Aboriginal Quotes - page 3
Man's tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence. . . . It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam's fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present-namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,' and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.' Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory' of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.
Leslie Weatherhead
Father Hermanns is particularly angry with a publication titled The Adivasis - So-Called by G.S. Ghurye, the great social scientist who had mapped the nasal indexes and skull indexes of all the communities in India. Speaking with authority, Ghurye rejects the motivated notion of "adivasi”: as the article's title eloquently says, the so-called adivasis are not more adivasi than the targeted non- adivasis. Nearly all Indians are sons of the soil, and no one in India has any more right to call himself a true native than the next man. The pure race is a myth, a myth that has become frowned upon thanks to Hitler's terrible use of this myth. But in India, inter- ested quarters continue to use this myth of "racial integrity”. Father Hermanns calls it an "aboriginal claim”, though it is in fact a West- ern notion attributed and taught to the tribals by the missionaries, because this myth has been serving them so well for over a century now.
Koenraad Elst
...In the Aboriginal world we give way to all emotions. In the ‘British', the present white generation of Australian people have been told that to cry is weakness, and if a ten year old boy gets up and cries they say, My goodness! But in the Aboriginal world, to cry is a beautiful thing. To us it's compassion...
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
