A few days ago I viewed a TV program on this remote Aboriginal community. I know these communities well having visited nearly every remote community in WA in a former career as an educator. I've written about my views on how well we educators did in other posts in this blog. I felt we did poorly in our work despite great efforts by conscientious teachers. We did not sufficiently embrace the local cultures in what we did.
Hermansberg was established as a Mission station by the Lutherans in the 19th century. History shows that this was often a disaster and the beginning of the end of the local Aboriginal culture. To the great delight of my wife and myself we discovered that the Lutheran brethren had from the beginning of their time recognised the local culture and set about translating Christian hymns into the local language. In the TV program we saw and heard a choir singing these hymns and saw pages of the script in the local language.
A local man was loud in his praise of how the Lutherans retained much of the local culture particularly the language.
My observations here are not to say that Christian missionary zeal was the way to go for these remote places. However in this case the harm to the local culture was minimised and well done Lutherans. Hermansberg is a dry community having suffered the ravages of alcohol at one stage in its life, presumably after the Lutherans had gone.
Well done Hermansberg you are a lighthouse community for the Aboriginal people.
Great to have good news.
May the Force be with you.
GD
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