation, of course, bears some similarity to Stanner’s story of the rainbow-serpent as the originator of the Murinbata people, but by emphasizing that the rainbow-serpent is a Creator who has withdrawn to the sky, Rosendale avoids entirely the close connection of the symbol to fertility, reproduction and the persistence of the lineage. In the end, the theological projection of a localized and varied symbol onto the universal God of Christian faith finds very little support in the ethnographic descriptions conducted by researchers in the early to mid-twentieth century. Among the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska, it is not theologians or missionaries who have placed an indigenous idea of a universal consciousness, known as Ellam Yua, on a level equal to the Christian deity, but local elders and villagers, assisted by academics, who together have forged a cultural revival movement aimed at championing traditional values in the face of years of denigration by the dominant white population. This was made evident through the mask exhibition in 1996, which began in the small village of Toksook Bay on Nelson Island, and was carried to major cities in the United States including New York and Seattle (Fienup-Riordan 2000: 209–45). In the descriptions of symbols associated with the masks that were exhibited, some references to a figure called Ellam Yua, interpreted as the person of the universe, are made. However, this idea does not feature prominently in the overall accounts of the exhibits. Local villagers and some elders are cited as referring to Ellam Yua as one who watches people all the time and who rewards good behaviour and punishes acts that are contrary to social regulations and customs. It is only a few academics and a select number of elders who seem to have noted the significance of Ellam Yua as a possible source for furthering cultural revival among the Yupiit by making the person of the universe commensurate with, but not the same as, the Christian God. Oscar Kawagley, a Yup’ik educator and university professor, projected Ellam Yua as an important idea as part of his overall description of the Yup’ik worldview (Kawagley 1995: 7–38). The anthropologist, Ann Fienup-Riordan (1994: 262–5), who has worked among the Yupiit for nearly forty years, contends that Ellam Iinga, an impersonal all-knowing force, has been personified in Yup’ik cosmology as Ellam Yua. She explains that this forms a natural extension of an indigenous understanding of the world, since yua, or personhood, is attached to all things that affect human welfare, including hunting utensils, the game required to sustain the people, the sun and the moon, as 142

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well as people, spirits of the dead and other spiritual forces. Fienup-Riordan observes that today local descriptions of Ellam Yua as one who watches over the people are tinted by Christian influences that cause local villagers to think of Ellam Yua as an omniscient deity. The person who has come closest to describing the Yup’ik worldview in terms of Christian theology is the Orthodox priest and theologian, Michael Oleksa (1992; 2001: 280–88). We have seen that Oleksa emphasizes the connection between yua, as spirit or person, and Christ, but he does so in a way that fails to draw a connection between God the Father in Christian theology and Ellam Yua. Instead, in an Eliadean fashion, he represents yua as an anticipation of the incarnation in Christ, and thereby makes the Yup’ik worldview subordinate to his interpretation of Orthodox Christianity. He prefers to link cultural practices exported from eastern Europe, such as “Starring”, with traditional feasts like the Messenger Festival, through which in premodern times Native people from several villages would gather to share their goods and thereby ensure peaceful relations. This stress on finding common ground between, in Oleksa’s case, cultural events surrounding Christmas and Epiphany and indigenous social gatherings is replicated in Roman Catholic practices in Alaska by introducing symbols from the culture into Christian religious observances. Despite these efforts at “inculturation”, neither Oleksa nor his Roman Catholic counterparts have made the connection between Ellam Yua as the Person of the Universe and the Christian notion of personhood in Trinitarian theology. Empirical evidence seems to suggest that Ellam Yua formed part of the overall Native worldview, not in a hierarchical fashion as a Supreme Being, but as an extension of what people experienced in day-to-day living. In this sense, the failure of Christian theologians to equate Ellam Yua with the Christian God conforms to what we can know based on research findings, whereas indigenous leaders and academics have manufactured the concept to support their argument that the Yupiit already had a well-conceived and highly developed cosmology before they had contact with Christian missionaries, early ethnographers and American educators. The above summary of my findings of cases drawn from New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Australia and Alaska demonstrates overwhelmingly that those who have affirmed the existence of primordial indigenous beliefs in a Supreme Being in each instance have “invented” their arguments for an array of reasons, which only secondarily are the result of empirical investigations. Of course, it is not possible to determine precisely what pre-modern societies believed about a Supreme Being, but based on the anthropological, linguistic and oral sources I have reviewed, it is safe to conclude that any idea of a Creator maintained in the four societies I have described cannot be construed as commensurate with Western philosophical or Christian ideas of God unless theological presuppositions, idealized notions of pre-modern societies or intentional strategies aimed at promoting indigenous cultural values are inserted into the equation. My findings suggest that each society had its 143

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own localized, particular and culturally relevant religious beliefs, oral stories and ritual practices. After extensive contact with Western culture, traditional worldviews mixed with Christian ideas to produce a synthesis which inevitably resulted in the absorption of the Christian idea of God into indigenous beliefs, but this describes a far different process than is implied by those who assert that a universal conception of God constituted a core belief among indigenous peoples prior to contact with Western explorers, Christian missionaries and colonial agents. aNaLySING THE EmpIrICaL EVIDENCE: CULTUraL HyBrIDITy

In order to extend my analysis beyond conclusions derived strictly from empirical evidence, I introduce the term “cultural hybridity”. Hybridity as a general concept is derived in the first instance from genetics. It was associated in the nineteenth century with the mixing of different races and thus conveyed racist overtones. Its biological meaning, based on Mendel’s experiments with plants in the mid-nineteenth century, refers to the offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock. Robert Young (1995: 26) observes that “at its simplest”, hybridity “implies a disruption and forcing together of any unlike living things, grafting a vine or a rose on to a different root stock, making difference into sameness”. The term was re-invented in the early twentieth century as a tool for cultural and linguistic analyses rather than exclusively denoting biological mixing. More recently, the concept “cultural hybridity” has been employed by scholars writing from post-colonial perspectives, who, rather than depicting localized indigenous societies as passive receptors of powerful global influences, stress that the local has influenced the expression of the universal in ways that have altered its original meaning just as the universal has modified the local (see, for example, Bhabha 1984: 125–35; 1994). Metaphorically, cultural hybridity symbolizes how two vibrant yet distinct sources, when brought together and fused, produce a dynamic, new organism. The Russian literary critic, linguist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1981: 358–62), in his philosophical and semantic discussion of the novel, distinguished between organic hybridity and intentional hybridity. Bakhtin (ibid.: 358) defined “hybridization” in general as “a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation or by some other factor”. In terms of how languages evolve, Bakhtin (ibid.: 358–9) described organic hybridity, or what he referred to elsewhere as “unintentional” or “unconscious” hybridization, as a “mixing of various ‘languages’ co-existing within the boundaries of a single dialect”. This occurs naturally as languages meet, making the encounter “mute and opaque” (ibid.: 360). Such organic forms of 144

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linguistic hybridity have been “profoundly productive historically” since they “are pregnant with potential for new world views” (ibid.). The novel, by contrast, must be “an intentional hybrid” since it is “conscious … as distinct from a historical, organic, obscure language hybrid” (ibid.: 359, original emphasis). The dialogue that occurs in a novel is constructed by the author and sets up what Bakhtin calls “two individual language-intentions”, one “representing authorial consciousness and will” and the other “the individualized linguistic consciousness and will of the character” (ibid.). This results in a “collision between differing points of views on the world that are embedded in these forms” (ibid.: 360). Bakhtin’s analysis of hybridization in language and the novel has been applied to constructions of how differing worldviews mix when they encounter one another. In this context, Andreas Ackermann (2012: 12) defines organic hybridity as the “unintentional, unconscious, everyday mixing and fusing of diverse cultural elements”. This suggests that cultures interact with one another in ways that are not deliberately directed towards specific ends. The syntheses that occur are unreflective and happen naturally. Intentional hybridity, on the other hand, refers to setting different cultural traits into opposition in order to empower elements within the culture that otherwise might be threatened. Examples can be drawn from colonial situations where indigenous political, economic and religious patterns of behaviour were replaced by European cultural structures, including housing, dress, education, economy, language and religion. In this light, new religious movements that arise in the wake of colonial domination can be understood as deliberate and conscious protests against the religion of the invading culture. This occurs not by retrenching behind tradition, but by renewing the tradition through a process of mixing elements derived from the old and the new, which metaphorically can be likened to hybridity. Ackermann observes that “Bakhtin’s doubled form of hybridity offers a particularly significant dialectical mode for cultural interaction: organic hybridity that tends towards fusion, conflicting with intentional hybridity that enables a contestatory activity” (ibid.: 13). The distinction between organic and intentional hybridity can be applied to the way indigenous societies have responded to the introduction of the Christian God into traditional worldviews. On one level, pre-Christian ideas have coalesced with Christian teachings in an unreflective way, the two melding into one. On another level, the appropriation of the Christian God as the indigenous deity represents a move to regain power over the invading culture by re-enfranchising the subjects of colonial oppression through a strategy of oblique resistance. Incorporating the deity of the oppressor into traditional religious systems enables the victims to assert their own authority over their religious beliefs and practices by intentionally aligning the gods of tradition with the God of the Christian West. This is described by Homi Bhabha (1994: 88) as “mimicry”, a process that reverses “the colonial appropriation 145

