A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS: Listening to the Statement from the Heart Author: Celia Kemp | Artist: The Reverend Glenn Loughrey
Front cover painting: A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing Inside front cover painting: Treaty 3 First published November 2018 Second printing with minor updates, June 2019 Minor updates and reformatting for print-on-demand, August 2021 Third printing, August 2022 ISBN: 978-0-6483444-0-7 Free pdf version, Leader’s Guide or to order hard copies: www.abmission.org/voice ABM is a non-profit organisation. This Study has been made possible by donors who support ABM’s Reconciliation work. We especially acknowledge the generous support of the Society of the Sacred Mission (SSM). Foreword Listening is an important, if not dying, art form. Being able to hear the voice of the other is deeply challenging. It seems to me, at least, that many Australians wish to hear the voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They truly want to hear what is on our hearts. Yet, at the same time there are some whose hearts have turned cold, and do not wish to listen to anything but their own voices. ‘The Statement from the Heart’ is an important voice for the aspirations and hopes of the First Nations peoples of our land. It deserves to be heard by many, and for those who have stopped their ears it could become a chance for ‘hearts of stone to be turned into hearts of flesh.’ (Ezekiel 36: 26). ‘Voice in the wilderness: Listening to the Statement of the Heart’ is the creation of loving listening by Celia Kemp; encouraging the Church to stop and listen. This study also gifts us with the opportunity to ‘listen’ to the art of Glenn Loughrey, a Wiradjuri man and Anglican Priest; the penetrating voice of sight, colour and image. I encourage all who use this important study to stop, listen, and pray that our ears may be opened and our nation’s broken heart healed. Bishop Chris McLeod National Aboriginal Bishop
About the Artist Yuwin ngadhi Glenn Loughrey Dyirmadilinya badhu Wiradjuri My name is Glenn Loughrey and I am proud to be a Wiradjuri man. Glenn Loughrey is a priest at St. Oswald’s Anglican Church, Glen Iris and a member of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council. He is an artist who fuses Indigenous art styles with Western forms of storytelling. He was a finalist in the 2017 Doug Moran Portrait Prize and has had solo exhibitions in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. His art expresses his journey into the story of his family and his mob and reflects the interaction between the dominant culture and the oldest living culture on the planet. It explores the impact of that interaction from the Indigenous point of view and its purpose is to engage, challenge and initiate action leading to unification and reconciliation. The art throughout this Study is used with the permission of the artist: it is under copyright and unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. Please contact Glenn Loughrey at glennloughrey.com for further information, to purchase his art (many of the paintings in this study are for sale) or to support his work. “A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” Acrylic on canvas The story of Australia is a story told from the edges. It is a story that often leaves out important bits such as Tasmania, the deep north or the red centre and ignores the darker stories at the heart of the countries history. It is a story ignoring the story of the people who have lived here for some 50,000 years. There is much more to Australia than a story told from the perimeter. “Treaty” Acrylic on canvas We are in the process of a discussion about how to recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution. This piece suggests that only when deep dialogue occurs between equals resulting in true sovereignty and a treaty that recognises such will we have recognition. The piece uses red to signify the bloody history of our country, the black lines as the fences and policies we have used to further that history, the black and white squares as the way we view our selves in opposition. The tentative yellow lines and the meeting place reminds us that we have only just begun and that this process is fragile and can collapse at anytime. 4
About the Author Celia Kemp wrote this study while working as Reconciliation Coordinator for the Anglican Board of Mission. She lives in Alice Springs and spends her time on community, Scripture, theology, prayer, desert spirituality and nature. Celia graduated from Melbourne University with Honours in medicine and law. She has worked as Counsel Assisting the Coroner in Western Australia and as a Prosecutor and the Deputy Coroner in the Northern Territory. She was a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council and a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics at Melbourne University. Celia is the author of the acclaimed Into the Desert and Deep calls to Deep Bible study apps. Index Foreword 3 Credits 4 Introduction 7 The statement from the heart 10 What to do 11 Part 1 the doctrine of discovery 13 Part 2 lucky for who? 23 Part 3 we don’t listen 33 Part 4 “the torment of our powerlessness” 43 Part 5 “the problem of the 3 per cent mouse and the 97 per cent elephant” 55 Part 6 helping is not always helpful 65 Part 7 a 60,000 year old church? 77 Part 8 what is land for? 89 Conclusion 99 Acknowledgements 103 Appendix 1 – The constitutional recognition context 104 Appendix 2 – The Anglican Church’s response 109 Additional ABM Resources 110 5
