The arrival of Europeans in Australia from 1788 was catastrophic for the continent’s Aboriginal peoples as they soon found it brought disease, slavery and land seizure. Yet the settlers also carried the gospel and the result was a number of remarkable native Christians. The most notable of these was the extraordinary David Unaipon, a man who, in difficult times, played a key role in finding a way forward for his people.
Unaipon was born in 1872 in southern Australia to the Ngarrindjeri people. His father had been an early convert to Christ and was now an evangelist. The young Unaipon grew up and lived with two identities that might have conflicted: that of being both an Aboriginal Australian and a Christian. As a child Unaipon showed a passion for learning, acquiring English, Greek and Latin, studying music and showing an inquiring scientific mind. He was to say that the greatest books he ever read were the Bible and Newton’s Laws of Physics. In his early teens Unaipon became a servant to a prominent Christian politician who encouraged his many interests. Ultimately seeking betterment, he went to Adelaide but, frustrated by racial prejudice, returned home.
Now married, Unaipon found work with a charity, The Aborigines’ Friends’ Association, dedicated to the well-being of the Aboriginal peoples. For fifty years he worked as a speaker and promoter for that organisation, preaching and teaching across Australia. Unaipon, who would preach to every race, was always faithful to the Bible, but would illustrate his sermons with imagery and stories from his Aboriginal culture.
From 1924 Unaipon became the first Aboriginal Australian to be published in English, writing newspaper articles as well as booklets of Aboriginal stories in a classical style that reflected his love of Milton and Bunyan. Collecting some of the beliefs and stories of his ancestors, he produced a manuscript entitled Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals which, mysteriously, was published in an edited form under the name of a European doctor without any reference to him. In 2001 the book was republished in its original form, giving Unaipon credit as author.
Unaipon, who devoured science journals, was also an inventor. One of his innovations was an improved hand tool for shearing sheep; the basic form is still used today. Contemplating how the boomerang flew in the air, he envisaged the idea of a helicopter. However, prejudice resulted in him receiving inadequate support and Unaipon made very little from his inventions.
Increasingly well known in Australian society, Unaipon became involved in movements to better the conditions of the native peoples. A gracious, tolerant and well-spoken man, he soon became something of a spokesperson and advocate with the government for Aboriginal affairs, where he strongly recommended more enlightened policies for a race who still lacked most legal rights. His was not an easy role. He was criticised in some white communities for promoting the Aboriginal people but, at the same time, found himself accused by some of his own people for not being assertive enough in his demands. Unaipon’s concern for the downtrodden went beyond his own people and he spoke up for poorer white Australians.
In 1953 one of the first acts of the new queen, Elizabeth, was to award Unaipon the Coronation Medal. A few years later he stopped travelling and, something of a national treasure, returned home to contemplate his inventions. Unaipon died in 1967, a year in which Aboriginal Australians were granted citizenship, an action in part at least due to his efforts. One subsequent honour would probably have amused a man who for most of his life was penniless: in 2006 his image was used on the Australian $50 note.
David Unaipon was a man who found himself living in a rapidly changing world. I think of him as bearing testimony to much of value.
First, Unaipon was a testimony to human equality. By the 20th century the biblical view that all men and women were made in the image of God had become seriously threatened by ‘Social Darwinism’, in which the various human races were seen as being at different evolutionary levels. Such views suggested that it was best if the ‘more primitive’ races died out or were eliminated, a view that in Europe led to the Holocaust. All such views considered Aboriginal Australians as primitive and even subhuman. Unaipon, with his intelligence, ingenuity, fluency in languages and ability to quote Milton and play Bach, was unarguable disproof of any such justification for racism.
Second, Unaipon was a testimony to his culture. Even those who believed that the Aboriginal peoples should survive, often felt that the best thing was that their culture and traditions were forgotten. Not so David Unaipon. Without ever compromising his Christian faith, he retained a deep loyalty and affection for the threatened world of his ancestors. With typical clarity he saw that while it was both essential and inevitable that the Aboriginal peoples entered the modern world, that transition needed to be in a way in which their identity and heritage were valued and protected.
Third, Unaipon was a testimony to grace. He endured prejudice and pressure; he was once arrested in Adelaide for ‘vagrancy’ for no other reason than that the arresting policeman had ‘never seen an Aborigine in a suit’. His gentle advocacy for Aboriginal rights brought him enemies but he resisted the temptation to be angry. He commented powerfully that ‘in Christ Jesus colour and racial distinctions disappear’.
Finally, Unaipon was a testimony to the gospel. In his long life David Unaipon was many things: a writer, inventor, musician, social reformer and political advocate. Yet above all these he was always a preacher and someone who would share the gospel with anybody and everybody, regardless of their colour.
Let me leave you with one of his preacher’s comments: ‘Look at me, and you will see what the Bible can do.’ Indeed!
J.John
Reverend Canon
