THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE is to remind ourselves, and the Church, that there is a need to rediscover the treasure lying deep within the heart of each of us and in the heart of this nation. But do we have the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, or the heart to feel it, or the wisdom to search for it?
The Indigenous people who have lived for eons in the vastness of this continent are steeped in the spirit of the earth and have developed a unique spiritual affinity with the whole of creation. However, I believe that the source from which their spirituality comes is open to all because we are one, made in the image and likeness of the One Creator.
The late John Paul II said, “The silence of the bush taught you a quietness of soul that put you in touch with another 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...secure in the knowledge that they belong. Through your closeness to the land you touched the sacredness of [human] relationship with God.”
Those of us who have lost touch with the earth and nature have been deprived of its mystique, so our body, soul and spirit are out of balance with the earth. Therefore there is disharmony not only within ourselves but in all that is around us. The challenge for the Church today is to restore the mysticism of the natural world, which is filled with the Spirit of the Creator, into its liturgy and worship. When I consider the gospel story of the pearl of great price, I think it could be that the spiritual worth (the essence) of our Indigenous culture that is now slowly being recognised will turn out to be the Pearl of Great Price in this land.
In a collection that regular Pacifica readers will discover is quite different from our usual fare, this issue brings together a number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices around the theme of relation-ships between land, culture and faith for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as they consider critically their experience of the Church. Some of the articles reflect typical Western scholarly norms more than others. Some call for a different kind of attentiveness as readers are invited to listen, respect, respond and connect with the voices and stories that are presented. In order to preserve something of the oral dimension of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, several of the articles and the vignettes that come in between are based on interviews with Indigenous people. The impetus for this issue is itself the twentieth anniversary of an oral presentation, the speech of Pope John Paul II to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at Alice Springs in November 1986.
In preparing this issue of Pacifica, the guest editors hoped to fore-ground Indigenous theological writing and experience and to work on a model of partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers. The editorial team comprising Elizabeth Pike, Anne Elvey, Brian McCoy and Robyn Reynolds is delighted, therefore, to be able to publish articles from Lee Miena Skye, a Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) womanist scholar and Graham Paul-son, the first Australian Indigenous ordained Baptist minister. Their articles reflect two quite different approaches to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theology. We affirm the collab-orative work of Pat Dodson, Jacinta Elston and Brian McCoy in their report “Leaving Culture at the Door” and of David Thompson and Michael Connolly in their reflection on doing Aboriginal and Islander Theology in context. Dominic O’Sullivan brings an Indigenous perspec-tive from across the Tasman to Pope John Paul II’s legacy concerning reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia. Tracy Spencer challenges us to attend to stories of respectful and engaged everyday contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people as potential parables for a postcolonial theology in Australia. This editorial also reflects our hope for partnership in that it represents a collaboration between Elizabeth (Betty) Pike, a Nyoongah woman (from the south west of Western Australia), and Anne Elvey, some of whose ancestors were early invaders/settlers of Balardong country in Western Australia. In order to keep our voices reasonably clear, Anne’s words here are in italics and Betty’s in regular print, though much of this editorial reflects our joint discussions.
If suffering is at the heart of Christianity, it can certainly be found at the roots of our land. The pain, sorrow, bloodshed and tears of our Indigenous people mingle with those of the early settlers. Many of these were convicts sentenced to a life of cruelty and injustice and forcefully removed from their own homeland and families. So much of this suffering has been induced by politics, greed, blind ignorance and corrupt power. These are the things buried deep in the psyche of this nation. They must be addressed before any authentic healing can occur. Such healing could be achieved if you could consider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as your spiritual ancestors, and though you are of different stock, you could enter into and be grafted onto their spirit. You could then read our continuing story as the fulfilling history of the human presence in this land.
Graham Paulson and, in a different way Michael Connolly, argue here, that there are parallels and perhaps models in biblical traditions for reading a continuing story in relation to land, culture and Christian faith in Australia. For Paulson the biblical narrative takes precedence over later colonial Christian narratives and offers a starting point for an Aboriginal Theology that is culturally embedded. Connolly considers both the priority of relationship to land for those Indigenous people whose connection to land remains strong and the potential for Christianity to offer a spiritual home for those Indigenous people who through colonial violence have lost connection to land and kin. Many will find this a challenging position.