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Painting: Australia Day – Celebrating an Imposter INTRODUCTION A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS “Australia Day – Celebrating An Imposter.” Acrylic on canvas, 2018 I did this painting in the midst of the debate about changing the date for Australia Day. It consists of over 25,000 single brown dots that represent the more than 65,000 Aboriginal people in Queensland alone who lost their lives in the frontier wars. Its background is a combination of orange and purple, the colour of country and the colour of sovereignty. Despite the attempts to impose religion, technology, culture and sport on this land, it still remains the sovereign home of those who went before, those who are here now and those yet to come. 7
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”’ Mark 1: 2-3 NRSV1 Woe to any age in which the voice crying in the wilderness can no longer be heard because the noises of everyday life drown it – or restrictions forbid it – or it is lost in the hurry and turmoil of “progress” – or simply stifled by authority, misled by fear and cowardice. Father Alfred Delp S.J. Prison Writings Our original Constitution, the document that sets out how power works in Australia, came into force on 1 January 1901. First Nations people were not consulted about it. Not surprisingly, it was a document that both excluded them and enabled their exploitation. In 1967 two discriminatory provisions were removed by referendum. However there are still controversial references to race in the Constitution and there is no overt inclusion of First Nations people and their long history and connection with this country. There has been much talk about rectifying this. During 2016-7, there were 12 separate regional consultations, which sent delegates and ideas to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention at Uluru in May 2017. It was the most extensive consultation of Indigenous people ever and the first time such a substantial group from so many different places came together to state what they wanted. They said, in a page, what they wanted. On 26 May 2017, Australia was gifted with the Statement from the Heart. It speaks into the stories we tell to explain who we are and how we live and what we do. That is, it speaks into our theology. This 8-part study comes out of the theological questions it raises. I am sometimes asked about First Nations people because of where I live and what I do. The question is often phrased: “So, how do we solve ‘the Aboriginal problem’?” My mind turns to a quote by the African American comedian Chris Rock: In May 2017 something new and important happened. 8
Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years... my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people. Chris Rock2 This resource is not about how we solve ‘the Aboriginal problem’.3 Instead, I believe listening to the Statement from the Heart reveals a lot about what is actually going on in Australia. If we listen only to people like us, then our way of seeing the world is reinforced. The general form of propositions is “This is how things are”, - That is the kind of proposition one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is treating the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it. Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations Listening to the other isn’t comfortable. It risks shattering boundaries and ideas that keep us safe and make the world predictable and secure for us and those we love. But listening helps us to see our country, and ourselves, more clearly. Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin As Much Truth As One Can Bear4 So the first question isn’t do I agree or disagree with the Statement right now. It is whether I want to stay with it long enough to allow the encounter with it to change me. We have to fight for black and white. Mabo said to his son – let’s fight for black and white. His son asked, but why are we fighting for whitefellas? And Mabo said, because they are blindfolded; we need to open their eyes and let them realise that we were in this country before them. Darwin Consultation Our Story Final Report of the Referendum Council 9
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart: Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago. This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and coexists with the sovereignty of the Crown. How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears fromworld history in merely the last two hundred years? With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood. Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future. These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness. We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country. We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution. Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination. We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history. In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future. the Statement from the Heart 10
