An Aboriginal Christian's Perspective On Treaty, Sovereignty and Constitutional Recognition.

I find this a difficult discussion to take part in. I cringe when I hear the words “Christian perspectives” as if there is such a thing as a Christian view of kindness, justice and compassion that is necessarily preeminent to others. There is only one ethic in the New Testament and that is the all-consuming unconditional love for the other.

I struggle also when I find myself speaking on first nations issues as an individual who has had a privileged white education, who has been dispossessed of his culture and language, and who runs the risk of acting as colonially as those who now rule this land. Yes, I am a Wiradjuri man, but I have no inherent right to speak on behalf of that nation or any of the other sovereign nations now under colonial occupation.

Yet I do have the right to speak on behalf of my own people – ABMT – Aboriginal but not tribal (traditional). As a dispossessed person without connections to traditional language, culture and community I stand in a different place but not alone. My people are many and we are searching for a way to have a voice, to speak into this place but find ourselves impeded by both white and black culture. I receive letters questioning my aboriginality from white culture and I hear indigenous voices questioning it also. “A shame he’s not black.”

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – love; I find myself unable to support constitutional recognition on the grounds that it continues the colonial project of assimilation and erasure. Indigenous people suffered genocide in my hometown with the last reported as being killed in 1876 according to one of the key exterminators, William Cox.

In Amos Oz’ book Judas, the two protagonists are discussing the relationship between Jews and Arabs and come to the conclusion, “The Arabs live with the disaster of their defeat, and the Jews with the dread of their vengeance.” It is a comment, that if we exchange the words appropriate to our situation holds true for the Australia in which we live, ““First Nations people live with the disaster of their defeat, and White Australia with the dread of their vengeance.”

As I child I learnt that white was good, black was not good. My father referred to anybody he deemed a good person as a white person regardless of whether they were white or not. Recently I officiated at a funeral in my hometown. A person who has known me all my life came up and said, “You’re blackfella’s young bloke, you’re young blackfella!.” 61 years later I still had no name, no place other than that of a nameless black fella.

Constitutional recognition enshrines such in the DNA of this country and gives credence to the stereotypes we read and hear each day. It erases any sense of being a real person with real rights. It erases from the national psyche the history of independent nations who have populated, governed and managed this land for 10’s of thousands of years. It continues to recognise these people only as the ‘previous custodians of this country”, if it recognises them at all, as I recently read on a plaque in a church school ground close to here.

As a follower of the way of Christ – kindness, respect and compassion – I support the process required to institute a treaty or a series of treaties acceptable to the sovereign first nations people. Note I have not said we need a treaty now. I have not and cannot advocate for such a thing until we fully understand and undertake the process required to do so. A treaty requires incarnational dialogue in order to overcome the ideologies, prejudices and deep trauma that stands in the way of constructing a workable relationship.

The model for this is breaking into the world of Jesus through which God became present in this world in order to empathise and dialogue with humanity in its own country. This took time, many centuries before God took such a step. It then took Jesus a lifetime to connect, challenge and dialogue with those around him. It has taken the Spirit of Christ many centuries to bring us to where we are to day. The Triune God has patience and we need to bring such patience to the task we face today.

If non-indigenous people are serious about working towards reconciliation then they must not be in a hurry. Simply saying sorry and popping us in the constitution may make you feel better but it doesn’t change much for us. We are still under occupation by a foreign government. To change that, even by a treaty, will require incarnational patience – sitting in the dirt and listening, not to answer or solve, but to hear, co-operate and get out of the way of the process. It begins with the first nations being given the opportunity to come together and agree on what such a treaty should look like. Not an easy task. It won’t happen quickly but it must precede any dialogue with the non-indigenous society. Then dialogue can begin in kindness, respect and compassion, allowing communication and action to reflect a mutual desire for reconciliation.

What about my people? What is their place in this world of exile, disconnect and generational trauma? What are we to do while we undergo this long process toward treaty and reconciliation?

Jeremiah, writing to those in exile in Babylon, provides a blueprint for action:

29:⁴ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

We are in exile but in exile we are not powerless. We are to remain in charge of our own heritage, traditions and dreaming; we are to build up our mob while living off-country in another’s land. We are to seek wellbeing for those we live amongst, in doing so we ensure the well being of our own mob.

This is not giving in to a foreign culture but becoming proud of who we are and who we can become. We are to excel in another culture so we can lead our own people into excellence for their own sake. Instead of responding to stereotypes of politicians, media shock jocks and naysayers, let us celebrate the extraordinary achievement of communities and individuals as they address our issues and find ways to be world leaders in health, education, arts, sports or whatever they turn their hand to. Let us ignore the temptation to blame, hate or attribute guilt to others. Let us avoid the temptation to play the victim.

Jeremiah reminds the exiles that right will win in the end, even though the end may take a long time (the meaning of the word 70), it will come.

^{“ 10} For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

 Our people have a long and proud history, one that is still being made. It has not finished. A treaty will be accomplished but let us not allow the desire for such or the push by others for it and/or constitutional recognition prevent us from flourishing now and remaining sovereign in our own being. Let us get on with the business of building pride, respect and community within our mob so there can be no option but a treaty.

