ABSTRACT
Australian Aboriginal religions have always been diverse, even before colonialism. Today, it includes Christianity, non-Christian faiths, and non-religion, largely in line with the overall population trends discussed in the previous chapter. A slight difference, however, is that an Indigenous person is more likely to identify as non-religious than a non-Indigenous person. Therefore, this chapter analyses both the census data and literature to make sense of these findings. However, before undertaking this task, the chapter first discusses the classical theory of Emile Durkheim on the elementary forms of the religious life and argues that if he had concentrated his work more on the writing of the missionary Carl Strehlow, the field of study on religion could have been different with regard to the notion of secularisation. This missed opportunity provides an important background to understanding the current dynamic amongst Indigenous Australians.