What to do Read the Statement from the Heart. On 30 July 2017 the Referendum Council, who organised the consultations, issued the Final Report of the Referendum Council, which recommended adopting the recommendations in the Statement from the Heart. Their report included Our Story5; a vivid summary of the 12 Regional Dialogues. (Scroll down a bit to find it at 2.2.1) Consider reading this also. Our Story and the Final Report of the Referendum Council are cited throughout these studies. This 8-part Study Guide is designed to take you through themes arising from Statement from the Heart. The depth of content means it is best used over an 8-week period (or at a pace that suits the particular group). The material is suitable for individual reflection or for a group study; each part contains Art, Stories, Quotes, Scripture, Questions and a Prayer. There are additional resources at the end of each Part for those who would like to ‘Go Deeper’. A free Leader’s Guide is available to assist with running a group study. This Study is also available as an online pdf and in that document the internet links are active. You can download both of these at: www.abmission.org/ resources/a-voice-in-the-wilderness/ This is not an easy Study because the material is confronting. The Statement from the Heart throws up difficult questions and this Study does not attempt to give definitive answers or a conclusive church response. My hope instead is that it will open up conversations about a Christian response to our history and present situation. I have found grappling with the Statement from the Heart to be challenging but deeply worthwhile. I believe it helps us hear God’s voice in Australia at this time and may show the way to becoming a truly Australian church. 1 All Scripture readings are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. 2 http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html 3 I am indebted to Veronica Brady’s discussion of the issues with talking about ‘the Aboriginal problem’ and her use of the Wittgenstein quote in this context in Can These Bones Live (and generally this book has been very influential on this Study Guide). 4 The New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962) 5 https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/final-report.html 11
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Painting: The Temptation at Cook’s Gap PART 1 The doctrine of discovery “The Temptation at Cook’s Gap.” Acrylic on canvas, 2017 My father faced the temptation to be equal with his white neighbours. Somewhere around 1967 my father and mother developed a basic business plan to purchase the small farm and post office in Cook’s Gap. He was an exemplary farmer and she a resourceful seamstress and manager. They believed that this would give them the opportunity of equality and set up a better life for their boys. Dressed in their Sunday best they went to see the local bank manager, someone he played cricket with, only to be told no. He walked out of the Bank and across the road to the pub and our lives changed dramatically. The Temptation of Jesus: Matthew 4:1-11 13
In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives should not be counted. Section 127 of the Australian Constitution (Removed by the 1967 Referendum) In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. Statement from the Heart I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, scarcely settled, great southern land. Prime Minister Tony Abbott Keynote Address to the Australia- Melbourne Institute Conference 20146 STORY In July 2014, a statue of John McDouall Stuart appeared in an Alice Springs park where many First Nations people hang out. He is very bronze and very tall and is carrying a huge rifle. The statue was gifted to the Town Council by local Freemasons. (John Stuart was a Freemason.) It had not gone through Council processes for approving public monuments. However, after a public fight, it ended up displayed anyway. The statue’s inscription reads in part: John McDouall Stuart and his companions were the first Europeans to pass through this region, going on to discover the centre of Australia in April 1860. There were, of course, people already living in the centre of Australia in April 1860. They had been living in the centre of Australia for a long, long time. Chances are, their descendants wander past the statue most days. So what is meant by ‘discover’ here? Participants expressed disgust about a statue of John McDouall Stuart being erected in Alice Springs following the 150th anniversary of his successful attempt to reach the top end. This expedition led to the opening up of the “South Australian frontier” which led to massacres as the telegraph line was established and white settlers moved into the region. People feel sad whenever they see the statue; its presence and the fact that Stuart is holding a gun is disrespectful to the Aboriginal community who are descendants of the families slaughtered during the massacres throughout central Australia. Ross River Consultation Our Story Final Report of the Referendum Council Cook did not discover us, because we saw him. We were telling each other with smoke, yet in his diary, he said “discovered”. Torres Strait Consultation Our Story Final Report of the Referendum Council Built a large cone of stones, in the centre of which I placed a pole with the British flag nailed to it. Near the top of the cone I placed a small bottle, in which there is a slip of paper, with our signatures to it, stating by whom it was raised. We then gave three hearty cheers for the flag, the emblem of civil and religious liberty, and may it be a sign to the natives that the dawn of liberty, civilization and Christianity is about to break upon them. Journals of John McDouall Stuart 23 April, 1860 Describing his actions at the top of what is now known as Central Mount Stuart7 On May 27 1967, Australians voted to remove part of the Australian Constitution that treated Indigenous Australians as inferior to non-Indigenous Australians: 14
Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10: 2-5 Strongholds are habits of thinking that hurt people - that create division between people. The doctrine of discovery is one of those strongholds. Bishop Mark McDonald National Indigenous Anglican Bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada WATCH8 READ9 DISCUSSION At the heart of the doctrine of discovery is the idea that Indigenous people are a primitive form of human life and therefore discoverable. Bishop Mark McDonald 10 The use of the word ‘discover’ makes it very clear who our point of reference is. And who it is not. We don’t ‘discover’ our sort of people, usually. We meet them. And we don’t ‘discover’ their homes or properties. We visit them. Because we recognise that another human owns them already. This is not a neutral issue for the Christian church. Pope Alexander used the doctrine of discovery in 1493 to justify the Spanish conquest of the New World. He issued a Papal Bull that said that any lands not inhabited by Christians were available to be ‘discovered’, claimed and the rulership taken over in order that ‘barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself’.11 This doctrine became the basis for Europe’s claims in America, and the US Supreme Court used it to justify American Expansion into the West. That is, Protestants also used whether people were ‘Christian’ or not to decide whether they had a right to their lands. In Australia it appeared in the guise of terra nullius - a Latin expression that means nobody’s land.12 This has been called ‘a morphed and more extreme version of the doctrine of discovery’.13 We learned that their law told them a story called terra nullius, which meant that if you go to a land where the people don’t look like you or live like you, you can pretend they don’t exist and take their land. Dr Galarrwuy Yunupingu 14 the doctrine of discovery - Part 1 15
DISCUSSION We have placed ourselves in a position that has compelled the Aborigines to become our neighbours and we have worked ill toward our neighbours… 1838 Report of Lancelot Threlkeld Missionary for the London Missionary Society on the shores of Lake Macquarie, Newcastle15 The Colonisers believed in loving the neighbour as the self. Treating Indigenous people badly jeopardised people’s conception of themselves as good. This sort of cognitive dissonance has long been resolved by putting some humans outside the realm of people whose suffering we have to care about. The Romans were not without any moral feelings. They showed a high regard for justice, public duty, and even kindness to others. What the [bloody gladiatorial] games show, with hideous clarity is that there was a sharp limit to these moral feelings. If a being came within this limit, activities [that] occurred at the games would have been an intolerable outrage; when a being was outside the sphere of moral concern, however, the infliction of suffering was merely entertaining. Some human beings— criminals and military captives especially— and all animals fell outside this sphere. Peter Singer Animal Liberation Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ Luke 10: 25-37 16
The lawyer who questioned Jesus was doing the same thing. ‘You have to love your neighbour as yourself’, you can hear him thinking, ‘not everyone.’ And, lawyerlike, the issue is where is the line? This is a reasonable question. We are limited. Day to day we do have to delineate what we can care about. Jesus’ answer smashed the use of race or religion as that line. For much of Australia’s history, however, race was overtly used in this way. I do not think either that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is that basic inequality. These races are in comparison with white races – I think no one wants convincing of this fact – unequal and inferior. Sir Edmund Barton Prime Minister of Australia 26 September 190116 Many Colonists believed they were superior to First Nations people, who were such lesser humans that really they were more in the category of animals. It was maintained by many of the colony that the blacks had no language at all but were only a race of the monkey tribe. This was a convenient assumption, for if it could be proved that the Aborigines…were only a species of wild beasts, there could be no guilt attributed to those who shot them or poisoned them. Lancelot Threlkeld Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L.E. Threlkeld, Missionary to the Aborigines, 1824-1859 Because the primitive lords of the soil interfere, in some of the frontier stations, with the easy and lucrative grazing of cattle and sheep, they are felt by the sensitive pockets of the graziers to be a nuisance; and the best pleas that these “gentlemen” can set up for their rights to abuse the nuisance by the summary processes of stabbing, burning and poisoning, is that the offenders are below the level of the white man’s species. Editorial The Colonist 16 January 1839 Early last century, Alfred Canning built the Canning Stock Route through deserts in the West. He captured and chained indigenous people and gave them only salt water to drink until, driven mad by thirst, they led him to their sacred waterholes, which were then taken for cattle.17 For most of Colonial history, well into last century, the consequences for an Indigenous person who killed a whitefella’s cow were harsher than for a whitefella who killed an Indigenous person. As the Kimberley Land Council recently remarked ‘the fact that people are more important than cattle is something the gadiya [whitefellas] find very hard to accept’.18 the doctrine of discovery - Part 1 17
