Introduction

This is the first book ever to be published in English on the religions of the south-west Pacific as a whole. Almost a quarter of a century ago, Hans Nevermann, Ernest Worms and Helmut Petri published Die Religionen der Südsee und Australiens (1968), and a French translation was made soon after. Worms and Petri’s section on Aboriginal religion, which constituted a little more than half of the original, has only very recently appeared in English, but alas, their material, always disjointed and uneven, is now also thoroughly dated. A new work, such as this volume, is the only answer.