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by now producing a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence”. When “mimicry” is considered in the context of Bakhtin’s notion of intentional hybridity and used as a way of analysing how oppressed peoples have responded to the oppressors by adopting parts of the invader’s message and making it their own, in the words of Robert Young (1995: 23), “the voice of colonial authority … hears itself speaking differently, interrogated and strategically reversed”. Since the meeting of the colonial powers with indigenous peoples has occurred between two disproportionately unequal parties, in our case the appropriation of the Christian God as an indigenous deity, intentional hybridity acts, in Young’s words, “as a monstrous inversion, a miscreated perversion of its progenitors” and therefore “exhausts the differences between them” (ibid.). Cultural hybridity is often associated in the literature with syncretism. For example, the Penguin Dictionary of Religions, edited by John Hinnells, in much the same way as I have interpreted Bakhtin’s distinction between organic and intentional hybridity, defines syncretism as “the fusion of religious cults or movements” occurring “in situations of intercultural contact … either spontaneously or by intentional adaptation” (Hinnells 1984: 317). The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, edited by John Bowker, modifies this definition by putting the emphasis on cultural mixing by calling syncretism “the amalgamation of religious beliefs and practices in such a way that the original features of the religions in question become obscured” (Bowker 1997: 936). Despite its widespread use as a category for describing cultural change, syncretism, as a tool for critical analysis, suffers from the implication that the process to which it refers involves two quite separate and even static entities blending with each other to produce something new. In reality, the interaction is much more complex than this. Religious movements are always dynamic and in flux. Thus, when religions meet, they bring with them already operating internally active characteristics that have been formed by prior historical encounters with different cultures and belief systems. To suggest, for example, that contemporary indigenous beliefs in God represent a syncretistic union of Christianity and indigenous religions assumes that both Christianity and indigenous religions constituted self-contained entities that only formed something new when they met and absorbed elements from each other. This oversimplifies the situation and ignores the historical realities that European forms of Christianity were themselves being affected by the contexts into which they entered and that indigenous religions were responding not only to outside influences derived from Western colonialism, but that they had for centuries been subject to change as they engaged with neighbours, migrating groups, environmental crises and changing historical circumstances. Another problem with the term syncretism results from the way representatives of orthodox religious traditions use the term pejoratively in order to maintain power and exercise control over religious innovations. The 146

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Bowker dictionary calls this the effort of religious leaders to limit the impact of syncretism “by reference to the received traditions, so that disruptive novelty is kept in check” (ibid.: 937). In his core text, Religious Syncretism, Eric Maroney (2006: 168) describes syncretism as “conceptual anarchy that the orthodox mentality can never accept”. This suggests that attempts to employ the term syncretism to describe scientifically the results of processes of religious interaction can be overshadowed by its association with religious controversies. Although cultural hybridity as a concept is sometimes obscured due its connection with post-colonial and postmodern discourse analysis, it nonetheless avoids the connotative error of syncretism that implies that religions are static and monolithic entities and it circumvents any association with theological attempts to limit the impact of religious innovations. For these reasons, I have chosen to use the concept cultural hybridity as a more incisive analytical tool than syncretism to examine the motivations of those who have located a belief in the Christian God among pre-modern indigenous peoples. aNaLySING THE CaSES THrOUGH “CULTUraL HyBrIDITy”

I begin my analysis using the concept cultural hybridity not in the order in which I presented the cases in this book, but with the Rainbow Spirit Theology, since it provides a clear and unambiguous example of intentional hybridity. The Rainbow Spirit Elders have consciously, deliberately and intentionally sought to fuse Christian theology with Australian traditions about the rainbow-serpent by identifying the rainbow-serpent with the Creator God. In accordance with the theory of intentional hybridity, Aboriginal Christian leaders in North Queensland have co-opted the traditional symbol of the rainbow-serpent as the Aboriginal expression of the Christian God, the objective of which is to give voice to those who otherwise have little power within the larger society. And again in conformity with the theory, the Elders do this not by rejecting the religion of the oppressors, but by incorporating it into their own indigenous culture and worldview. In this sense, the Rainbow Spirit Theology contests and challenges the power structures that have oppressed indigenous culture. This is made abundantly clear when the Elders repudiate the missionary interpretation of the rainbow-serpent as demonic and insist instead that it is equivalent to the Creator God. In a quite radical affirmation of their own cultural values, as we have seen, the Elders go so far as to describe Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the rainbow-serpent. The intention of the Elders to create a hybrid form of Christianity as a protest against the suppression of indigenous culture is demonstrated by their references to the catalogue of crimes which the white invaders perpetrated against Aboriginal peoples. Although they charge the colonialists with heinous misdeeds bordering on genocide, the Elders do not discard the 147

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religion which is associated with the culture of those who committed the crimes. Rather, they assert their dignity and reclaim their power by declaring the aggressor’s religion their own, not by conforming to how it was presented to them by missionaries, but by exalting their central cultural symbol to the highest position as the Creator, not only of Aboriginal peoples and their land, but of the universe itself. They also elevate their traditional stories to the position of scripture by equating them to the Old Testament, which Christians regard as inspired and as anticipating unequivocally the advent of Jesus Christ. On this reading, Aboriginal stories about the rainbow-serpent and the rituals connected with them can be regarded as equally inspired as any stories recounted in the Hebrew scriptures. In these ways, the Rainbow Spirit Theology accomplishes precisely the aims of intentional hybridity by provocatively challenging what Ackermann (2012: 13) calls “social or political order and identity” so that it “is felt to be most threatening by those responsible for safeguarding the status quo”. As I noted in the interview I conducted in 2009 with David Spanagel, the mission superintendent of the Lutheran Church for northern Queensland, I was told that although the Aboriginal Elders at the consultations at Townsville in 1994 and 1995 wanted to call their movement the Rainbow Serpent Theology, the Lutheran Church would never accede to such terminology.1 In a later interview I held with Spanagel in July 2011, I was told that the Rainbow Spirit Theology remains highly controversial among mainline Lutherans because it challenges their view that Christ came to redeem Aboriginal culture rather than to become assimilated into it.2 From the point of the Rainbow Spirit Elders, their intentional creation of a hybrid religion is seen as liberating them from past oppression and serves as a conscious strategy to foster pride in their cultural traditions. The theory of intentional hybridity is particularly apt at just this point since the tool used by the Elders for implementing the strategy is to re-interpret and claim ownership of the very instrument (in this case the Bible) which was used by the colonialists to oppress them. The case of Mwari in Zimbabwe, by contrast with the intentional hybridity of the Rainbow Spirit Elders, functions much more like organic hybridity. From the Shona perspective, the idea introduced by missionaries that God had always informed the traditional worldview appears to have developed naturally as the people became Christians. This reflects the pragmatic approach to religion apparent in Shona culture, which does not adopt an exclusive attitude towards religious truth, but seeks in a functional manner to resolve particular problems successfully (Cox 2000: 231–3). For example, it is common in Zimbabwe today for people to consult a variety of religious practitioners in response to family misfortunes, such as persistent illnesses or a series of deaths. The Western medical doctor plays a role in diagnosing and treating illness, but so too do traditional healers, each of which may have specialized skills ranging from knowledge of herbal medicines through the ability to use mechanical devices (such as divining sticks) to those who become 148

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possessed of spirits. Prophets and healers associated with African Initiated Churches may be visited in addition to Western doctors and traditional healers, or mainline priests or ministers may be asked to pray for healing for a sick person. These many sources are likely to be consulted by the same person without a sense of contradiction (ibid.: 233–7). What matters is not the dogma supporting the activity of the various healers, but in practice what works. It should be borne in mind as well that the Shona do not interpret causality at just one level, but will always look for multiple explanations. For example, they know very well that mosquitoes transmit malaria, but this does not explain why one individual is infected by the disease within the same community and another is not. Why did a non-malarial bearing mosquito bite one individual but a malarial infected mosquito land on another person? For the traditional Shona, this question cannot be answered strictly by Western ideas of causality (Chavunduka 1986: 29–49). By expanding this commonly held attitude towards life among the Shona to the idea of God, it becomes clear that belief in Mwari as God the Father does not conflict with the ideas that Mwari is the original ancestor, Mwari is a fertility deity or Mwari is a sky god. Mwari can be each of these things or all of them at the same time. The ability of the Shona to adapt to new circumstances and to adopt into their overall worldview practices and beliefs derived from Christianity (or other sources) without contradiction suggests that the transfer of foreign ideas into traditional concepts of Mwari, or other terms associated with fertility or original ancestors, formed part of a process that operated long before the Shona came into direct contact with missionaries and colonial representatives. During the period of the Shona dynasties from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the same pattern of adjusting to new ideas introduced by outside forces was ongoing. The encounter with Christianity and Western colonialism may have taken place on a scale greater than had been experienced previously, but the same pragmatic, functional and non-dogmatic responses would have dominated the relations of the preChristian Shona with neighbouring peoples just as it did after contact had occurred. This way of dealing with change represents a model much in line with Bakhtin’s notion of organic hybridity, where the mixing of cultural ideas occurs naturally and even unconsciously, rather than intentionally. What I have described as organic hybridity among the Shona should be understood as a tendency, rather than as a definitive and inflexible process. Certainly, religious choices were made and intentional strategies adopted, particularly by political activists and indigenous theologians. This is exemplified as we have seen by Canaan Banana, a Christian theologian who radically called for a “re-writing” of the Bible, but who also was a political activist in the struggle for independence and the first President of Zimbabwe. It is clear that Banana deliberately employed a strategy drawing from indigenous African traditions by combining them with Christian ideas to affirm, in his case, a Zimbabwean form of Christianity. By taking ownership of the religion 149

