This week is Reconciliation Week. As I begin writing as a non-indigenous person, I pay my respects to those who are the original custodians of the land upon which I write, the Taungurung people of the Kulin Nation. I further need to acknowledge that my reflections are from a non-indigenous perspective and cannot begin to match the wisdom or the insights that those with an Indigenous heritage and connection to this land may offer on this subject. What I will try and do is connect my European, Christian heritage and insights with the deep meaning and significance of this week within contemporary Australian culture and identity.
Reconciliation week begins on May 27 with the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum that finally recognised Indigenous Australians as citizens within their own country and on their own land. It ends on June 3 with the anniversary of the Mabo decision which overturned the legal fiction of Terra Nullius, the concept that before European settlement from 1788, this was ‘nobody’s land’. Australian history is marred by both injustices that caused years of dispossession, genocide, the disrespect of the dignity of the human person, non-recognition the human person in the first place, the intentional destruction of language, removal of Aboriginal children from their parents, black deaths in custody, poverty and disease. The list goes on and on, and justice demands reconciliation and redress.
Coinciding with Reconciliation Week this year is the celebration of the Feast of the Trinity, a feast seeped in mystery and story that is best understood from an Indigenous spiritual perspective not limited by words but captured in music, dance, art and song. Like so many dreamtime stories, the Trinity asks us to rest easy and comfortably with contradiction and ambiguity; the story itself invites us into a deeper reality than mere words can capture. The Trinity recognises that while God may be the eternal creator from the beginning of time, this creator continues to dwell in the beauty and dynamism of the universal creation all around us. And this same God calls us into the act of creating, to become part of the deep story written into this ancient landscape and join the sacred dance of life anew, as if for the first time.
Western spirituality grows out of a patriarchal, monotheistic, conquering culture that thought humans could dominate and so subdue the world. And in our attempt we have brought humanity, life and creation to the brink with environmental degradation and climate change that threatens life as we know it. Reconciliation Week asks us not only to seek reconciliation for the past injustices done to our Indigenous brothers and sisters over the last 250 years, but invites us to learn from them, their spirituality and their intimate connection to this place, this land, in order to heal and restore it. Our contemporary Indigenous brothers and sisters are the descendants of ancient and noble First Nations peoples who have occupied and cared for this continent for well over 65,000 years. And they have a wisdom and a cultural insight that is not only precious and unique to this place, but that we, the contemporary generations of Australians who live in this time of environmental degradation and climate change, can ill afford to ignore. In being reconciled to them, may we be reconciled to the land, the universe and ultimately with the timeless God, eternal, ever new.
Creator God
We pray in thanksgiving
For the gift of this land on which we live
And for those who have cared for it over countless generations before us.
May we see with the eyes of our Indigenous sisters and brothers
Your presence revealed to us
In the grandeur of this ancient landscape;
Tracks of your presence that weave across hill, rock, tree and soil.
Inspire us from this day to care for your creation
With the same respect and reverence as the first peoples of this land.
May we live as one people
United by our common connection to this earth
And the sacredness of this place
That gives us life.
Creator God, thank you for the gift of this land
And the noble history and heritage that it’s ancient story
Sings to us.
Amen