QUESTIONS Rhetoric that makes one lot of people less human than another lot of people is an alarming precursor to untold woe. We face the urgent call to eliminate every stereotype discrimination that reduces- and denies – [the image of God] in the other. It was the ability to distinguish some people as human and others as not that enabled the Nazis to segregate and then destroy the “subhumans” (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs). The ability to differentiate the foreign Jews from French-born Jews paved the way for the deportation first of foreign-born, then of native, French Jews. This differentiation stilled conscience, stilled the church, stilled even some French Jews. The indivisibility of human dignity and equality becomes an essential bulwark against the repetition of another Holocaust. It is the command rising out of Auschwitz. Rabbi Irving Greenberg Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust19 It came up again at the start of the Rwandan genocide20 and it was used recently in Britain about refugees.21 Have you heard the sort of rhetoric that treats First Nations people as lesser humans? As more like children? Or animals? What is a theological response to the claim one group of humans is lesser than another? Why is it such a persistent idea? Where do you have a tendency to draw lines putting some humans outside your sphere of moral concern? 18
PRAY Holy Father, God of Love, You are the Creator of all things. We acknowledge the pain and shame of our history and the sufferings of Our peoples, and we ask your forgiveness. We thank you for the survival of Indigenous cultures. Our hope is in you because you gave your Son Jesus to reconcile the world to you. We pray for your strength and grace to forgive, accept and love one another, as you love us and forgive and accept us in the sacrifice of your Son. Give us the courage to accept the realities of our history so that we may build a better future for our Nation. Teach us to respect all cultures. Teach us to care for our land and waters. Help us to share justly the resources of this land. Help us to bring about spiritual and social change to improve the quality of life for all groups in our communities, especially the disadvantaged. Help young people to find true dignity and self-esteem by your Spirit. May your power and love be the foundations on which we build our families, our communities and our Nation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Prayer from the Wontulp-Bi-Buya Indigenous Theology Working Group, 13 March 1997 Used by the Anglican Primate of Australia, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier to commence his address to General Synod, 2017 the doctrine of discovery - Part 1 19
GO DEEPER They thought they’d pick a supposedly uninhabited spot out in the Australian desert. Only they got it wrong. There were people here. Robin Matthews Caretaker of the Maralinga Nuclear Test Site22 British Nuclear testing was conducted at Maralinga in South Australia from 1956 to 1963. Seven bombs, with a combined strength greater than the Hiroshima explosion, were dropped, followed by a series of smaller tests. Indigenous residents were exposed to the radiation and the site was left contaminated with radioactive material. Eventually political pressure led to the 1985 McClelland Royal Commission. The findings included: Overall, the attempts to ensure Aboriginal safety during the [Maralinga tests] demonstrate ignorance, incompetence and cynicism on the part of those responsible for that safety… [A] site was chosen on the false assumption that the area was not used by its traditional Aboriginal owners. Aborigines continued to move around and through the Protection zone and inadequate resources were allocated to locating them and to ensuring their safety. The reporting of sightings of Aboriginal people was discouraged and ignored… The affairs of a handful of natives counted little compared to the interests of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Then Prime Minister Robert Menzies gave the go ahead for the testing. It was done with extreme secrecy. He did not ask for any scientific evidence.23 He did not consult, not even with his own Cabinet.24 It is hard to escape the conclusion that he did not give serious thought to the consequences because the people likely to be affected just didn’t count very much. Listen to Yami Lester describe what it was like: www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-27/yamilester/6178744 Read more about what happened at Maralinga: theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-themaralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-toput-security-over-safety-62441 blackmistburntcountry.com.au/index. php/resources/history/ www.creativespirits.info/ aboriginalculture/history/maralinga- how-british-nuclear-tests-changedhistory-forever OR When the Heart Cracks Open The Rev Dr Sarah Bachelard www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Gesk9E96zQg&feature= youtu.be 20
6 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/tony-abbott-says-australia-benefited-from-foreign-investment-because-it-was-unsettled-before-the-british-20140703-zsvby.html 7 Further reading on this statue at https://griffithreview.com/articles/icons-living-and-dead/ 8 2015 Sacred Circle: Bishop Mark MacDonald on the Doctrine of Discovery, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygk3X5Xjjh4 9 2015 Sacred Circle: Bishop Mark MacDonald on the Doctrine of Discovery, http://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015-08-18-MacDonald.pdf 10 https://adelaideanglicans.com/stories/2017/10/time-to-confront-the-doctrine-of-discovery 11 Papal Bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493 https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/T-04093.pdf 12 This term was used in the Papal Bull Terra Nullius of 1095 which gave European kings the right to discover and claim land in non-Christian areas. 