Lee Miena Skye offers a voice that unashamedly begins with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures as the site of inculturation of Christianity, so that in the encounter between land, culture and faith, Christian theology is reimagined. From her field work with some central Australian Aboriginal and Tiwi Islander women, Skye underscores key areas of Christian theology, such as eschatology, Incarnation, and Trinity, that are being reimagined through the deeply lived experience of being an Indigenous woman today. For Skye the women who are her informants are Christian theologians in their own right.
The Creator spirit is eternally inviting each of us to a deeper awareness of our own spirituality. The spirit also calls the wisdom leaders of a culture to be involved in a collective shift in order to develop their communal spirituality. This occurs most particularly when a sudden traumatic change has occurred to a culture whose spirituality is at the centre of their everyday lives and experiences.
This development can be achieved by introducing into ceremony new songs, dances and stories that ritualise the changed lifestyle. This will take time, pain, courage and vision, as grief, doubt and forgiveness will have to be dealt with. This will eventually give new strength and direction to the soul of the culture, as communities re-establish and enrich their identity.
Because of the staggering fragmentation of Aboriginal people from their various cultures, many who live scattered in suburbia are in a far more complicated situation. Here then, lies the challenge for the Church to walk with us, to listen more seriously, to heed the words of John Paul II at the very beginning of his 1986 Alice Springs speech: “I want to tell you right you right away how much the Church esteems you and how much she wishes to assist you in your spiritual and material needs.” Later he says: “Many of you have been dispossessed of your traditional lands and separated from your tribal ways, some still have their traditional culture...for others there is still no real place for camp-fires and kinship observances, except on the fringes of towns.”
Today, however, very few churches have anything within them that would portray any connection at all with Aboriginal culture, or even anything Australian, that would allow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to feel welcome. There is little if anything in the liturgy that hints at esteeming or loving us.
In their joint article, Pat Dodson, Jacinta Elston and Brian McCoy explore some of the difficulties of Aboriginal and Islander experiences of Church especially at key moments such as funerals when cultural values and church practices can be in tension. With particular reference to Roman Catholic practice, Dodson writes: “There is no desire to endorse and adopt ritual practice in Aboriginal culture as capable of the same salvific encounters as the performance of the sacramental rite in the Roman rite.” The article concludes with two key questions from Elston: “How do the churches support our mob to retain their spiritual strengths? And, how do they do it in a way that doesn’t mean that people feel they have to choose between being Aboriginal and being a Christian?”
Sometimes I think there is an attitude driving so many Australians, even within the Church, to an almost obsessive concern to control everyone and everything. There appears to be some unconscious element of fear in their hearts, as they constantly assert their rights to ownership of this land. Does this underlie the fact that this land was acquired by theft?
There is no doubt that we cannot undo the past, but we must go forward together, to fashion a different and better future. Telling the true history of our past will give us this freedom. However, there will always remain a fundamental right for Indigenous people of this country in regard to our belonging. We are the first people and traditional owners. This needs to be respected and honoured in any future conciliatory dialogue. Telling the true history of our past and our present achievements will give us the understanding, knowledge and freedom to fashion a different future.
As we are discussing this editorial Betty says to me, “We should be so proud of our culture but we are shamed”. While Dominic O’Sullivan points here to the positive outcomes of Pope John Paul II’s speech, the real shame is how little things have moved in the churches and the wider community since 1986. As a message stick makes its way around many Roman Catholic parishes to Alice Springs in October 2006, Betty reminds me of how many other changes have only been rhetoric. She challenges me to recognise our failure and our need to honour the antiquity and wisdom of a living culture that predates all the cultures of the biblical world.
May the people and the Church of the future look deeply and truthfully into our country’s history then they will find there is a Pearl of Great Price here in our midst, our very own Creation spirituality that belongs to this land.
Elizabeth Pike and Anne Elvey
25 August 2006