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of the colonialists, Banana sought to transform the Bible into a tool of protest against the colonial regime. Despite the interventions of academics like Banana, on the whole and on the ground, the adoption of Mwari into the place of the Christian God and the association of the Christian God with Mwari have been accomplished much more naturally, or organically, in accordance with the normal pattern operating within Shona society, which is characterized by religious tolerance, non-dogmatic beliefs and practices and a multi-layered way of interpreting and dealing with questions most important to the community (see Platvoet 1993: 29–48). In Alaska, the impact of Christian missions was almost immediate, certainly after the missionary-teachers were sent to all parts of Alaska by the American General Agent for Education in Alaska and Presbyterian missionary, Sheldon Jackson. As demonstrated by studies conducted in the early 1930s by the Stanford educational researchers Anderson and Eells (1935), nearly forty years after Jackson was appointed as the General Agent for Education in 1885, the conversion of Native peoples to Christianity was nearly universal. Under the influence of the United States government, the suppression of indigenous customs, ways of life, economic patterns, housing, dress, myths and religious beliefs was thorough and overwhelming. The native languages were also suppressed, so much so that when I made field trips to the Inupiaq village of Kivalina in the early 1980s, people aged in their thirties and forties were learning for the first time their native language (Cox 1991: 9, 86; 1999: 272–4). Any sign of pre-Christian beliefs were not overtly visible during my visits, since virtually the entire population of around 150 were members of the Episcopal Church, and certainly no practices associated with shamans were evident. The traditional men’s communal house and the location of ritual activity, the qasgiq, had been replaced by the gymnasium of the local high school where social gatherings generally were held. The case of the Yupiit would appear to suggest that no mixing occurred that could be fitted into the categories either of organic or intentional hybridity, but this is only an apparent conclusion which dissipates under closer examination. I have written elsewhere describing my experiences in Kivalina, in which I identify “remnants” of the pre-Christian belief system operating (Cox 1999: 272–80). I cited one example of this by relating how in mid-winter I was walking with the local indigenous sacramental priest of the Episcopal Church at the edge of the village when an amazing display of the Northern Lights occurred. The priest told me not to whistle, since the tongue-like and rapid movements of the light energy, which appeared to be touching the ground, would grab me and take me up to the moon. The priest warned me that if the light does approach me, I should pick up some dog dung that was lying frozen on the top of the ice and throw it at the threatening light. In the preChristian times, the people believed that the shaman often made trips to the moon to battle with spirits or, in one story related by Fienup-Riordan (1994: 307), to copulate with the moon to produce game for the next year’s harvest. 150

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In the traditional worldview, spirits sometimes were attracted by whistling, but they could be repelled by dog dung. That these ideas and related warnings were conveyed to me by a Christian priest suggests that the old beliefs had not died, but had been carried forward in folk traditions without any direct relation to contemporary ritual practices. This might be called a form of organic hybridity, but one that is very weak since the overt expression of the old religious life of the people had either been forgotten or had been disconnected from any living religious expressions. I encountered no overt references to an Inupiaq version of Ellam Yua in my own fieldwork in northern Alaska. Intentional hybridity among the Yupiit can be identified in the cultural revival movement I have described as exemplified in the case of the “Our Way of Making Prayer” Mask Exhibition, which appropriated the Christian practice of prayer by equating it with the rituals and dances associated with Yup’ik masks and the central role of the shaman in traditional society. This transformed Christian “prayer” into an indigenous act by making shamanic séances, which were condemned by the missionaries as “devil worship”, commensurate with prayer, which Christians regard as the principal means of communicating with God. The organizers of the Mask Exhibits were also reaffirming cultural values in full knowledge of the economic advantages that could benefit their communities by appealing to romantic notions that indigenous societies serve as paragons of ecological responsibility and that they were innately peaceful. By using these “primitivist” projections that idealized pre-modern indigenous Yup’ik ways of life, contemporary Yup’ik leaders were able to convert the naivety of outsiders into commercial benefit. Certainly, this was intentional and reflects an overt strategy of opposition to the extension of white benevolence first introduced by the civilizing mission of the American missionaries and teachers. An example of this expression of intentional hybridity is described by Ann Fienup-Riordan (1988: 442–55) in an article which features detailed plans by a Juneau-based filmmaker, David Hunsaker, to produce a full-length film depicting the legend of a culture hero named Apanuugpak, who is associated in oral tradition with bow and arrow warfare on Nelson Island. According to Fienup-Riordan (ibid.: 445), “Apanuugpak is the embodiment of all that is powerful and cunning in a warrior”. His training as a youth was rigorous and tales of his shrewdness and strength are recounted in the tradition. His ability to outwit his opponents is exemplified by the clever undergarment he wore constructed out of mussel shells, which made him invincible to the arrows of those attacking him. Fienup-Riordan notes that recent interest in the stories surrounding Apanuugpak and other oral traditions have been influenced in part from what she calls “new and often commercial interests in … traditional dances, carving, and storytelling” (ibid.). That traditional culture can be converted into profit in a capitalist economic system has resulted “in the process of inventing a new past to meet the situation” (ibid.). 151

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Fienup-Riordan notes that Hunsaker had his own motive in writing the script for the film, which aimed at portraying ancient Yup’ik society as peaceful and opposed to war. At the conclusion of the film, Apanuugpak declares that “weapons are for killing animals, not human beings” (ibid.: 448). The intention of the scriptwriter and the community coincide in this case not over empirical fact (the Yupiit indeed engaged in warfare with their neighbours), but over their response, in Fienup-Riordan’s words (ibid.: 445), to “the distress of the current political situation” and to the possibility that the re-invention of tradition might foster economic gain from outsiders who have romanticized indigenous culture generally as peaceful and as being one with nature. Hunsaker, as an outsider, and members of the community resident on Nelson Island, as insiders, both became complicit in bringing to the screen an imagined Yup’ik past. In Fienup-Riordan’s view, Hunsaker was not “encumbered by the specificity of Yup’ik concepts of space, time or personhood” but responded to the plea of the community “for the severing of a connection with a white man’s world they view as having gone awry” (Fienup-Riordan 1988: 452). This corresponds precisely to what Ackermann (2012: 13) meant when he referred to intentional hybridity as “a contestatory activity”, in this case setting up a direct challenge to the dominant political and economic power structures by taking advantage of naive, idealized conceptions of indigenous ways of life and using them to counteract the very power structures that had suppressed traditional culture. By extension, Fienup-Riordan’s and Kawagley’s descriptions of the ancient belief in Ellam Yua function in the same way: the indigenous community manufactures a traditional notion of a universal consciousness (just like Hunsaker’s filmic depiction of the Yupiit as innately peaceful), expresses it by carrying the Mask Exhibit to centres in the United States, and then uses this constructed idea as a means both of reasserting cultural pride and enhancing commercial interests. In the case of New Zealand, if we accept the hypothesis that Te Whatahoro was using the Io idea as a means of integrating indigenous Māori religion with his understanding of Christianity seen through the lens of Mormon teaching, his strategy was to affirm that the Māori believed in a Creator called Io as their High God in order to undermine the negative depictions of Māori religion spread by most missionaries, and then to contrast this with the positive attitudes displayed in Mormon approaches to traditional culture. After all, Mormons also had to struggle against dominant religious attitudes in America which resulted in persecutions of their new faith (Bowman 2012: 49–95). For Te Whatahoro, this would have at once linked Māori experiences of oppression with Mormon suffering. If Te Whatahoro made the similarity between teachings about Io and Mormon doctrines much more than they actually were, it would have been done with the twin purposes of affirming the value of traditional Māori culture while at the same time advancing the Mormon mission among Māori communities. 152

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My theory that Te Whatahoro used Mormon ideas to uplift ancient Māori religious ideas in the minds of Elsdon Best and S. Percy Smith, while at the same time undermining mainline Christianity, finds support from the Mormon academic and legal expert, Robert Joseph, who charged the colonial government with committing a list of offences against the indigenous population. He claims that “the forcible individualisation of land, property and world views in the Native Land Court disturbed the balance between members of kin groups” (Joseph 2012: 43). He lays major blame for the disruption of Māori culture on Christianity, which he asserts “damaged in many ways the connection between the people and the gods” (ibid.). The combination of colonial interests, Christianity and Western systems of capitalism “destroyed traditional tribal reciprocity economies, the equilibrium between kin, the physical and metaphysical world, the environment and the fundamental obligations to past, present and future generations” (ibid.). Joseph argues that the Mormon Church appealed to the Māori precisely because the attitudes of its missionaries stood in such sharp contrast to those of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in New Zealand. Quoting the historian H. M. Wright, Joseph asserts that Mormon missionaries understood “that the only way it was possible for anyone to influence the Maoris … was to become as ‘Maorified’ as possible” (cited by Joseph, ibid.: 45). Joseph observes that this attitude was exemplified in the comments of the Mormon missionary Oliver Cowdery Dunford, who wrote in 1889 that “we soon became at home with the Maori. We spoke the Maori language, we ate the Maori food, we slept in Maori huts, we slept in Maori beds, we studied Maori traditions … we began to think like Maori, to feel like Maori” (ibid.: 45). When S. Percy Smith published his translation of Te Whatahoro’s Things Celestial as part I of The Lore of the Whare-wānanga in 1913, Te Whatahoro had been working with Mormon missionaries for nearly thirty years, having helped them translate the Book of Mormon into Māori. Subsequently, he had been baptized into the Mormon Church. Over this period of close association with the Mormon Church he would have experienced the positive attitudes displayed by Mormon missionaries to traditional Māori culture and would no doubt have absorbed many of the Mormon doctrines. If I am correct, Te Whatahoro saw in the Mormon Church a way to restore pride in Māori religious traditions precisely by describing the cult of Io in ways that were consistent with Mormon teachings about God and creation. At the same time, by virtue of the fact that the Mormon Church could enter into the dominant culture in ways that traditional Māori were unable to do, he found a footing through which he could influence attitudes in the wider society. The accuracy of his judgement was confirmed by the rapid conversion of many Māoris to Mormonism, so much so that, according to Joseph (2012: 46), by 1901 “there were seventy-nine branches of the Mormon Church in New Zealand”. It is also likely that Te Whatahoro saw in the Polynesian Society a similar avenue as Mormonism for asserting indigenous rights in New Zealand. 153

