‘We are Lutherans from Germany’: Music, language, social history and change in Hopevale

The excerpt is a transcription of fieldwork footage filmed during the Carols by Candlelight festivities in December 2004 in the Lutheran Australian Aboriginal community of Hopevale, Northern Queensland. It documents the speech given by local Indigenous Pastor George Rosendale in which he reflected on the Lutheran heritage of the former Northern Queensland Hopevale Mission.2 He urged local Indigenous people to seek support in their Lutheran religious heritage of three generations suggesting it might encourage them to reflect on the level of alcohol misuse in the community and alter their ways. He stated that the excessive drinking habits of many local Indigenous people is a negative way in which they seek to imitate white Anglo-Australian culture. As an alternative, Pastor Rosendale advocated that not only should Hopevalians seek support in