19th February, 2005

DAVID ADAMS

“Dear Aboriginal people, the hour has come for you to take on new courage and new hope. You are called to remember the past, to be faithful to your worthy traditions, and to adapt your living culture whenever this is required by your own needs and those of your fellow man. Above all you are called to open your hearts ever more to the consoling, purifying and uplifting message of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died so that we might all have life, and have it to the full.”   - Pope John Paul II, 1986

It was late November, 1986. It had been a hot day and over Blatherskite Park, just outside Alice Springs Gap, there was a storm brewing with lightning flickering across the sky.

There was an air of expectancy as the thousands who had gathered at the park heard Pope John Paul II deliver a speech which resonates in the ears of many Christians - and indigenous Australian Christians in particular - to this very day.

"Within the church, there’s that question of have we really taken up God’s challenge of bringing indigenous culture within our churches?” - Graeme Mundine, NATSIEC executive secretary

In a statement which many see as unparalleled in its proclaimation of the dignity and importance of indigenous Australians, the Pope spoke of the rocky relationship between indigenous Australians and those from overseas who came to settle here, of their ongoing struggle on issues such as land rights and of the invitation Jesus Christ had extended to them through acceptance of which they would be made “more than ever truly Aboriginal”.

“You are part of Australia and Australia is part of you,” he said. “And the Church herself in Australia will not fully be 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.”

Now, in a new initiative aimed at putting indigenous issues squarely back at the centre of Australian concerns, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission is planning to commemorate his visit in October next year with a number of events next year running under the banner of “Dreaming from the heart” and culminating in a week-long conference aimed at putting the issues of indigenous Australians squarely back at the centre of the national consciousness.

This week, to kick-off the lead-up to next year’s event, the commission - an arm of the National Council of Churches - is holding the first of a series of forums around the country to look back at what has changed since the Pope’s speech and to look at the ways forward for Australia - both as a nation and a church.

Graeme Mundine, executive secretary of NATSIEC, will be speaking at the forums alongside keynote speakers including Bishop James Leftwich, NATSIEC’s chairman and the Aboriginal Bishop for the Anglican Church, Vicki Walker of the Aborignal Catholic Ministry, and Dr Jill Tabart, former president of the Uniting Church in Australia. Local church representatives will also be invited to speak.

Mundine says the purpose of the “Hearts are Burning” forums is aimed at highlighting whether any progress on indigenous issues had been made since the Pope’s visit.

“The talks themselves are to highlight that the Pope spoke 20 years ago and (to look at whether) things really changed? He advocated about landrights and yes, we do have a thing called native title, but is it working for Aboriginal people? The area of health, education and housing - the effects of colonisation - have we really addressed those 20 years down the track? And also, within the church, there’s that question of have we really taken up God’s challenge of bringing indigenous culture within our churches?”

While many churches have introduced groups aimed at working with Aboriginal people, Mundine says the question remains open as to whether such moves have been embraced by the church as a whole.

“Has it really been joyfully received by the church?”

Mundine says that the history between Aboriginals and those who arrived in the past few hundred years remains an issue that has never truly been resolved in Australia.

“It’s been described by a few people - including Bishop Bruce Wilson, an Anglican Bishop who’s retired now, of the Bathurst Diocese - as...’Australia’s original sin’. It’s something that’s there and has never really been addressed and if we don’t really address it, it will always be there eating away at our soul.

“I think that’s probably very true - that here we are even 20 years after the Pope’s speech - and it’s still eating us. We still have the worst houses, worst health records, our fellow Australians are still dying 20 years earlier than mainstream society. And that’s something that’s atrocious. We see what’s happening in Sudan and places like that, but some of that’s happening here in our own country.”

Mundine says incidents such as the recent events in Palm Island and the T.J. Hickey case in Redfern have shown that for many indigenous Australians the “fires of injustice are still burning strongly”.

The forums, he says, are about re-sparking the conversation on indigenous issues among all Australians.

“Can our hearts also burn with hope and a renewed sense of justice as we walk together on a new road?”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Aboriginal Catholic Elizabeth Pike in an article which will form part of the presentation at the forums.

“As our stories are beginning to be heard and the new green shoots of the burnt tree are slowly breaking through, there is also a deep and humble responsibility to be observed. We have to be worthy keepers of our New Dreaming, just as our Ancestral Dream Keepers were strong and trustworthy in their belief that the true spirit of the land came from the Great Spirit of all creation...

“This then is the answer to the question posed at the beginning, why remember the Pope's Speech, why celebrate 20 years down the track? Rebirth must always continue. It is essential to keep alive the truth and hope that was given to us, in order to keep the Dream alive and to enrich this nation to become the nation it was meant to be.”