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In S. Percy Smith and Elsdon Best he found voices that were critical and at times dismissive of mainline missionary attitudes towards the Māori. In his biography of Best, E. W. G. Craig (1964: 168) quotes Best as condemning the “utter narrowness of the average Christian missionary – his contempt for all other forms of belief than his own”. Best was well placed as an ethnologist in the Colonial Museum in Wellington to act as a respected voice who was able to argue forcefully for the claim that the Māori belief in Io was equal to or even superior to the Christian doctrine of creation. This is confirmed in Best’s comment that the missionaries were guilty of spreading an “absurd, and often degrading, dogma” (cited by Craig 1964: 168). Te Whatahoro’s mixing of alleged Māori beliefs in Io with Mormon teachings, conveyed covertly in The Lore of the Whare-wānanga to Smith and Best, represented an extremely astute strategy that conforms precisely to what is meant by intentional hybridity. His plan aimed at making use of the biases of Elsdon Best against traditional Christianity to affirm elevated Māori religious beliefs interpreted through the teachings of the Mormon Church, which itself claimed superiority over established Christian structures by recovering and restoring the original teachings of Christ (Bushman 2008: 4–8). THE INVENTION OF TraDITION aND CULTUraL HyBrIDITy

In the preface to this book, I referred to Eric Hobsbawm’s ([1983] 2012: 1) definition of the invention of a tradition as a process of inculcating “certain values and norms” by implying “continuity with the past”. The intention of this definition is to underscore that the implied continuity with the past is contrived in order to legitimate the values and norms the tradition is intending to implant. In all our cases, the values and norms of indigenous societies have been subjected to intense abuse by dominant outside forces. In response, as illustrated particularly in the instances of the Rainbow Spirit Theology in Australia and by Te Whatahoro in New Zealand, by constructing an imagined line of continuity between the indigenous past and the new order that has been introduced, the God of the oppressor is identified with and located in the very cultures that have been so thoroughly disparaged. In the cases of Zimbabwe and Alaska, with notable exceptions among academics and political activists, on the ground the fusion of the Christian and indigenous gods has been spontaneous and natural. On one level, it would appear that indigenous leaders who have endorsed the idea that localized, kinship groups always believed in a Supreme Being with attributes similar to the Christian God have acquiesced to the Europeans who devalued indigenous religions by comparing them negatively with Christian beliefs. This allegation characterizes indigenous people as meekly conforming to the expectations of the missionaries, as might be paraphrased in the statement: “We are as good as you are because we are like you”. Seen through 154

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the lens of “invention”, this judgement is thoroughly challenged, particularly where attempts to fit deliberately and consciously pre-Christian religious beliefs into theistic categories function as calculated strategies to manufacture the God-idea precisely to legitimate (or re-legitimate) the authoritative tradition of those whose original religious beliefs had been demeaned. These instances correspond to Bhabha’s idea of “mimicry”, which refers to a deliberate act intended to empower the oppressed, who consciously imitate the values and norms of the oppressor, thereby minimizing the differences between the two and redressing the imbalance of power (Bhabha 1994: 88). Organic hybridity, which occurs naturally and largely unintentionally, as Bakhtin (1981: 360) has noted, still has profound effects on cultural change. This was seen in the case of the Shona of Zimbabwe, where Mwari has clearly been invented, but largely through an organic process consistent with the manner the Shona typically appropriate outside forces by making them their own. A similar situation can be attributed to the Yupiit of Alaska, where the Christian God has overtaken traditional ideas associated with personhood (yua), but with little conscious integration of the two. Intentional hybridity, in both Zimbabwe and Alaska, has been limited to the work of academics, social activists and politically sensitive elders, who, rather than embracing the Christian idea of God by rejecting past traditions, have invented, in the case of the Shona, an “African Old Testament”, or among the Yupiit, a universal consciousness as an extension of yua. In both cases, the pre-Christian indigenous religious expressions have been interpreted almost exclusively in terms of remembered authoritative traditions, which have been used by indigenous leaders to reassert cultural and religious values. Factors other than those associated with organic or intentional hybridity can be identified in each of the cases I have presented. A clear motivation of Christian theologians in inventing an indigenous God has been to advance the spread of Christian faith among indigenous peoples. This can be seen unmistakably in the case of New Zealand in the Christian theologies articulated by Michael Shirres, James Irwin and Māori Marsden. In Australia, the aims of non-Aboriginal theologians, like Norman Habel, can be attributed to a sympathetic attitude to indigenous religious perspectives, but always with the aim of interpreting the Christian faith in culturally relevant ways. The same could be said for the motivations of the Alaskan Orthodox theologian, Michael Oleksa and his Roman Catholic counterparts in Alaska and Zimbabwe, who as part of the wider Catholic missionary strategy called “inculturation” introduced indigenous symbols into the liturgies of the Church in both countries. In these senses, the general category “cultural hybridity” does not explain the motivations of theologians, who must be seen as inventing God for purposes aimed at promoting the Christian mission among indigenous peoples. In a like manner, those whose motives were driven by efforts to redress acts of violence and oppression against indigenous peoples, exemplified by 155

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the “Māoriphiles” Elsdon Best and James Irwin in New Zealand, cannot be explained in terms of organic or intentional hybridity. Their ideas are better described as having been generated by ambitions aimed at asserting the presence of refined religious concepts among the traditional Māori to counter the general demeaning attitudes towards indigenous cultures proclaimed by most early missionaries. They invented Io, not directly in the language of Christian theology, but in terms of Western conceptions of what constitutes a “high” religion. In this sense, they fall into a similar category into which I placed Andrew Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt and Mircea Eliade, whose investigations into primordial monotheistic beliefs were theologically inspired and reflected the European intellectual obsession with the origin of religion. The primary difference between the Māoriphiles and the primitive monotheists is that figures like Best, Smith and Irwin were concerned with improving the social and cultural situations of indigenous peoples. Other academic interpretations, as illustrated in the anthropological writings of W. E. H. Stanner and L. R. Hiatt in Australia, do not overtly promote an ideological agenda, but have tended to offer interpretations of Aboriginal culture in empathetic terms that are consistent with the views of indigenous peoples themselves, or at least, if interpreted to them, they would not find offensive. GENEraLIZaTIONS DErIVED FrOm THE CaSE STUDIES

When using a case study approach, a widely accepted methodological assumption is that any specific research topic should help to clarify and promote understanding of similar situations. In other words, a case study adds to our knowledge precisely because it is capable of generalization. With regard to the cases I have outlined in this book, at the most basic level, this would force me to ask if I can now conclude that God has been invented in all indigenous societies. The answer to this is obvious. Since from the outset I have argued that each situation contains its own uniquely applicable historical, social and cultural components, I cannot now make a sweeping statement that the specific instances I have outlined can be applied to all situations where Christianity as a universal religion has met localized, kinshiporientated societies. Each case would need to be explored in its own context. Nonetheless, I can make some general conclusions drawn from my studies of the meeting of the Christian God with pre-contact indigenous religious beliefs that can be applied to further research on this topic. I list these generalizations under the following six points: 1. Each indigenous society must be studied empirically using the tools available to social scientists, including, among others, reviewing relevant historical records, consulting archaeological findings, eliciting remembered oral traditions, conducting interviews, engaging in 156

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

participant observation of currently practised rituals, studying symbols and artistic representations and describing important places where rituals or ceremonies occur. Those studying current and past beliefs held by indigenous peoples need to apply self-reflexive techniques, which are intended to make the researcher as aware as possible of pre-determined theories and how these might influence and even distort the eventual conclusions reached. In phenomenological terminology, this means employing the epoché, or suspending prior judgements so that the actual data can present themselves to the researcher as free as possible from potentially biased and pre-formed opinions (Cox 2010: 49–52). Theological assumptions about how God revealed himself through nature, reason or culture, in other words, assertions made on the basis of a natural theology, need to be clearly stated from the outset of any description of the relationship between Christianity and indigenous religions. Theological statements are non-falsifiable by definition and, although perfectly acceptable as an insider discourse, must not be confused with social scientific research. This means that all claims that God had been at work preparing indigenous peoples to receive the Christian message prior to their ever hearing it proclaimed must be classified as theological interpretations and not asserted as having been derived from factual sources or empirical studies. If ideas of God are found in indigenous societies that are in some ways consistent with the Christian idea of divinity, this needs to be explained scientifically, drawing largely on findings supported, for example, by cognitive scientists of religion and phenomenologists who assert that all humans, because they share common physical and environmental conditions, think basically alike (Cox 2010: 165–70). This scientific assumption, which is supported by empirical investigations, needs to be applied to specific social and cultural situations in order to account for wide variations of belief and practice. In the academic study of religions, all religious communities need to be studied using the same criteria, depending on the methodologies employed, thereby ensuring that scholars do not fall into the error of comparing religions using non-scientific methods, such as those derived from theology, those based on assumptions about the hierarchy of cultures originating from late nineteenth-century evolutionary models, those derived from philosophical ethics or those which uncritically value world or universal cosmologies over localized religious expressions. Theoretical constructs used in the analysis of the data must not be confused with pre-determined notions, nor should they be seen as violating principles associated with self-reflexivity and epoché. Theories are fundamental for making sense of the data, but, as theories, they must 157

