[defrost]

It's certainly true that there are people today with deeply held spiritual beliefs with tens of thousands of years of continuity that don't revolve about a singular interventionalist monotheist God - which rather dents the claim that "but it's all the same God".

[barrysteve]

Yeah that theological argument is surmountable, from my eyes. I'm happy to have both ideas on as options, the monotheism one was left off the map.

The Indian and Japanese beliefs are particularly fascinating in the departure from monotheism. The Shinto practices and Hindu beliefs are something I have left inadequately studied so far.

[defrost]

Surmountable?

It's not exactly a game that you win, missionaries were just another group of colonisers bent on the destruction of other.

See, also: https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-libr...

and others.

[barrysteve]

I don't feel the need to defend against the idea that missionaries and colonizers were Saturday-Morning-Cartoon villains hellbent on death and destruction. Not saying you said it like that, but just want to express the notion that it leaves me ambivalent.

Symbolically they might have threatened <the other>'s society and religion/faith/beliefs.

But in practice the English "invaders" of the Aboriginals have brought a lot of positives and sought to preserve Aboriginal culture and beliefs in written works, film & media pieces (limited due to Aboriginal beliefs), live performances and routine practices, and linguistic, seasonal and historical documentation.

It is not reasonable to say that Australia is a British country, it isn't. The structural bones the Brits built and the blood they poured into cultivating the land, bore a lot of good fruit, for Aboriginals and the native Australians, born of emancipated criminals. There is a lot the Brits failed to do, leaving a good structure to build into the future was not a failure of theirs.

British missionaries have always been stuck between thoroughly empirical/routinized Kingdom and following the mission to nurture the people on the land. When those two elements disagree, there's not a lot of control in the missionary's hands.

Some of the Medicine Leaves pieces are really nice.

https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/artworks/jacinta-nu...