2011 - Theses - Flinders University

White Lives in a Black Community: The lives of Jim Page and Rebecca Forbes in the Adnyamathanha communityTracy SpencerVolume One Creative Writing Component: Excerpted Chapters from Volume Three Appendix OneThere was a blackboard above the fireplace in the dining room – two forms to sit at onefor boys one for girls – where the sisters would write things for us to pray for, ‘cos wewere a faith mission and taught that if you believe your needs will be supplied, then theywill. 125I didn’t know whether to gasp or laugh at the stories about a load of cabbage falling off atruck by their door when they needed green vegetables, and excess bread from the bakerbeing delivered to them one long weekend when the Home was out of flour. Sometimes thesethings happen. But this Home had twenty five children to feed, far from their homes, in atown that didn’t want them. 126 I had asked Aunty Clara about this precarious position before,and she had replied with the same conviction.I said as far as I’m concerned, we’re a chosen people not a stolen people. We’re chosen:God chose us and you say that because you had that opportunity of everything like youreducation and learning how to understand other people and that, and the things that you’vebeen involved in. You know, you’ve seen the needs of people and you had to dosomething about it. You had to change those needs; get those needs happening. So it’s as Isaid: I said ‘You hear people condemning the missionaries,’ I said, ‘It’s I know thosepeople lived - those people that [were] in our mission - well they lived on nothing, youknow. They weren’t paid wages or nothing…It was faith mission. And they lived by faithand they gave up their lives. They gave up their lives and their friends and family for justto go out to help, just to be part of helping others. … So well I feel that us people that havebeen brought up by people [and] have been taught by missionaries and that, have beenfortunate. 127I looked for the note of bitterness, but there was none, only a simmering anger against theworld’s injustice to needy people, and rich compassion. From the first conference of theUAM in April 1930, it had been stated: ‘What is a “Faith” Mission? …a Mission that doesnot permit the appeal to any human source for financial aid, but persistently appeals to God inprayer, and depends on Him to supply every need.’ 128 And Clara had lived what she learned:You’re as good as anyone else; you have to work harder to prove it. You can be whateveryou want if you fight for it. No point being angry, it makes you bitter and that’s just76