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remain accountable to the data. I introduced the theme of this book by referring to the “invention of tradition” model, which I tested against the findings in my case studies and at the conclusion analysed through the concept “cultural hybridity”. Other theories, of course, can be employed drawn from a range of scientific disciplines, but it is important that theories do not so direct the research findings that the conclusions are made before investigations have begun. In this sense, theoretical constructs used in the analysis of research are fully heuristic. When applied to the case studies I have reviewed in this book, these six points indicate the precise factors derived from my findings that are capable of being generalized. In each instance, I have sought to draw on what empirical evidence was available to me. This, of course, was not exhaustive, but I am convinced that it was sufficient to support my conclusion that the idea of a Supreme God in each society I considered was invented for a variety of reasons by those promulgating the idea. My conclusions, since they are testable, can be challenged, amended or reversed, but such contestations of my findings must be made on the basis of empirical research. Throughout the chapters of this book, I have sought to expose the predetermined judgements of those who have promoted the God idea among the societies I have studied, while at the same time making it clear that I am committed to the empirical, non-theological study of religions. I have demonstrated that many of those who supported the coincidence between an indigenous Supreme Being and the Christian God did so for theological reasons, even those writing for a Western audience, such as Andrew Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt and Mircea Eliade. Numerous other instances of theological interpretations of the God idea in indigenous societies have been documented in this study. I have argued that the problem in these cases is not that theological assumptions were employed, but that these assumptions remained hidden and were presented as conclusions based on factual data. As I indicated, my case studies do not rule out the possibility that an ancient belief in a Supreme Being with attributes similar to the Christian God might be discovered within specific indigenous societies other than those I have described. Such a finding, however, cannot be explained scientifically by recourse to theological theories, but must be capable of falsification, as evidenced, for example, in research conducted in the field of the cognitive science of religion (see Pyysiäinen 2003: 9–23). I have shown that the only value judgement acceptable in academic studies of indigenous religions is found in the assertion that indigenous religions must be subjected to the same scholarly standards of fair treatment as are applied to the study of all other religious communities. My general theory regarding the “invention of tradition” was introduced at the outset of this study, not to pre-determine my findings, but to test the idea that God had been invented in the traditions I have outlined in this book. My claim not to have presumed the outcomes of my 158

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research before actually conducting the research is supported by the fact that I subjected my empirical findings at the conclusion of my study to a critical analysis in terms of “cultural hybridity” interpreted through Bakhtin’s distinction between intentional and organic forms of hybridity. ImpLICaTIONS OF THIS STUDy FOr THEOLOGy aND rELIGIOUS STUDIES

One consistent principle which has been upheld by the phenomenology of religion as a methodology is that any scientific interpretation of findings about religious communities must include the perspectives of believers themselves (Cox 2010: 53–5). It is just at this point that a dilemma for the scholar of religion becomes clear, one which exposes the tensions between the academic, scientific study of religion and theology. In this book, by calling theological efforts to make the Christian God compatible with pre-Christian indigenous beliefs an invention, although correct historically and empirically, I risk excluding the believer’s voice from the interpretations I provided with the possible unintended result of undermining nascent cultural revival movements. This position was reinforced to me during an interview I conducted in July 2011 with David Spanagel, the Lutheran missionary leader in northern Queensland, and Victor Joseph, principal of the Wontulp-Bi-Buya Theological College in Cairns, Australia. I outlined to them some of the evidence that the Rainbow Spirit Theology was really an invention and did not correspond to fact. David Spanagel replied, “Then you are saying that the Rainbow Spirit Elders are not Christians”.3 At first I was puzzled by this comment, but then it became clear. To deny the legitimate right of the Rainbow Spirit Elders to find the Christian God in their own traditions is to draw a line of discontinuity between Aboriginal traditions and Christian faith, and play into the hands of those who want to maintain that indigenous cultures everywhere are incommensurate with Christian faith as a way of maintaining the supremacy of Christianity over indigenous religions, further disempowering indigenous communities. I came across a clear example of this recently with respect to New Zealand when I discovered a booklet written by Michael L. Drake entitled Māori Culture in a Christian Worldview (2005). Drake is a former school teacher, and an active Christian worker involved with the Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship (formerly Intervarsity Fellowship) and with the Bays Baptist Church in Auckland. On his website he describes his greatest passion as “making Christ known and the Bible understood in a way that aims to give vitality to everything in life” (Drake 2010). In a chapter of his book entitled “Māori Culture and God”, Drake argues that the postulated pre-Christian Māori Supreme Being Io “is not a god of revelation” (Drake 2005: 21), and contrasts this with what he calls “the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ – a supreme God who can be approached by sinful men, not because he can be manipulated but because he 159

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brings freedom” (ibid.: 22). Clearly, Drake is rigidly delineating Māori beliefs in a Supreme Being from the Christian idea of God, but for entirely different reasons than I have done when I argued that indigenous deities cannot be equated with the Christian conception of God unless firm empirical evidence can be found to support the alleged consistency between the two. Drake provides an example of what Spanagel was warning me against: by casting doubt on the factual basis of claims that the Christian God can be found in indigenous religions, I may inadvertently support those, like Drake, who accuse contemporary Christians who want to synthesize Christian faith with indigenous cultural values of having “lost the fundamentals of the Christian faith – sin, grace and the cross of Christ” (ibid.: 54). My study clearly has operated on a quite different agenda, although my conclusions may coincide with Christians (like Drake) who oppose what they would regard as the syncretistic tendencies of theologians we have met in this study, such as Norman Habel, George Rosendale, Māori Marsden, Michael Shirres, Canaan Banana and Michael Oleksa. One of my aims has been to uphold academic integrity by insisting robustly that all assertions about preChristian religious beliefs must be subjected to close empirical scrutiny. If the results of scientific investigations support the views of certain Christian groups that fiercely oppose fusing Christian with indigenous religious beliefs, we cannot alter our findings, although our interpretations of the data may differ radically. In order to disarm interested parties who deliberately use facts for ideological purposes, academics quite legitimately can expose the presuppositions or uncritical assumptions of those interpreting the data by bringing them into the open. Nonetheless, for sound academic reasons, no matter how contentious the arguments may become, theological debates must always be distinguished from scientific research. Despite my insistence on maintaining an intractable boundary between religious studies and theology, I readily admit that scholars of religion must always be reminded that their findings and interpretations inevitably have social consequences. It is for this reason that another of my aims in this project has been quite openly to advocate for what I regard as a fundamental ethical principle in academic research by maintaining that scholars should fully respect the subjects of their investigation. When this standard is applied to the content of this book, it means that, in their many forms, indigenous religions should be studied as traditions in their own right, and not as a preparation for Christianity or as a base on which all religious beliefs are constructed. If we accord the so-called world religions the dignity of studying their histories, oral or written transmissions, rituals and beliefs as selfcontained phenomena of religion and not as a subset of another tradition, then, on grounds of academic fairness alone, we ought to do the same with traditions whose histories are largely oral and presentational, and whose societies are small-scale and kinship-orientated. 160

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This is exactly what the Ugandan scholar, Okot p’Bitek, with whom I introduced my argument, intended, when he asserted: “The aim of the study of African religions should be to understand the religious beliefs and practices of African peoples, rather than to discover the Christian God in Africa” (p’Bitek 1990: 111). We could make this a more general statement, one which summarizes my overarching objective in this book, by re-wording p’Bitek’s conclusion to read: “The aim of the study of indigenous religions should be to understand the religious beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples, rather than to discover the Western God in indigenous societies.” If I have been true to this maxim throughout this book, by exposing the “invention” of God in indigenous societies, I will have broadened understanding both academically and among the general public of indigenous religions. The implications of this outcome are twofold: within academic circles I will have clearly demarcated religious studies from theology; and in wider society I will have promoted respect for indigenous peoples and, at least indirectly, furthered indigenous rights.

