Tuesday, 15 August 2017

Australian Aboriginal Quakers?

From Sally O'Wheel posted on the Facebook site of Quakers Australia ---

Sally O'Wheel shared a link.
This is so interesting! Earnest Westlake was a Quaker, (his mother was a Neave). He collected thousands of stone tools but also interviewed Aboriginal people. At this time they were considered to be 'extinct' and his interviews were discounted by later historians because they weren't regarded as 'real' Aborigines. But in fact these people had kept their culture and language alive. I am reading about the descendants of Fannie Smith (née Cochrane) and about their spirituality which Earnest Westlake thinks is very Quakerly. 
He says: 
' I seem to have discovered what was missed by those excellent Friends, Backhouse and Walker in their reports on the Tas Blacks, ie that the Blacks were themselves Quakers, in that they sought for the guidance of the Spirit, and lived more or less in the light of it. Certain it is that Mrs Smith, who had come under Christian influence, was a Quakeress of excellent quality.' Fascinating book!
In 1908 English gentleman Ernest Westlake packed a tent, a bicycle and forty tins of food and sailed to Tasmania. On mountains, beaches a...
GOODREADS.COM

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