Faith Matters

Faith Matters – Listening to Feel

On Wednesday we celebrated Sorry Day at our College as the commencement to our communities commitment to Reconciliation. We were fortunate enough to have Norm Stanley and Nikki McKenzie offer a smoking ceremony and personal insight into the challenges encountered by Indigenous People today. Whilst Norm and Nikki offer our community so much in the short period of time they share with us, The Smoking Ceremony is a very important aspect of our annual gathering. However, if all we, as a community remember is a smoking ceremony we fall well short of our intention to encounter and be present to others.

Last Saturday, Anthony Albanese was elected Prime Minister. Various analysts suggest that one point of difference that may have swayed voters was the commitment to Indigenous affairs reform. Prime Minister Albanese has stated that the commitment includes "constitutional recognition of First Nations people, including a Voice to Parliament that is enshrined in that constitution". Five years after this statement was completed the document will be formally accepted and progressed as part of our Federal Government’s agenda.

A significant component of this progress will be the inclusion of Indigenous viewpoints on legislation, especially those laws that affect our First People. Consultation is a difficult process as it requires a level of trust that all involved seek the better outcome and the humility to relinquish control and let the hearing involved form the final decision. Let us pray that this process proceeds swiftly and that those who currently have power and control are able to truly enter with the intention of “listening to feel”. Feeling is more important than listening. Empathy occurs when we feel as others do. Let us pray for feeling more than for hearing. This desire will bring about deeper understandings and a greater desire for change than listening alone.

To conclude, I encourage you to read in a contemplative manner the Uluru Statement from the Heart (below), that you may hear what is being ‘said’ and that you can be part of this period of discernment in our nation.

Yours in Christ,

Brendan Nicholls

Liturgy Coordinator and FIRE Carrier

ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART

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 co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.

How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world 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.