STATEMENT ON RECONCILIATION.

 

Jesus simply says, "By this shall all people know you as my disciples, by the way you love one another" Jn.13.35 Paul teases out this idea when he says that, "Love withstands anger and forgives offences. It does not take delight in the wrong but rejoices with the truth". 1 Cor.13. 5,6. John Paul II specified what this means in an Australian context in an address to the Aboriginal people at Alice Springs in 1986. He said: " The Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received by others." Reconciliation with Aboriginal people is not a question of "bleeding hearts" but a Christian imperative.Reconciliation Plaque Rossmoyne - Fr Seamus Freeman SAC, Pallottine Fr General

The Pallottines, a group of Brothers and Priests who have been privileged to work with Aboriginal people for the last 100 years, have endorsed the principles and practical measures contained in this statement. These insights on reconciliation are offered from their experience.

  • All human beings, to live a meaningful life, need surety about their individuality and their links to community. Our individual identity is strongly linked to our place in the society in which we live. In discreet societies this link to community is uncomplicated. Where a new society enters the scene, the question of a person’s standing in the reconstituted community takes on another dimension. His/her status as an individual within that community is redefined.

  • The Australian Aboriginal people had a well-defined societal structure. It established the status of individuals and their role in society. Relationships with neighbouring Aboriginal people were regulated. With the permanent arrival of European people towards the end of the 18th century, all this changed.

  • For Aboriginal people, as indeed for most cultures, language, land and interpersonal interaction lie at the heart of culture. With European settlement, suddenly a people with a foreign language arrived and their views on land were radically different. The relationship between the two groups was at best problematic and at worst hostile. The two groups had competing and, at most times, confrontational attitudes to land, law and world outlook.

  • All cultures and societies have in and out groups. Those from a different group are inevitably viewed with suspicion. Where these initial attitudes are strengthened by an outlook based on the presumed superior self-image of the new group, antagonism, disrespect and even worse manifestations will result.

  • The Europeans who settled the Australian continent were people struggling to come to grips with a new environment. Subtlety of approach was a luxury few could indulge. It was inevitable that there was an incomplete grasp of Aboriginal language, approach to land and cross-cultural exchanges. We can hardly claim such mitigating circumstances in our relationships with Aboriginal people at the start of the new millennium.

  • It was inevitable that profound changes would take place in Aboriginal society. Language would be under immense pressure to survive. The binding to land and its spiritual significance would be pressured by a new concept of economic use of resources. The intricate subtleties of relationships in Aboriginal society would be barely known, let alone grasped. Cultural clashes are typical of colonised lands. We cannot deny the history of European colonisation of Australia. Australia is a vastly different land environmentally, economically and demographically from the place where Governor Phillip landed in 1788.

  • We can rightly plead it was not our doing. But there are still remedies that are both appropriate and possible to further reconciliation:

 

  1. An acknowledgement in law and in attitude from all Australians that the Aboriginal peoples were the prior owners, occupiers and custodians of this land.

  2. Meaningful, practical and generous spirited support for feasible solutions that flow from juridical decisions such as the Mabo and Wik. Where a legal basis for ongoing connection to land exists, the Aboriginal people must have a decisive input with regard to any future use.

  3. Practical support in both the education and cultural fields for Aboriginal languages and their use as a valued cultural expression of a unique people.

  4. Support for the retelling of Aboriginal myths, stories and histories and a meaningful effort by all to understand the spiritual wedding of Aboriginal people to their land and its implications.

  5. Encouragement and active support to indigenise liturgy, prayer forms and devotional exercises tailored to the mind and cultural expression of Aboriginal people.

Mike McMahon, SAC (Regional Superior)
Shelley WA. May 6th 2001

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