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Indigenous Australians embrace new Bible

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With the United Nations General Assembly declaring 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages, the Bible Society is raising awareness of the need to translate the Bible into Indigenous languages.

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More than half of Indigenous people are Christians, yet very few have read or heard the Bible in their ‘heart’ language, according to the Bible Society.

Katrina Tjitayi is from the Pitjantjatjara community, in central Australia. She is working on a translation of the whole Bible into Pitjantjatjara.

“When somebody comes talking in English, the door is closed. But when we do our language, everything spiritual is opened,” Katrina says.

One person who is continuing a family tradition of opening the door to faith for Indigenous people is Jonathan Harris, Bible Society’s national manager of Church and Community Relations.

The trip from Barraba, in northern New South Wales to Gunbalanya (formerly known as Oenpelli), in the Top End, should take about 40 hours of continuous driving. But when Jonathan arrived in the remote Northern Territory Indigenous community from his family farm in NSW, he was completing a family journey that began more than 80 years ago.

Jonathan’s grandmother, Nell Harris, spent 36 years as a missionary in the Northern Territory. In an era when colonial thinking meant that Indigenous people were often forced to forget their traditional language and speak only English, Nell was ahead of her time.

In the 1930s, Nell joined forces with a group of Indigenous women to bring the translation of St Mark’s Gospel into the ‘language of the heart’. Sitting under the shade of a bark hut, the women would translate five verses a day.

Little did Nell know that one day her work would become the Kunwinjku Shorter Bible, printed in China, shipped to Sydney and driven by her grandson to the community who had waited for eight decades for the Bible to ‘return home’.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Its aim is to raise awareness of the crucial role languages play in people’s daily lives.

In the small community of Gunbalanya, ‘heart’ language is alive and well.

For Jonathan Harris and members of the Gunbalanya Christian community, the delivery of the Bibles represents more than just a tribute to the work of their ancestors. As Hagar Nadjamerrek says, it is a symbol of hope.

“This is what we need our kids to learn and to understand and to share the good news amongst our people,” Hagar says. “Not only in this community but sharing out to other communities, other families.

“This is our future.”

To donate today to help Indigenous Christians share the Bible their way, in their words, visit www.biblesociety.org.au/projects/australia-indigenous/

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