Book review of Anaditj by Rev Dr (Deacon) Denise Champion

 

Anaditj by Aunty Rev (Deacon) Dr Denise Champion, © 2021

Follow the road your ancestors took

Aunty Denise Champion, a Deacon in the Uniting Church in Australia, is a proud Adnyamathanha woman from the Finders Ranges in South Australia, and the Theologian in Residence at Uniting College in Adelaide. In her new book, Anaditj, Aunty Denise  speaks of a life principle for Adnyamathanha Peoples, ‘a state of being’.

A literal English translation of the meaning of Anaditj is ‘the way things are’. However, as Aunty unpacks this, the reader will discover far deeper and profound meanings. Speaking of the “dark spaces between the stars”, Aunty describes “Dark Emu”, from which Bruce Pascoe took the title of his book about the way First Nations Peoples cared for the land, cultivated it and harvested it; Adnyamathanha Peoples look at the night sky and see the dark spaces between the constellations.

How do you read the Scriptures? Aunty Denise begins to open the readers mind to fresh understandings. “Jesus… a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek”. Could this be the “priesthood of all Creation”? She challenges the Western constructs and invites the reader to open themselves to Adnyamathanha ancient wisdom. 

Speaking of restoring the dignity of the Gospel, Aunty says: “What is the Gospel for us as indigenous people? When my culture and language is affirmed - that is Good News.” Speaking of the question Jesus asked, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Aunty answers, “Nina urtyu Ngalakanha Muda. You are the Christ. Anaditj. You are Big History.” Aunty Denise points the reader to the wisdom of the Cosmic Christ – Big History!

In Chapter 3, Aunty Denise says: “I don’t like the concept of being in or out, the concept of being lost or found, which has shaped the institutional structure of the church.” Aunty prefers to say: “I am urupaku, a follower of Jesus.” She then unpacks these statements and speaks of Christ as “Ngalakanha Muda”, talking of the love, care and protection of God. Aunty speaks about contemporary issues the church is challenged by and the Adnyamathanha wisdom which responds

Anaditj – “The Lord said: My people, when you stood at the crossroads, I told you, follow the road your ancestors took, and you will find peace.” (Jeremiah 6:16, NRSV). First Nations Peoples find peace in the pathway of the ancestors. Aunty Denise tells how she has discovered Christ in Adnyamathanha creation stories and cosmology, in this to “grasp the deeper meaning when Muda are understood as Ngalakanha Muda – wisdom.”

The last chapter entitled ‘Standing at the Crossroads’ explores the moment in time Australia and First Nations Peoples are at. What of colonisation, racism, self determination and United Nations Rights of Indigenous Peoples – it’s time says Aunty Denise for ‘Reformation’!

This powerful book is a blend of wonderful Adnyamathanha story-telling and wisdom, challenging a fresh thinking from this Adnyamathanha Theologian, and a call for justice for First Nations Peoples within the Church and the nation.

The last word from Aunty Denise: “I don’t think God labels people. Does he? Does she? God doesn’t label anybody! Once you recognise this it brings a lot of freedom to determine for ourselves who we are.”

“In the beginning Arrawatanha (God) created, and nobody’s got a monopoly on that. That’s our identity. Anaditj.”

(This review written by Stuart McMillan, Arraru man, National Consultant: Covenanting, Uniting Church in Australia)

Congratulations, Aunty Denise Champion

On 20th June, 2015, Aunty Denise Champion was ordained as a Deacon in the Uniting Church in Australia, the first Aboriginal woman from any denomination ordained in South Australia. Aunty Denise has served for many years in the church - in congregations, and in the Synod, and with the UAICC (Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress) and now continues her ministry in Port Augusta in regional South Australia. Congratulations, Denise, and blessings for your ministry.
Denise was presented with a specially designed stole reflecting her Aboriginal culture, and the colours of the Flinders Ranges, home of the Adnyamathanha people where Denise regularly leads Pilgrimages (read an account of one pilgrimage here).

Denise and Moderator Dr Deidre Palmer

Adnyamathanha pilgrimage

Look, listen, there are no straight lines....

Sophie Lizares

In February 2015, Deacon candidate Sophie Lizares and Aboriginal Pastor Denise Champion, also a candidate for Ministry of Deacon in the Uniting Church in Australia, shared time together in the Flinders Ranges, about 5 hours north of Adelaide in South Australia.

This is Sophie's story:
“You asked about how to approach Aboriginal people,” Aunty Denise Champion picks up our conversation from several days ago. “This is how,” she says as together we step onto a path leading  to a low circular monument.
Nothing would have kept me from walking directly to the sinuous rust stone carving that mimicked the two snakes of Ikara (Wilpena Pound), the vast geological monument that surrounds us.  There were no barriers, no instructions, no protocols, just a stone marker at the mouth of the path announcing, “Ngarlparlaru yata”.



“This is our country,” Denise translates as we walk the two-toned gravel walk that wound its way to the centre. In the Aboriginal world, nothing is direct, the subtleties confound.
I am saved by the saying ‘relationship before stories before questions’, a way so counter-intuitive to the journalist in me. At the brown centre of the monument, however, on a grim grid, no words were minced:
“We lost our traditional way of life to pastoralism and our land to pastoralism–and adapted to an alien culture, a new language and religion.”
“My dad couldn’t vote, he was under the Dog Act. I felt so bad.”
“If the missionaries heard us kids speaking our language, they would refuse to sell our mother groceries at the store. She would have to wait for the next week  or travel to the next town to buy flour and sugar.”
“After years of pastoral settlement, our traditional life has disappeared.”

Embedded on the ground are crosses, horseshoes, and a length of barbed wire that cuts across. Even for me, it is painful, the line between prison and freedom. For all the Adnyamathanha place names that Aunty Denise had earlier asked us to remember – Vandha Urthanha, Yura Bila, Ngurri Madlanha – she gives us no name for this memorial. She refers to it as the ‘National Park Rangers Quarters' - in English.

Aunty Denise, a Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress elder, is leading a pilgrimage of about 30 persons on Adnyamathanha country, 430kms north of Adelaide. There are whitefellas and blackfellas, but when one looks closely, the lines blur. There is Rhanee whose mother is Aboriginal and whose father came from Indian, Malay and Anglo lines. With her is her American-born husband, who traces his genealogy to Costa Rica and to Africans who were taken there. Their children are dusky blonde beauties. There are the three brothers from the Taize  Community, one French, another German, another Australian, their own ‘Pilgrimage of Trust’ intersecting with us: Anglo-Australian, German-Australian, Italian, French, Liberian and Filipino.

Denise Champion and the Aboriginal Congress

 

Denise Champion (standing, centre, in blue/black top) is a Deacon candidate in the Uniting Church in Australia, and provides significant leadership with the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) in South Australia. Currently she is working on 'A Destiny Together', a week of prayer and fasting with a focus on justice for First Peoples. It is an initiative of the National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia.

The week, set down for 17-23 March 2014, will include a public prayer vigil outside Parliament House in Canberra, to be held on Tuesday 18 March and to be led by the UAICC Chairperson and the Uniting Church President. It is hoped that many Uniting Church members will come to Canberra to be a part of this historic public witness to justice and reconciliation.

The heart of the week will be a nationwide movement of Uniting Church individuals, small groups and congregations exercising a daily practice of prayer and fasting.