New Age Aboriginal

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Peter Sutton (2010) opens his article, Aboriginal Spirituality in a New Age, by discussing the spiritual duality of a Wik man of Cape York Peninsula, Silas Wolmby. He describes Wolmby as a Presbyterian Reverend who has “no trouble with this combination of Wik and Christian post-mortem cosmologies” easily manages to blend his Christian beliefs with those of his traditional indigenous upbringing. He goes on to describe the difference between the two belief systems, stating that “Aboriginal religious thought is performative rather than meditative…relational more than privatistic,…concerned with similarities, with the integration of oppositions, and with revelatory semiotic experiences of relationships between entities, especially those of representation and transformation.” However Sutton accepts that it is possible for Wolmby to achieve this duality.

Alternatively, when discussing the disparages between New Age beliefs and Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, Sutton outlines elements that are indicative of New Age such as voluntarism, optimism, individualism, power, naturalism, conservationism, feminism and more, and concludes “a profound incompatibility between Aboriginal thought and New Age thought”. He surmises that this makes “it unlikely that people of a classical cultural orientation would be susceptible to New Age influences except perhaps superficially”, but concedes that “an urban-style individualism and eclecticism” developed by some Aboriginal people has made some “receptive to New Age or similarly exotic influences on a deeper level”.

If Silas Wolmby can blend his traditional Aboriginal beliefs with seemingly incompatible Christianity, then as long as New Age beliefs are not mistaken for Aboriginal beliefs and Aboriginal beliefs are preserved without distortion, it should be possible for others to blend their traditional beliefs with that of New Age. 

References

Sutton, Peter, “Aboriginal Spirituality in a New Age,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2010): 79-89.