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NOTES

1. THE “GOD CONTrOVErSy” IN prE-CHrISTIaN INDIGENOUS rELIGIONS 1. The Golden Bough underwent numerous editing processes between 1890 and 1915. The third version, published in 1915, consisted of 12 volumes. 2. For an excellent discussion of Frazer’s interpretation of religious development in a particularly anti-Christian way, see Thrower (1999: 101–6). 3. B. Spencer (Spencer & Gillen 1927: 99) defined Churinga as the name for “certain sacred objects which, on penalty of death or very severe punishment, such as blinding by a firestick, are never allowed to be seen by women or uninitiated men”. 4. Further investigations by B. Spencer (Spencer & Gillen 1927: 306) suggest that one use of Alchera means “dream”: “Natives who can speak English … when referring to a man’s Alchera and everything associated with it in the far past mythic times, always call it ‘his dreaming’.” T. G. H. Strehlow (1971: 614) argues that this was a mistranslation of “altjiraŋa ŋambakala”, which literally means “having originated out of altjira” and is an expression used only about the earth-born supernatural beings”. According to Strehlow (ibid.: 614–15), this mistranslation has persisted in popular usage since it “has gained wide currency among white Australians through its sentimentality and its suggestion of mysticism”. 5. John Strehlow (2004: 77) asserts that Baldwin Spencer “was involved in a vigorous campaign of disinformation and concealment for the sole purpose of protecting his and Gillen’s reputations in intellectual circles in England”. 6. Lang (1907: 1–15) made this comment in the introductory essay to a multi-authored book produced by leading scholars of the day as a tribute to E. B. Tylor. Lang’s full statement reads: “The more Animism, the less ‘All Fatherism’, if I may use Mr Howitt’s term for the superior being, such as Baiame, believed in by many tribes in Australia and elsewhere.” 7. This biographical information is obtained from the Anthropos heritage website: www. anthropos.eu/anthropos/heritage/schmidt.php (accessed 17 January 2012). 8. Following Sharpe, my discussion of primitive monotheism in this chapter is not intended to resolve the perplexing problem of the origins of religious beliefs, myths and rituals among human societies, but to bring into the open the prior assumptions of those who promoted the idea of a common belief in a primordial High God. For a lengthy and detailed study of the origins of human mythology, which disputes the competing theories of diffusion and cognitive similarity, see E. J. Michael Witzel’s monumental review of

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what he argues are two basic strands of human mythological thinking, the Laurasian and Godwana mythologies (Witzel 2012). Witzel painstakingly analyses the development of mythology by testing his hypothesis of a common origin of myths in “stories told by early Homo sapiens sapiens or, to use the popular term, to the period of the African Eve who lived some 130,000 years ago” (ibid.: 3). Witzel claims that his study is fully scientific and heuristic, and thus accountable to empirical testing and revision. I am arguing that, if Witzel is to be believed, his approach differs markedly from the ideologically motivated writers I am considering in this chapter. 9. For my discussion of the place of Eliade in the phenomenology of religion, see Cox (2006: 177–87).

2. THE DEBaTE OVEr IO aS THE prE-CHrISTIaN māOrI SUprEmE BEING 1. Marjorie Newton (2012: 59) lists Te Whatahoro’s baptism into the Mormon Church as occurring in November 1884, sixteen years earlier than had been reported previously. 2. A corresponding member refers to a member residing at a distance, who was elected to correspond with the society and aid in the carrying out of its business, but had no role in its actual management. 3. A river port located in the far north of the North Island on the southern part of the Aupuri peninsula in the Northland Region. 4. E. J. Michael Witzel (2012: 128) relates the story of Rangi and Papa to his theory of the wider Laurasian mythological “story line”, which he argues contains various accounts of “Father Heaven and Mother Earth” emerging from sexual union. In the Māori myth, Rangi and Papa are “in permanent sexual union”, a condition which keeps their children in “perpetual darkness”. Witzel suggests that this is “a variation of the motif of primordial darkness before creation”, which he contends is typical of Eurasian mythologies. 5. The word atua often is defined as “gods” or “departmental gods”. James Irwin (1984: 81) refers to atua as “a god or a power”. 6. Irwin (1984: 82–4) defines mana as ‘supernatural power”, tapu as “prohibition, restrictions, sacred” and noa as “common, ordinary, free from tapu”. 7. Pei Te Hurinui Jones (1898–1976) was a noted historian of the Tainui people of the central region of the North Island, recording geneaologies, traditions and priestly lore. 8. Pei Te Hurinui Jones was cited by Michael Shirres in support of the case for Io. By 1943, had collected and transcribed the handwritten writings of his granduncle, Te Hurinui te Wano, who attended a Tanui whare-wānanga between 1867 and 1886. These have just been published under the title He Tuhi Māreu-kura: A Treasury of Sacred Writings (Jones 2013) and contain previously little known references to the Io cult operating among the Tainui people in the Waikato region. Rather than adding support for claims to the antiquity of the Māori belief in Io, these appear to confirm J. Z. Smith’s conclusion that belief in Io came to prominence in conjunction with the King Movement in the 1860s, which was centred in this region. For a brief overview of the King Movement, see Te Ahukaramū (2010).

3. makING mwarI CHrISTIaN: THE CaSE OF THE SHONa OF ZImBaBwE 1. Rozvi is a Portuguese word meaning “destroyer”. 2. Banana refers to “Massasi” as the evening star and “Murombo” as the morning star. In Karhari’s account, the order and spelling are different. Kahari (1986: 117–18) names “Massassi” as the morning star and “Morongo” as the evening star. I have relied on

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3. 4.

5. 6.

Kahari’s original spelling and translation here, but the story as I have summarized it conforms to Banana’s rendition. The contributors were Martin Lehmann-Habeck, Graydon F. Snyder, Roger W. Anderson Jr, James L. Cox, Ephraim C. Mandivenga, Frans J. Verstraelen, Jean C. Lambert and Isabel Mukonyora. The report of the Bible translators, which is entitled, “What Does the Name ‘Mwari’ Mean?” is unpublished. I have derived the content in this chapter from the work of Nicholas M. Creary, who credits Paul Gundani (who at the time was at the University of Zimbabwe) as providing a copy of it for him. Creary (2011: 297) reports that “according to the date of an early draft of this essay the translation project was in progress as of October 1986. As of May 2000, it was still ongoing”. For a phenomenological analysis of a traditional kurova guva ritual, see Cox (2010: 73–90). For field descriptions of kurova guva rituals from various locations in Zimbabwe, see Cox (1998: 233–45). In August 2004, I conducted fieldwork with Professor Tabona Shoko of the University of Zimbabwe near the village of Mberengwa in south-central Zimbabwe. On 12 August, I was invited to an unveiling the tombstone ceremony in memory of the mother who had died at the homestead of a local family. In an interview with the son of the deceased mother, I learned that the Lutheran pastor who was in charge of the unveiling ceremony had at first refused to perform the Christian rite because he had become aware that some members of the family had observed a traditional kurova guva ritual before he had arrived.

4. THE raINBOw-SErpENT IN THE raINBOw SpIrIT THEOLOGy 1. Mrs Parker was a largely untrained, but sympathetic amateur interested in Aboriginal folklore, who saw the Christian God in the peoples among whom she and her husband had settled in the late nineteenth century in the northern part of New South Wales near the Queensland border. It should not go without notice that Mrs Parker’s publication of the stories she collected carried a foreword by Andrew Lang. 2. This same ritual is described by Elkin ([1945] 1993: 128–30) in Aboriginal Men of High Degree, which was first published in 1945 as a result of public lectures he delivered in 1944 in the University of Queensland. 3. This same point was made by Jeremy Beckett in his Foreword to the second edition of Aboriginal Men of High Degree, which was published in 1976. Beckett ([1976] 1993: xvii) observes that Elkin had anticipated Eliade’s work in a number of ways, including Elkin’s description of the medicine-man as one who “has died and come alive again; his entrails have been taken out and replaced; he has been swallowed by the rainbow serpent and regurgitated; magic crystals have been put in his body; he has acquired an animal familiar that dwells within him”. 4. The first volume of Oceania contains three substantial articles by Radcliffe-Brown on “The Social Organization of Australian Tribes” (1930b: 34–63; 1930c: 206–46; 1931: 426–56). 5. The selection of the Rainbow Spirit as the vehicle for conveying a pre-Christian belief in an Aboriginal God was not taken without an awareness, certainly by Norman Habel, of the academic literature that had been written about the rainbow-serpent by anthropologists from the 1920s onward, and that it had played a major part in Mircea Eliade’s interpretation of the High God in his book Australian Religions: An Introduction (1973: 77–80). In my first interview with Habel (21 August 2009, Adelaide College of Divinity), he referred me to numerous publications dealing with Australian religions, including

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

Eliade’s text. As the theological advisor to the Rainbow Spirit Elders, we can assume that this background would have been important in the selection of the symbol for the preChristian God. J. Cox interview with David Spanagel, 9 November 2009, Cooktown, North Queensland, Australia. In the preface to the book, Habel (2007: ix) notes that originally the group had opted for the nomenclature, “Kookaburra Theology”, but this was replaced by “Rainbow Spirit”, since “the Rainbow Spirit was identified as a more profound and universal symbol for an indigenous Aboriginal theology”. The reader is informed on the page opposite the credits that “Milbi Dabaar means ‘good news’ in the Guugu Yimithirr language of Pastor George Rosendale” and that “this Aboriginal language is spoken at Hope Vale community in far north Queensland”. This is a region about 900 kilometres north of Cairns on the Cape York peninsula. J. Cox interview with Norman Habel, 13 July 2011, Adelaide, South Australia.

5. aLaSka: ELLam yUa, THE pErSON OF THE UNIVErSE 1. J. Cox interview with Ann Fienup-Riordan, 20 April 2011, Anchorage, Alaska 2. J. Cox interview with the Rev. Mark Allred, 19 April 2011, Anchorage, Alaska.

6. INVENTION aS CULTUraL HyBrIDITy 1. J. Cox interview with David Spanagel, 9 November 2009, Cooktown, North Queensland, Australia. 2. J. Cox interview with David Spanagel, 6 July 2011, Wontulp-Bi-Buya College, Cairns, Queensland. 3. J. Cox interview with David Spanagel and Victor Joseph 6 July 2011, Wontulp-Bi-Buya College, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

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LIST OF INTErVIEwS J. Cox with Norman Habel, Adelaide College of Divinity, Adelaide, South Australia, 21 August 2009. J. Cox with David Spanagel, Cooktown, North Queensland, Australia, 9 November 2009. J. Cox with the Rev. Mark Allred, Alaska Native Lutheran Church, Anchorage, Alaska, 19 April 2011. J. Cox with Ann Fienup-Riordan, Anchorage, Alaska, 20 April 2011. J. Cox with David Spanagel and Victor Joseph, Wontulp-Bi-Buya College, Cairns, Queensland, 6 July 2011. J. Cox with Norman Habel, Adelaide, South Australia, 13 July 2011.

