The 1996 census reported that almost 72 percent of Aboriginal people practised some form of Christianity, and that 16 percent listed no religion. The 2001 census contained no comparable updated data. The Aboriginal population also includes a small number of followers of other mainstream religions.
Aboriginal spiritual beliefs are intimately associated with the land Aboriginal people live on. It is 'geosophical' (earth-centred) and not 'theosophical' (God-centred). The earth, their country, is "impregnated with the power of the Ancestor Spirits" which Aboriginal people draw upon.
Christianity has influenced Aboriginal spirituality in many ways, and many Aboriginal people are Christians. Aboriginal and Christian spirituality can sometimes peacefully coexist in the same person's belief system, and churches open up to this change.
It is by knowing and understanding both which deepens our faith in God the Creator Spirit. Aboriginal Christians around the nation believe we are all God's chosen people and we can rediscover God through our Aboriginal Spirituality, through our stories and through our history.
In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Baiame (or Biame, Baayami, Baayama or Byamee) was the creator god and sky father in the Dreaming of several Aboriginal Australian peoples of south-eastern Australia, such as the Wonnarua, Kamilaroi, Guringay, Eora, Darkinjung, and Wiradjuri peoples.
For example, many people spoke of Indigenous Spirituality as a “way of life” and “way of knowing” (or worldview) that was centered on a relationship with the Creator, the land and “all our relations.” This usually included all other beings and forms of life, including what are commonly perceived as inanimate objects, ...
The complex set of spiritual values developed by Aboriginal people and that are part of the Dreamtime include 'self-control, self-reliance, courage, kinship and friendship, empathy, a holistic sense of oneness and interdependence, reverence for land and Country and a responsibility for others.
To make direct eye contact can be viewed as being rude, disrespectful or even aggressive.To convey polite respect, the appropriate approach would be to avert or lower your eyes in conversation.
Sacred sites are places within the landscape that have a special meaning or significance under Aboriginal tradition. Hills, rocks, waterholes, trees, plains, lakes, billabongs and other natural features can be sacred sites.
Indigenous religions are the ancestral religions of peoples who are native to particular landscapes. Their religions help them achieve the goal of living successfully in those places. Thus, indigenous religions vary, just as the places their practitioners inhabit vary.
A Shinto rite. Shinto is often called an "indigenous religion", although the reasons for this classification have been debated.
Even after the residential schools era, a majority of aboriginal people still identify as Christian, fusing religion with their own beliefs and traditions.
Dreamtime is the foundation of Aboriginal religion and culture. It dates back some 65,000 years. It is the story of events that have happened, how the universe came to be, how human beings were created and how their Creator intended for humans to function within the world as they knew it.
In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
Newer belief systems
In the 1991 census, almost 74 percent of Aboriginal respondents identified with Christianity, up from 67 percent in the 1986 census.
Aboriginal Death Beliefs
When it comes to the dead, most tribes traditionally believed that the spirit needed to go to the Land of the Dead. Notions of heaven and hell though, were not a part of their beliefs. So the idea of an Aboriginal afterlife with rewards or punishment does not exist.
Many Aboriginal tribal groups share the belief that this life is only part of a longer journey. When a person passes away, the spirit leaves the body. The spirit must be sent along its journey; otherwise it will stay and disturb the family.
Religious affiliation in 2021
Christianity (43.9%) No religion (38.9%) Islam (3.2%) Hinduism (2.7%)
There is no single founder of Aboriginal spirituality. The spiritual and cosmological views of Australian Aboriginal cultures were established and maintained through generations of storytelling and the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next.
You can find Aboriginal Muslims all over the country. Most live in urban areas and attend mosques alongside Muslims from other cultural backgrounds. Some of them are “cultural Muslims.” They identify with the cultural practices and some beliefs found in Islam, but they don't go to the mosque.
Officially, Australia is a secular country. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the federal government from creating a state church.
'Aborigine' is generally perceived as insensitive, because it has racist connotations from Australia's colonial past, and lumps people with diverse backgrounds into a single group.
This allows us to better understand how health issues for Indigenous Australians might be the same as, or different to, other Australians.
Definition. Aboriginal group refers to whether the person is First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit). These are the three groups defined as the Aboriginal peoples of Canada in the Constitution Act, 1982, Section 35 (2). A person may be in more than one of these three specific groups.
Assimilationist terms such as 'full-blood,' 'half-caste' and 'quarter-caste' are extremely offensive and should never be used when referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aborigines • native/native Australians • lost (e.g. Lost language, cultures).