Record student stats from Nungalinya College in Darwin reveal the First Nations’ college is doing well, despite the difficulties that have led to the closure of other institutions Wontulp-Bi-Buya in Cairns and School of Indigenous Studies, University of Divinity.
“2023 was a record year, with 336 Indigenous students coming to the College to study within our ‘Foundation Studies’, ‘Ministry & Theology’ or ‘Applied Ministries’ pathways!” Ben van Gelderen, the Nungalinya College principal, wrote in the 2023 Annual report (which was published before the news of the other closures occurred.)
2023 was the jubilee year for the college, which was established in 1973. It now partners with teh Anglican, Uniting and Catholic churches to empower Indigenous Christians.
The report contains an account of how the college navigates traditional cultures that draws on the work of Yolŋu elder Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra who was promoted to glory in June.
“The College has a long history of wrestling with the issues of integrating Christian faith with traditional cultural practices. As an example, publications by Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra (who worked as a teacher at Nungalinya) such as Father, you gave us the Dreaming outline a contextualized, discerning process:
“‘We believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is also the God of our forefathers.
“‘In Him we have survived and maintained our true Aboriginal spirituality through our religious ceremonies and social life. We are prepared to throw away any wrong interpretation of the creator spirit which the Holy Spirit now reveals to us. We are trying to help our people understand that it was the God of the Bible who was effective in Aboriginal history and dreaming. We believe that some of the Aboriginal ceremonies and rituals are not God given gifts to the Aboriginal race. It has come to us through the fall of mankind who became disobedient to God’s purpose and plan for all His creation‘ (Gondarra, 1988, p. 8).
“At Nungalinya, we believe that all Christians should be in a constant state of discerning what elements of their ‘culture’ is consistent with a life of faith. There is no sacred ‘Christian culture’, but a call to live as authentic Christians within our own cultures. In this sense, we are all living ‘Bothways’ and although we know that individual people may disagree about specific decisions, at Nungalinya we encourage each other to be integrating our faith and culture to best present to live out the good news.”
Over the last few years, Nungalinya has equipped Indigenous teachers to be trainers in the VET context to take classes “incorporating First languages and theologies onto courses,” according to the annual report. “We thank the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in particular, for helping fund positions for James Woods, Mandy Manggurra and Marlene Andrews. Yurranydjil Dhurrkay, Wängarr Dhamarrandji and Alanga Nganbe have also worked as Indigenous Teachers in recent years. We are also excited to announce that from 2024, further funding has been found to employ a pool of casual Indigenous Teachers from various other First languages and communities.”
The full report is available at https://www.nungalinya.edu.au/publications
Image credit: Nungalinya College
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