180th anniversary of mission school marked

On Sunday 27 October, members of Victor Harbor Lutheran Church and representatives of nearby Encounter Lutheran College, the Miwi Inyeri Pel-epi Ambi Aboriginal Corporation and the local Ramindjeri Ngarrindjeri community gathered for a church service that marked a special anniversary for Encounter Bay on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula.

The day marked 180 years since, on 27 October 1844, Pastor Henry August Eduard Meyer opened the first mission school in the area. Pastor Meyer documented the Ngarrindjeri language – the language of the Indigenous people of the Southern Fleurieu – and taught the children in the language.

Pastor Meyer’s approach would later become critical to the protection and celebration of the region’s language for teaching and cultural heritage.

Victor Harbor Lutheran Church’s Pastor Nigel Rosenzweig expressed gratitude for Pastor Meyer’s work and legacy and stressed the importance of being able to hear ‘the good news, the gospel truth’ in one’s own language.

‘We give thanks for the legacy of Pastor Meyer, his wife Friederike and people like them today whose focus is on building relationships and passing on the good news of the gospel in local language’, Pastor Nigel said. ‘Through their work, we come to know the truth that Jesus sets us free indeed. This freedom leads us to be reconciled to one another and to work together as one community.’

As part of the service, Ngarrindjeri elder, Aunty Leonie McCallum sang ‘Amazing Grace’ in Ngarrindjeri, while The Lord’s Prayer, originally translated by Rev G W Taplin, was also spoken in the local First Nations language.

‘It’s very important to keep the language alive for the next generations’, Aunty Leonie said. ‘We weren’t allowed to speak our language growing up and now we are trying to revive it and bring it back.’

This heritage of language dating back to Pastor Meyer is one that Encounter Principal Kelvin Grivell is proud to carry on. ‘The Lutheran Church believes firmly in the power of language to spread the gospel’, Kelvin said. ‘The early missionaries of the Dresden Society, a Lutheran mission movement out of Germany in the early-mid 1800s, believed that sharing the gospel in the local language was key.’

Teacher Nyree Davis said teaching the Ngarrindjeri language forms an important part of Encounter Lutheran College’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). ‘We aim to incorporate and normalise the use of language as much as we can’, she said. ‘Through our curriculum, our school signage and daily school life.’

The anniversary event also included an Acknowledgement of Country, led by Encounter Lutheran College student leaders Valentina Plisko, Tyler McCreanor and Jessica Jones.

Following the service, attendees travelled to the site of a monument marking the approximate location of Pastor Meyer’s school building.