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INDEx

Note: numbers in brackets preceded by n are note numbers. Ackermann, Andreas 145, 152 Acoli people 1–2 Africa 1–2, 7, 14, 161 central, Pygmies of 24, 25, 26 southern, Bushmen of 25, 26 see also Zimbabwe Alaska 3, 113–15, 150–52 indigenous peoples of 115 see also Yupiit people Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA, 1971) 113–14 Alchera 16, 163(n4) Alice Springs (Australia) 14–16 Allred, Mark 132–3 Altaic horse sacrifice 30–32 ancestors/ancestor spirits 4, 16, 67, 71–3, 74–5, 78–9, 83–6, 99, 127, 139–40 and Christian remembrance/burial service 84–6 tsvimbo and 79–80, 139–40 Anderson, H. Dewey 114, 150 Anglicans 44, 67, 89 animal spirits 118–19 animism 13, 22, 24, 32, 60, 163(n6) anthropology 12, 13, 14–17, 24, 36, 49, 53 British/German compared 17, 20 rainbow-serpent and 90–96 Apanuugpak 151–2 Aranda people 19–20 Arunta/Arrernte people 14–16, 19, 22, 108 Aschwanden, Herbert 79–80, 82–3, 139, 140

Atua/atua 46, 47–8, 65, 164(n5) Australia Aboriginal Christians in 2–3, 89 see also Rainbow Spirit Theology under rainbow-serpent Aboriginal religion in 3, 4 decline of 15–16, 17 Engwura ceremonies of 14–15 ethnographic approach to 17–21 evolutionary theory and 13–17 and primitive monotheism debate 21–3, 25, 26–7 Supreme Being in 16, 20 see also rainbow-serpent Lutheran mission in 19, 148 authority 5, 6, 9 Bai Ülgan 31–2 Baiame 21–2, 26 Bakhtin, Mikhail 144, 146, 155, 159 Banana, Canaan 75–81, 106, 149–50, 160 Beach, D. N. 69–70, 73, 140 Berndt, R. M. 98–9, 141 Best, Elsdon 35–6, 43, 44, 46, 48–9, 50, 51, 53, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66, 139 at Colonial Museum 59–60 and Te Whatahoro 58–61, 138, 153, 154 Bhabha, Honi 145–6, 155 Bladder Festival 117, 118, 121–2, 128 Bora ceremony 91–2 Bourdillon, Michael 69, 71, 72, 73 Buck, Peter see Te Rangi Hiroa

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Burch, Edwin 115, 116 Bushman, Richard Lyman 61, 62 Canada 114, 115, 116 Catholic Church/Catholics 11, 24, 64, 89, 94–5 Mwari and 67, 75, 83, 155 Yupiit people and 124, 127, 129, 135, 155 Christmas 130, 143 colonialism 3, 7, 12, 40, 42, 55, 56 and cultural hybridity 144, 145–6, 148, 149–50, 153, 154–5 community 5, 6, 77, 78–9, 140 Corowa, Jasmine 100, 101 Craig, E. W. G. 57, 61, 154 Creary, Nicholas 67, 81–2, 83, 165(n4) creation myths/creator God 1–2, 62, 63, 75–6 as emanations 40–41, 51 see also Raven; and see under Māori people; rainbow-serpent cultural hybridity 9, 144–56 cases analysed through 147–54 in language 144–5 and syncretism 146–8 tradition and 154–6 Daneel, M. L. 73, 74 Darwinism see evolutionary theory Davis, C. O. 49, 51, 57, 139 death/burial 49, 55, 84–86 degeneration theories 11, 12, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32–3, 60, 137 divination see hakata Drake, Michael L. 159–60 Edwards, William 107, 109–10 Eells, Walter Crosby 114, 150 Eliade, Mircea 11, 26–33, 29–30, 137, 143, 156, 158, 165–6(nn3, 5) degeneration theory of 28, 29, 30, 32–3 and Lang/Schmidt 27–30, 32 on shamanism 30–32, 33–4, 125, 128–9 Elkin, A. P. 90–91, 92–4, 95, 98, 99, 102, 104, 141, 165(n2) Ellam Iinga 123–4, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 142–3 Ellam Yua 3, 114, 116, 117, 119–20, 121, 142–3, 152 as Christian God 123, 124, 127, 128, 133, 142, 143 Logos and 131, 134

178

as watcher of the universe 122–3 Yup’ik accounts of 123–7 Yup’ik identity and 134 Engwura ceremonies 14–15, 16 Epiphany 130, 143 esoteric knowledge 37, 43, 44, 48 ethnography 2, 14–15, 23–4, 35, 36, 40, 91 ethnology 12, 14, 17–18, 20, 24–5, 59 Eucharist 14, 128 evolutionary theory 13–17, 18 opponents of 17, 20, 59, 60–61 and primitive monotheism 21–6, 28, 59 survivals in 14 fertility rituals 74, 78, 80, 82–3, 87, 93, 122, 125, 139–40, 141, 151 Fienup-Riordan, Ann 114, 115–16, 120–24, 125, 127–8, 129, 132, 134–5, 142–3, 150–52 Frazer, J. G. 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 28, 33 Genesis 11, 24, 25, 33, 53, 56, 100, 101, 103, 104, 141 Gillen, F. J. 14–16, 19 Gudgeon, Walter 54, 55 Gundani, Paul 84–5, 165(n4) Habel, Norman 89, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108, 141, 155, 160, 165–6(n5, 7) hakata 76, 78, 79, 140, 148–9 Hammer, Olav 7–8 Hammond, T. G. 36, 49 Hare Hongi (Henry Matthew Stowell) 54, 55–6 Hartmann, J. A. H. 114 Hiatt, L. R. 22, 23, 24, 94–5, 96, 97, 99, 102–3, 107, 108, 111, 141, 142, 156 history of religion 12, 33 Hobsbawm, Eric 6–7, 154 Holman, Jeffrey Paparoa 36, 37, 40, 44, 45, 52–3, 59, 60, 64, 138, 139 Horn Expedition (1894) 14, 16–17 Howitt, A. W. 21, 163(n6) Hunsaker, David 151–2 inculturation 86–7 indigenous religions characteristics of 3–4 Christianity/“world religions” privileged over 3 generalized guidance for research on 156–61

index

indigenous rights 114, 153, 161 initiation ceremonies 14, 16, 91–2, 94, 97–8, 100 Inuit people 114, 115 Inupiaq people 115, 132–3 Io 12, 35–66, 138 as ancient God 43 and Atua/atua see Atua/atua as creator God/first cause 45–8, 51, 52, 53, 56 Elsdon Best and 36–41 emanations of 40–41 intermediaries used by 39 as mistranslation of “muscular twitches” 54, 139 as moral God 39 as pre-Christian God 35, 36, 38–9, 40–41, 44–61 critique of 53–61, 138–9, 159–60 evidence of 48–51 modern acceptance of 51–3 recent scholarship on 44–8 and Rangi/Papa 39, 46, 49, 52, 53–4, 55 syncretistic view of 58, 59, 63 Te Whatahoro and see Te Whatahoro, Hoani twelve characteristics of 38 use of term 48 Irwin, James 49–50, 51–2, 58, 64–5, 138, 139, 155 Jackson, Sheldon 113, 118, 120, 131, 150 Jesuits 11, 67, 83, 128 Jesus 32, 33, 34, 80–81, 140, 159–60 Mormonism and 62 rainbow-serpent and 105–6 Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 51, 164(nn7, 8) Joseph, Robert 61, 153, 159 Judaism 4, 7 Jury, J. A. see Te Whatahoro, Hoani Kahari, George 77–9, 81, 164–5(n2) Kahungunu people 51, 52 karakia 48, 50, 51 Kawagley, Angayuqaq Oscar 114, 115, 116–20, 134, 152 Kelek ritual 126–7 Kenny, Anna 15, 17, 19, 20 King, Michael 45, 52 King Movement 59, 164(n8) kinship 4, 5, 70, 74, 80, 101, 111, 154, 156, 160

Kodiak Island people 128–9 Korekore people 69, 71, 72 Kunmanggur 95, 96, 109, 110 kurova guva ritual 84–5, 87, 165(n5) Lan, David 72, 73, 74 Lang, Andrew 11, 20, 21–3, 26, 27–30, 32, 33, 36, 58, 137, 158, 163(n6), 165(n1) language 18, 19, 81–3 and cultural hybridity 144–5 Lewis, John R. 7–8 liberation theology 75, 79–80 lion spirits (Mhondoro) 71–2, 73 location and indigenous religion 4, 49 Logos/logos 129, 131, 134 Lutherans 16–17, 19, 89, 99, 132–3, 148, 165(n6) magic 13, 25, 29, 32 mana 45, 47, 49, 164(n6) Māori people 2, 3, 34, 138 Christian converts 56, 57, 65 and colonialism 40, 42, 55, 56, 58 creation myths of 38–9, 42, 45–8, 49, 51–2, 54, 55, 59, 164(n4) and cultural hybridity 152–4, 156 death/judgement and 49, 55 as dying/threatened culture 36, 43, 57, 59 esoteric knowledge and 37, 43, 44, 48 folklore/customs of 39–40, 45 karakia incantations 48, 50, 51 and mana/tapu 37, 45, 47, 49, 164(n6) missionary influence on 57–8, 60 Mormons and 37, 61–3, 138, 153, 154 and Pākehā (non-Māoris) 35, 65–6 priest class (tohunga) 37, 44, 50, 57 prophet/protest movements 59, 164(n8) and realm of the dead (Hine-nui-o-te-po) 49 romanticization of 59 shamanism and 40 Supreme Being of see Io translations of texts of 35, 41, 42–4, 48, 50, 52, 53–4, 55, 56 whare-wānanga of 37, 43, 44, 48, 50, 56, 60, 61, 63, 138 Marsden, Māori 44–6, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 64, 138, 155, 160 mask rituals 113, 118, 119–20, 124–6, 129, 132, 134, 142, 151 Mass 85, 128 Matangakugara 79–80

