From Unknown to Known: Wantarri (Gift) and Interpretive Responsiveness across Warlpiri and Indonesian Contexts

Abstract

This article argues that shared life across cultural and religious differences is sustained by interpretive and relational responsiveness cultivated in everyday life. Beginning with the Warlpiri philosophic concept of ngurra-kurlu (home-having), it reframes pluralism not simply as an abstract framework for identity but as a dynamic field of relations in which meaning, responsibility, and belonging emerge through the circulation of stories, ceremony, and exchange—a movement from “unknown to known” understood as ongoing relational formation. On this view, knowledge is encountered as a wantarri (gift) which is received, shared, and renewed in relation.

Placing these concepts in dialogue with the experiences of Gereja Jemaat Kristus Indonesia (Churches of Christ in Indonesia) and the Indonesian state ideology of Pancasila, the article considers how plural societies depend not only on formal structures of unity but on interpretive practices that sustain interdependence and shared responsibility. By interposing Indigenous Australian and Indonesian contexts, it approaches theology as a practice of interpretive responsiveness, proposing interpretive generosity and narrative exchange as practices that cultivate relationality and ethical growth within difference.