13 http://www.als.org.au/the-doctrine-of-discovery/ 14 https://app.lms.unimelb.edu.au/bbcswebdav/courses/166392_2009_1/G.Yunupingu.doc 15 N. Gunson (ed.), Australian Remiscences and Letters of L. E. Threlkeld, Vol. 1, Canberaa: AIATSIS, 1974, p. 714 16 House of Representatives Speech in favour of the Immigration Restriction Bill. PM Barton is speaking specifically about the inferiority of Chinese people here. 17 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2015/sep/05/a-dark-chapter-of-history-is-tied-up-in-the-name-of-the-canning-electorate See also http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/yiwarra_kuju/essays/of_mining_and_meat/questionable_methods 18 The Crocodile Hole Report, Kimberley Land Council and Waringarri Reosource Centre, 1991, http://www.jawun.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/15-Crocodile-Hole-Report-1991.pdf 19 http://rabbiirvinggreenberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Cloud-of-Smoke-red.pdf 20 Tutsi people were repeatedly referred to as ‘cockroaches’ in the lead up to the genocide, see http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/73836 21 In 2015 PM David Cameron referred to a ‘swarm’ of migrants trying to get access to Britain, see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-31/david-cameron-under-fire-for-describing-migrants-as-a-swarm/6661790 22 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30640338 23 Findings of the McClelland Royal Commission 24 Findings of the McClelland Royal Commission the doctrine of discovery - Part 1 21
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PART 2 Lucky for who? Painting: From The Depth, Life Rises “From The Depth, Life Rises.” Acrylic on canvas Despite the destruction of Aboriginal life, culture and language, it has arisen once again. The colours in this painting refer to the dominance of the colonial culture (red, white and blue) which has found Aboriginal life and culture (purple, yellow and green) returning from the centre to wander right across the landscape of Australia. This is resurrection. What had been thought to have been destroyed, returns. Resurrection: Mark 16, Matthew 28, Luke 24 23
STORY 1 As I have got older I have become very interested in my own family story. It turns out, like in most families, some of the most difficult things are not talked about. A weighty family book bound in rich leather with swirling front pieces was written about one side. Later it was revealed that an ancestor had been omitted. He was a horse thief in Scotland and had been sent over as a convict. The writer left it out as a kindness to two members of the older generation who would have considered it shameful. Now they are no longer with us, the horse-thieving convict is back in. There was a very charismatic figure on the other side a few generations back. People still come up to me to talk about having heard him speak. He was a warm man. He was also a philanderer and a fraudster. A family member wrote a small book about him also. It mentioned neither of these, except perhaps in an oblique descriptor of him as a ‘man’s man’. QUESTIONS Have there been shameful things covered up in your own family tree? Why do we do this? Does it matter to you that your ancestors behaved well? Why? Or why not? Why is it so hard for many of us to talk about this? POEM Pinjarra I heard the whispering through the trees It was the whispers of old women It was concern. I heard the shouting above me, around me, in me. It was the shouting of old men, young men It was fear. I heard the sighing floating, hanging in the air. It was the sighing of young women It was despair. I heard the crying of the children girls and boys It was the crying that comes with destruction It was the cry of war. If you walk through this country anytime anywhere You will hear these sounds, if you care. Sue Jean Stanton We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history. Statement from the Heart The words ‘settlement’ and ‘invasion’ are highly charged for both sides of this historic encounter, but there is no use denying these two perspectives. It is understandable why some Australians speak of settlement, and why some speak of invasion. The maturation of Australia will be marked by our ability to understand both perspectives. Final Report Referendum Council Australia must acknowledge its history, its true history. Not Captain Cook. What happened all across Australia: the massacres and the wars. If that were taught in schools, we might have one nation, where we are all together. Darwin Consultation Our Story Final Report of the Referendum Council 24
DISCUSSION The anthropologist W.E.H Stanner talked about ‘the great Australian silence’ in his 1968 Boyer Lectures. He listed a number of Australian history books written between 1939 and 1955, pointing to their minimal focus on First Nations history, and continued: I need not extend the list. A partial survey is enough to let me make the point that inattention on such a scale cannot possibly be explained by absentmindedness. It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale. We have been able for so long to disremember the aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so. W.E.H Stanner Second Boyer Lecture Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” John 18:37-8 However, beware! Whenever people wonder ‘What is the truth?’ usually it is because the truth is just under their nose - but it would be very inconvenient to acknowledge it. And thus, against his own better judgement, Pilate yields to the will of the crowd and lets Jesus be crucified. Pilate’s problem was not how to ascertain Jesus’ innocence. This was easy enough: it was obvious. No, the real problem was that, in the end - like all of us, most of the time - he found it more expedient to wash his hands of the truth. Simon Leys Lies that tell the truth25 Today, it seems to me increasingly the point at which we, as a people, invaders of the ancient land and intruders upon its culture, are challenged to come to terms with our actual situation as distinct from the one we would like to imagine for ourselves. For that, of course, we have to be prepared to see through our illusions and let them go. We need to be able to stand in the truth, to have a way of describing ourselves and the world which actually fits. Veronica Brady Caught in the Draught: Essays on Contemporary Australian Culture and Society lucky for who? - Part 2 25
