The Meaning Of Pepe: God's Law and The Western Arrernte

Using both ethnography and textual material, this paper describes the way in which Western Arrernte people in central Australia interpreted the Christianity brought to them by Lutheran missionaries. The mission became an isolated domestic economy, a context that allowed the Arrernte to interpret its teachings in terms of a "law." This Christian law was often referred to as pepe, the Western Arrernte word for "paper." It involved a particular rendering of literacy and rested on a highly localized order. These conditions of mission Christianity would change with the coming of land rights and a cash economy.