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Accepted Paper:

Baptism of Fire  
Kristina Everett (Macquarie University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper describes the tactical use of 'things' (de Certeau) when they are employed in the 'new' religious practices of a group of urban Aboriginal people.

Paper long abstract:

Christianity and its material symbols and manifestations including churches and cemeteries have been subjected to radical transformations through the resistant and accommodating practices of those to which it was originally 'applied' as many authors including Comaroff and Comaroff (1991) in Africa, Hill (1988) in South America and Bird Rose (1994) in Australia report. It has, in short, been an important agent in transforming colonised subjects and has been itself transformed through the agency of its 'converts'.

This paper concerns the transmutation of Catholicism through the action of urban Australian Indigenous Catholics, but the action I describe involves particular uses and meanings ascribed to objects. I describe the practices of people who perform baptisms in the confines of a Catholic church which incorporate rituals connected to an Aboriginal cult. The church provides a space for urban Aboriginal people to make things mean something different to how they are understood by the wider Australian society. A key feature of the ceremony for example, is a site smoking in which a reclaimed 1960s aluminium barbeque is used to contain the fire which provides the smoke which cleanses the church of its evil spirits.

My paper describes the 'new' religious practices of a group of people who claim to 'be' Catholics whilst simultaneously claiming to 'have' Dreaming.

Panel P06
Hot property: the historical agency of things
  Session 1