DISCUSSION There were 12 First Nations regional dialogues held around Australia in 2016 and 2017 in the lead up to the Constitutional Convention at Uluru. This desire for truth-telling about our history was unanimous at every Dialogue. This was particularly significant because it wasn’t in the Referendum Council Discussion paper that went out to the dialogues. It arose afresh out of each of the 12 discussions because it is something First Nations peoples across Australia really want. And no wonder. We are a society that struggles with truth-telling. We go for what is polite or what is persuasive or what creates the best image to achieve our purpose. That is, we value expedience and reputational management over truth. We do it to what is happening now. We call it Public Relations (or PR). We do it to history as well. The story of our history isn’t irrelevant. It matters. You can tell how much it matters by the intensity of our struggles over it. Our history shapes who we think we are and how we think we should live. That is, it shapes our theology. Anglicans are entirely embedded in recent Australian history. An Anglican chaplain came over on the first fleet and Anglicans have been active across Australian society ever since. Anglicans were the pastoralists and governors and newspaper proprietors and miners and missionaries and Protectors and advocates and First Nations peoples. We are part of the good of it. We are part of the woe of it. We can’t understand ourselves, or our mission, without understanding it. So what is true in our history is no small question. It goes to the heart of what it is to be Christian, and Anglican, in this land. QUESTIONS Are truthfulness and sincerity the same thing? Do the institutions you work for prioritise telling the truth? Does your family? What about your church? What would it look like to be a person or a church that was known for telling the truth? The awful but surely undeniable fact of Aboriginal history, the one fact which transcends all other facts and all other estimates, reconstructions, analyses, guesses, misrepresentations, truths, half-truths and lies, is the fact of the immense and appalling reduction in the Aboriginal population during the first 150 years of European settlement. John Harris Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia26 In 1788 there were, as far as we can calculate, 350,000 Aborigines in Australia. There are now only 50,000 full-bloods. The cause of this decrease is quite clear, namely, we white Australians, Christian and civilized. Professor A. P. Elkin The Original Australians Pamphlet for the Australian Board of Missions (in circulation in the 1950s) 26
Early population estimates for the whole of Australia before European colonisation was about 300,000. More recent estimates suggest at least 750,000 and probably one million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated it to have plummeted to 31,000 by 1911, the lowest level suggested. These figures suggest a depopulation of perhaps 90 per cent, or even 97 per cent. If the population estimates were accepted conservatively as reducing from 750,000 to 100,000, a depopulation of 87 per cent would be indicated. More detailed studies support such human devastation. One estimate is that the population decline in Tasmania in thirty years was 96 per cent; in Victoria, at least 90 per cent in thirty-five years; on Victoria River Downs approximately 90 per cent in sixty years; and perhaps 97 per cent in the Alligator River district. Noel Loos White Christ Black Cross: The emergence of a Black church For the Lord comes out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no longer cover its slain. Isaiah 26:19 DISCUSSION There was a view in the 19th century that First Nations people started to vanish at the same time new people appeared who wanted their land in a staggering coincidence; convenient to the colonists but completely unattributable to them. John Harris writes that there were ‘no shortage of metaphorical euphemisms: the blacks were ‘fading away’ ‘fading out’, ‘decaying’, ‘slipping from life’s platform’, ‘melting away like the snow from the mountains at the approach from spring’, ‘perishing as does the autumnal grass before the bush fires’ and so on.27 Captain J.L. Stokes who visited in 1846 observed that the colonists were mostly willing to ‘content themselves with the belief that the imminent disappearance of the Aborigines was ‘in accordance with some mysterious dispensation of Providence’’.28 [A]s a Christian and a civilised people it was not easy for the British settlers to acknowledge what they had done. Stanner was fascinated by the other very common 19th century belief, captured in the line of Percy Russell’s poem – ‘Her shield unsullied by a single crime’ – that in the birth of the Australian nation no sin had been committed. Rather than acknowledge complicity in the destruction of Aboriginal society and consequent remorse, it was far easier for Australians either to avert their gaze – ‘sightlessness’ was one of Stanner’s favourite words – or to claim, as had the Reverend G. A. Wood, ‘that the cause of the extinction lies in the savage himself and ought not to be attributed to the white man’. Robert Manne Introduction to The Dreaming & Other Essays: W.E.H. Stanner lucky for who? - Part 2 27