Witchetty Grubs, Gumtrees and All The Saints

Luke 6:20-31

 

 

Today we are celebrating All Saints Day. The tradition of celebrating the saints and martyrs has been marked by Christians ever since the 4th century the Feast of All Holy Martyrs.

 

In 837AD Pope Gregory IV extended the festival to include saints, renaming the festival the Feast of All Saints, all who were martyred or who lived an exemplary life.

 

In recent times this has been widened to include everyone who is a Christian. We are all saints, in a biblical sense.

 

All Saints Day is a time to be thankful for all those Christians who have lived before us, whether they are officially saints or not. Some are the great teachers and prophets from history. Some are those who’ve taught and inspired us personally.

 

Some are our friends and family. We can thank God for their witness, and for the way they have transmitted the faith down the generations. We can learn from their lives. We can take time to be grateful for what we’ve received, and to recommit ourselves to follow in their footsteps.*

 

Interestingly, the reading from Luke’s Gospel takes us into a radical new place and challenges the narrow understanding of this day. In this passage Jesus moves from the narrow understanding of who was included in God’s economy and how that was to be defined.  He continues, as he has done repeatedly in Luke, to prefer the poor and to diminish those who would have seen themselves as belonging to the inner circle, the blessed, the rich, those with names and with power.

 

He instructs his followers to be inclusive even at the risk of personal recrimination and harm. He tells people to defy the accepted rules of engagement with others and to take it to and beyond the limits in place to make the intolerable tolerable. Soldiers, legally, could only make you carry their bags a certain distance so defy them and carry it twice as far and see what happens. Force the person to hit you with the back of the hand which was against law and practice. This is not about doing good, but about challenging the injustice inherent in the system.

 

Jesus takes it further and says we are to do unto others what we would want them to do unto us. This is an incredibly challenging statement. It is not a golden rule, it is a deep dark gold mine we are challenged to explore and to live. It is not about our relationships with those like us. It doesn’t even stop at simply celebrating saints who fit into our perception of life, faith and religion. It is not about our closed and isolated community but about the ever-expanding community of life on and beyond this planet.

 

Saints are not just humans, and especially not just humans who share our ethnicity, our values or our lifestyle. Saints are present in communities unlike ours, in peoples we fear and in the created world we continue to exploit.

 

Throughout history peoples of all backgrounds have sought to recognise God at work in their world. These cultures have discerned wisdom and insights both individual and universal, providing us with a web of spiritual and religious wisdom informing and expanding our own. To ignore such for an exclusive us only variety diminishes all of us. Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen, Rowan Williams, Elizabeth Johnson, Sallie McFague, Pope Francis and many many others  have initiated and maintained communion with the saints of other faiths and practices in order to add to and affirm what they already know or suspect. So should we.

 

In the book of Job we read, “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;” Other versions use the word beasts, a deeply primal and free expression of God’s creativity, full of the capacity to teach, mentor and lead us. They too fit the definition of saints and deserve to be treated in the way we wish to be treated.

Wendell Berry speaks eloquently of this communion of saints when reflecting on the cycle of life in forests and plains, swamps and deserts, and everywhere in the natural world we inhabit; “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…and this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures”.

 

In this century science and our expanding universe asks us to let go of the simple anthropomorphic (human centred) understanding of creation and Gods economy (kingdom) and to come into a relationship of respect, compassion and justice – the way of kindness - with all whom we share this world with. We are to recognise the wisdom inherent in others of all ethnicities, faiths and backgrounds and to sit in the desert and hear the wisdom of the beasts and all that maintains our planet and our lifestyle.

 

Failing to do so will continue the process of destruction of peoples through senseless wars, embargoes, bans and bombs. Saints are dying in places like Yemen, West Papua, Aleppo,  Philippines, the Sudan, Burma, remote communities of Australia and Manus Island. Saints are being banned from bringing their wisdom here for the crime of wanting a better life. Saints, such as these, must be welcomed in our country or we fail the test of doing unto others.

 

Failure will diminish the incredible success of the theory of evolution by natural selection in giving us the immense diversity of thousands of years of refining creation. Within that process there are many saints, past and present, responsible for giving us sustenance, oxygen, and sustainability – trees, birds, fish, oceans, mountains and rivers not to mention bugs, mosquitos, flies, microbes and more. We rarely include them in our list of saints or in our prayers on all saints day, but they are there by default, central to the on going creation of our world.

 

On this all Saints Day we are asked to expand our worldview to include difference and diversity, to find a place in our religion for all who have been created in the image of God; meaning those with the capacity to create and continue to create the unbelievable, and for many of us, the unfathomable complexity of our habitat.

 

By doing so we will be challenged about our relationships with others including the creatures we share this world with. We will begin to see such as deserving to be treated, in the words of Jesus, as we wish to be treated. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We are to write this across all our transactions, relationships and interactions with those we share this world with, and this world itself.

 

It is recognising the sainthood of all things, not just selected humans of specific gifts and talents. It is recognising that we entertain angels, saints, in each and every transaction we participate in. Detainees, victims of war, dislocated refugees and first nations peoples around the world, practitioners of other faiths, old growth forests, witchetty grubs and more carry the wisdom we need to maintain and care for ourselves, others and this world.

 

On this All Saints Day let us take just a few moments to quietly remember all saints of all kinds now.