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medicine-men 93–4, 109, 165(n3) Mhondoro 71–2, 73 missionaries 1–2, 3, 16, 17–21, 33, 37, 57, 94–5, 103 critics of 12, 17, 20 and cultural hybridity 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154–5 Mwari and 67, 77, 87 Presbyterian 107, 113, 150 and primitive monotheism 21–2, 25, 26 SVD 23–4 monotheism 11–12 primitive see primitive monotheism privileging of 13, 16 morality 26, 38 Mormon Church 6, 7, 37, 61–3, 138, 153 Morongo 76, 77–8 Mother-Goddess 97–9 Müller, F. Max 18, 21, 29, 33 Murinbata people 94–6, 109, 110–11, 142 Mwari 2, 67–88, 139–40 as Christian God 75, 75–88 ancestors and 83–6, 87 Canaan Banana and 75–81, 106, 149–50 Catholic Church and 67, 75, 83–7 denominations recognizing 67–8 opposition to 83 Shona language and 81–3 as creator God 75–81, 140 and cultural hybridity 148–9, 155 in traditional culture 71–3 as fertility deity 74–5, 87, 139–40 shrines to 72–3, 74 Mwedzi myth 75–6, 77–81 mythology 18, 23, 29–30, 33, 49–50, 76–7, 95 see also creation myths/creator God Nelson, E. W. 118–19 Neolithic people 37, 43 Nepia Pohuhu 42, 50, 57, 58 “new age” movements 6, 7 New Zealand see Māori people Ngata, Apirana 50, 51, 53 Ngati Kahungunu tribe 37, 52, 54–5, 139 Nguni people 69, 70 North America 6, 25, 26 see also Alaska Oleksa, Michael 128–31, 133, 134, 143, 155, 160

180

oral traditions 30, 43, 49, 50, 51, 68, 87, 95, 113, 118, 129, 138, 143–4, 151, 156, 160 Orthodox Church 128, 129–31 Oswalt, Wendell 115, 116, 126 Pacific Islands 23, 61 Papa 39, 46, 49, 52, 53–4, 55, 164(n4) Parker, Katie Langloh 92, 165(n1) Paul John (Yup’ik elder) 124, 125, 127, 134 p’Bitek, Okot 1–2, 3, 9 Polynesian societies 2, 35, 44, 53 see also Māori people Polynesian Society 37, 40, 42, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 138, 153 polytheism 24, 32, 60 Posselt, F. W. T. 82–3 praeparatio evangelica 28, 111 prayer 43, 48, 50, 51, 54, 124, 127, 132, 151 Presbyterians 107, 113, 150 primitive monotheism 2, 11–12, 19, 21–33, 59, 60, 163–4(n8) Eliade and 26–33 and evolutionary theory 21–6, 28 global distribution of 25, 26 as precursor to Christianity 24, 28, 111 science and 23–6 theology and 23 witness and 23, 27–8 Protestants 11, 67, 84, 114, 120, 131–3 comity strategy of 113 Lutherans 16–17, 19, 89, 99, 132–3 purification rites 45, 84–5 Pygmies 24, 25, 26 qasgiq 118, 119, 122, 128, 131, 133 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 90–92, 94, 141, 165(n4) rainbow-serpent 3, 89–111 anthropological research on 90–96 and Bora ceremony 91–2 as creator God 100, 102–3, 104, 106–7, 108, 110 as fertility/bisexual deity 89, 93, 97–9, 109, 141–2 and initiation rituals 94, 97–8, 100 and Rainbow Spirit Theology 89–90, 99–110, 141, 142, 159 cultural hybridity and 147–8, 154, 156 Jesus and 105–6, 147 as theological invention 106–10 rock paintings of 91, 92–3, 109, 141

index

Ranger, Terence 6–7, 72 Rangi 39, 46, 49, 52, 53–4, 55, 164(n4) Raven creation story 118–19, 129 Reilly, Michael J. 52–3, 64 religion defined 4–5 indigenous see indigenous religions origins of 13, 18, 156, 163(n8) religious studies 3, 9, 36 revelation 12, 28, 61–2, 63, 64, 106 Richartz, Francis 67, 83 rituals 3, 13, 14, 48, 84 see also fertility rituals; initiation ceremonies; sacrifice Rosendale, George 99, 100, 102–3, 104, 108, 109, 141, 142, 160, 166(n8) Royal, Charles (Te Ahukaramū) 44 Rozvi people 70, 72, 73, 74 Russia see Orthodox Church sacrifice 13, 14, 30–32 Schmidt, Wilhelm 11, 20, 23–6, 33, 137, 156, 158 and Eliade 27–30, 31, 32 Selaviq (“Starring”) 130–31, 143 shamanism 6, 30–32, 33–4, 40, 94, 150–51 see also under Yupiit people Sharpe, Eric 13, 18, 23, 26, 163(n8) Shirres, Michael 46–7, 50–51, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 138, 139, 155, 160, 164(n8) Shona people 2, 70–75 cultural hybridity and 148–50, 155 ethnic groups comprising 69 harvest festival of 78–9 kurova guva ritual 84, 87 Mwari and see Mwari names for God used by 71 pre-colonial 71–2 sin and 76 spirit world of 71–3, 74, 78–9 Siberian cultures 30–32 Simpson, Jane 11–12, 34, 35–6, 51–2, 58–9, 60, 65, 138 sky gods 26, 27–8, 30–32, 73, 74 Smith, Jonathan Z. 35, 55–8, 63, 138, 139, 164(n8) Smith, Joseph 61–2 Smith, S. Percy 35, 36, 41–4, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57, 64, 66 and Te Whatahoro 58–61, 63, 138, 153, 154 Society of Jesus see Jesuits

soul 13, 40 Spanagel, David 99, 148, 1259 Spencer, Baldwin 14–17, 18, 19, 28, 163(nn4, 5) Spencer, Herbert 13, 14, 20, 28, 33, 137 Spierenburg, Marja 72, 73 spirit 13, 63, 134 spirit mediums 68, 72, 73, 139–40 Stanner, W. E. H. 90, 94–6, 98, 109, 110–11, 141, 142, 156 “Starring” (Selaviq) 130–31, 143 Stowell, Henry Matthew see Hare Hongi Strehlow, Carl 16–21, 137 Strehlow, John 19, 163(n5) Strehlow, T. G. H. 14, 17, 19–20, 108, 163(n4) syncretism 58, 59, 63, 147–8 tapu 37, 45, 47, 49, 164(n6) Tate, Henare 47–8, 65 Te Matorohanga 42, 50, 54, 57, 58 Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck) 35, 53–5, 56, 58, 138, 139 Te Whatahoro, Hoani (J. A. Jury) 35, 37, 39, 40, 48, 50, 53, 55 and cultural hybridity 152–4 importance of 41, 42–3, 49, 52, 57 as Mormon convert 57, 59, 61–6, 154, 164(n1) unreliability of 57, 58–61, 64, 138–139 Tengere Kaira Kan 31–2 theology 4, 8, 23, 33, 83–7 of inculturation 86–7 Mormon 61–2, 63 Rainbow Spirit see Rainbow Spirit Theology and religious studies 3, 36 Tiwai Paraone 54, 55, 56 totemism 16, 20, 93 Tower of Babel 11, 25 tradition 6–8, 9, 158–9 and cultural hybridity 154–6 tsvimbo 79–80, 139–40 Tūhoe people 39–40, 48, 60 Tutakangahau 39–40, 59 Tylor, E. B. 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 26, 28, 137 Warner, W. Lloyd 97, 141–2 whare-wānanga 37, 43, 44, 48, 50, 56, 60, 61, 63, 138 White, John 48, 53–4, 57, 139 wondjina/Wandjina 92–93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 102–3, 104, 108, 109, 110, 141–2

181

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YHVH (Yave) 67, 81, 82, 83, 106 Young, Robert 144, 146 Yupiit people 3, 114–35 Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley and 114, 115, 116–20, 134 Christianity and 120, 124, 127–33 Catholic Church 124, 127, 129, 135 Orthodox 128, 129–30 Protestant/Lutheran 131–3 “Starring”/Selaviq and 130–31, 143 and cultural hybridity 150–52, 155 Ellam Yua and see Ellam Yua mask rituals of see mask rituals missionaries and 114, 118, 120

182

qasgiq and 118, 119, 122, 128, 131, 133 Raven and 118–19, 129 rituals/festivals of 117, 118 Bladder Festival 117, 118, 121–2, 128 Christian interpretation of 127–8 Kelek 126–7 Messenger Feast 130–31, 143 shamanism of 113, 114, 118, 119–20, 122, 126, 129 three realms of 117–18, 119 Zimbabwe 2, 3 pre-colonial/colonial history of 69–70 see also Shona people