This sort of thinking is still around. It is implicit in the term ‘lucky country’ as though modern Australia with all her vast mineral and land resources, just sort of fell into its citizens hands. Colonization was violent. It is hard to know numbers, because almost all the deaths were not investigated, but a recent paper estimated some 60 000 First Nations people were killed on the Queensland frontier.29 This is about the same as the number of Australians who died in WWI.30 The pre-contact population of Tasmanian Aborigines is widely debated and recent estimates are in the order of 4000.31 These people were almost, but not completely, wiped out by the 1830s by disease, violence and infertility.32 The Black War was the name Colonists gave to their violent struggle with First Nations people in Eastern Tasmania in the 1820s in which they killed the majority of those still remaining, and also suffered significant casualties themselves.33 There was official policy, and there was what was actually allowed or encouraged to occur at the frontier. Around Australia First Nations people were ill-treated. Some were shot. Some were tortured. Flour and waterholes were poisoned. Colonists ejected First Nations people from their land and water. They had a choice of starving to death or risking being shot for ‘theft’ from Colonists’ land. Many ended up with nowhere at all to go.34 There was widespread abuse of First Nations women and children (as well as consensual relationships), which led to venereal disease causing infertility.35 36 Many First Nations people died from other epidemic diseases (such as smallpox, influenza and measles) brought over by the colonists. I have heard it said that this part was a sort of bad luck but nobody’s fault really. It is more complex than that. It is true that once the diseases were here some of this could not have been prevented as epidemics to which people had no immunity raged through local populations.37 However, especially as time went on, the wretched living conditions people were forced into also contributed to the spread and fatality of disease.38 39 That they must die out is, I think, a foregone conclusion. Were they as valuable commercially as short-horned cattle, or merino sheep, there would be no fear of their dying out. The fact is we have pretended but never really wished to save them from extermination. Edward M. Curr 1877 Royal Commission on the Aborigines (An Australian pastoralist and Squatter)40 28
DISCUSSION But I think of a people crucified - The real Australian story Jack Davis Aboriginal Australia41 Once people die, their voice is lost, any children they would have had are not born, and they are wiped from history. History is written by the victor after all. Except in Christianity where someone who was killed spoke again and it changed the world. As Christians we don’t believe the earthly victor is necessarily right. We don’t believe that death is the end We don’t believe the voices of the dead don’t matter. In theological terms we believe that ‘blood cries out from the earth’ (Genesis 4:10). Death does not end relationships between human persons and between human persons and God; and this may be sobering news as well as joyful, sobering especially for an empire with blood on its hands. Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Sermon, 200442 No matter what benefits colonisation brought it effectively caused the death of the majority of people who were living here already. QUESTIONS What do we make of these deaths? Where is Christ in this part of our history? TO DO More Australians can name a horse that ran fast than can name any First Nations folk who stood up for their people. What are the Australian historical names you know? What sort of people are they? Who are the heroes? Who are the villains? Everywhere across Australia, great warriors like Pemulwuy and Jandamarra led resistance against the British. First Nations refused to acquiesce to dispossession and fought for their sovereign rights and their land. Our Story Final Report of the Referendum Council Look up Pemulwuy or Jandamarra. Find out everything you can about who they were and what they did. lucky for who? - Part 2 29
PRAY GO DEEPER Professor Lyndall Ryan from the University of Newcastle has embarked on a project to document Colonial Frontier Massacres. You can read about it at: www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/ featured-news/mapping-the-massacresof-australias-colonial-frontier The map itself (and further information about the project) is at: c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/ colonialmassacres/map.php Aboriginal Thanksgiving Prayer God of Holy Dreaming, Great Creator Spirit, from the dawn of creation you have given your children the good things of Mother Earth. You spoke and the gum tree grew. In the vast desert and the dense forest, and in the cities and at the water’s edge, creation sings your praise. Your presence endures at the rock at the heart of our Land. When Jesus hung on the tree you heard the cries of all your people and became one with your wounded ones: the convicts, the hunted, the dispossessed. The sunrise of your Son coloured the earth anew, and bathed it in glorious hope. In Jesus we have been reconciled to you, to each other and to your whole creation. Lead us on, Great Spirit, as we gather from the four corners of the earth; enable us to walk together in trust from the hurt and shame of the past into the full day which has dawned in Jesus Christ. Amen. The Reverend Lenore Parker Life Member of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council (NATSIAC) A Prayer Book for Australia 30
www.abmission.orgRkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI3ODI1