Australia has the oldest living culture in the world and yet sadly its indigenous people are not yet fully recognised in its constitution. A recent referendum on establishing an indigenous voice to Parliament failed, in part, because of misinformation and political interests.
View here to read the full Uluru Statement
We take a moment to listen to the cry of our First Nations people. In 2017 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples ‘from all points of the southern sky’ gathered and shared with us the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This statement invited all Australians ‘to walk together for a better future’. The Uluru Statement reminded Australians that in 1967 Aboriginal people were given a vote and now those same people wanted a voice. Our brothers and sisters desire to walk with us and be heard.
Brother Damien Price writes ‘We are invited not to see this as a grudging capitulation by white patriarchy but rather a sacred opportunity for the entire Australian community to grow into a fullness of expression of our nationhood and thus shine for the whole world.’
Sadly our brothers and sisters see that they are the most incarcerated people on the planet. They are 3% of the population yet 25% of the prison population. Their cry is ‘we are not an innately criminal people’, they see their children alienated from their families and they cry ‘this cannot be because we have no love for them.’ They see their youth languishing in detention and cry ‘our youth should be our hope for the future.’
In all of this the Uluru Statement from the Heart asks for a voice – asks to be heard. It asks what every people ask for: reforms to empower their people to take a rightful place in their own country. The Uluru Statement asks what every people asks for –power over their own destiny and, when that happens, they know that their children will flourish. And – for all of us – when they, their culture and their children flourish all of this will be a gift beyond price for all of us who call Australia home.
Aboriginal People offer us the wisdom of generations with a strong connection to the land, a strong sense of the Creator Spirit, a belief in the dreamtime and great respect for the environment and a strong desire for reconciliation based on truth-telling.
Their strong connection with the land was recognised and affirmed by Pope John Paul 2 when he visited Alice Springs in 1986
‘For thousands of years this culture of yours was free to grow without interference by people from other 
places. You lived your lives in spiritual closeness to the land, with its animals, birds, fishes, waterholes, rivers, hills and mountains. Through your closeness to the land you touched the sacredness of people’s relationship with God, for the land was the proof of a power in life greater than yourselves. You did not spoil the land, use it up, exhaust it. and then walk away from it. You realized that your land was related to the source of life.
The silence of the Bush taught you a quietness of soul that put you in touch with another world, the world of God’s Spirit. Your careful attention to the details of kinship spoke of your reverence for birth, life and human generation. You knew that children need to be loved, to be full of joy. They need a time to grow in laughter and to play, secure in the knowledge that they belong to their people.’
Sadly, on all the social indicators of disadvantage and poverty our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, the first people of this land are on the margins crying out for their human rights to be recognised, crying out for reconciliation, crying out for justice.
Let us take a moment to offer up a prayer, offer up in recognition, in unity with our First Nations brothers and sisters as we embody the words of Bruce Brewer who captures how we in Australia are called to be in his ‘Creed for Australia’
A big thank you Brigid and Karen for sharing that Reflection with us .
I felt joy, admiration ,anger ,a sense of powerlessness, and hope as I watched the videos & read the script.Beautiful .
The San peoples of Southern Africa have a similar respect for the earth and animals around them . They have also been displaces and pushed into the Kalagadi desert by the stronger peoples who have possessed their land.