Christianity, Identity, Power, and Employment in an Aboriginal Settlement

This essay examines Aboriginal people's expression of Christian ideologies, values, and behaviors in regard to personhood. Christian practice in Galiwin'ku is a repertoire of individualization that fosters self-reliance and self-actualization, which relate to employment benefits and positions of political authority. Christianity is an important and equivocal site for staging opposition between community residents and for the expression of indigenous political agency within and beyond the settlement. Examining how Christianity informs the production of identities sheds light on some of the ways in which Aboriginal people negotiate tensions arising from a market economy and an egalitarian ethos.