Conference Report: Raising our Tribal Voice for Justice – An Indigenous Theological Revolution

Conference Report: Raising our Tribal Voice for Justice – An Indigenous Theological Revolution
St Paschal’s College, Box Hill, Victoria
5-8 February 2024

CONFERENCE REPORT
This report focuses on a groundbreaking four-day conference held under the auspices of the School of Indigenous Studies established in 2022 by the University of Divinity. Professor Anne Pattel-Gray, the doyen of Australian Indigenous scholars, was appointed in 2022 as the first Head of School. She was born at Winton as a descendant of the Bidjara nations in Queensland and is a member of the Uniting Church of Australia which was one of the sponsors of the conference. Every speaker was either Australian or Pasifika indigenous for the first three days until the leaders of or representatives from the different Christian bodies gave their reflections on the final day. The conference format consisted of keynote presentations and panel sessions together with discussion groups on the four themes of truth, reparations, treaty, justice and reconciliation. A feature of the conference was that many speakers yarned about their own personal stories and experiences as indigenous.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

Professor Anne Pattel-Gray:
Australia’s Redemption: Founded on a First Nations’ Theology of Restorative Justice

Opening the Conference, Professor Pattel-Gray asked for patience and openness to our First Peoples’ theologians because their presentations would be confronting and challenging. We need to raise the banner of truth. There are so many nations in Australia who hold so many secrets about the theft of their lands, the denial of our humanity, the massacres, the rapes, the poisonings, the continuing imprisonment of our young people and the stolen children. In the racist oppression, we were expendable, and it was done in the name of God, King and Country.

It thus was a massive sin. Lip service is paid to restitution but not much has happened, robbing us of the opportunity to thrive. The ‘NO’ Voice result on 14th. October, 2023 said, “we First Peoples do not matter”. And a major cause was Peter Dutton’s and the Liberal Party’s Fascist racism.

The Church also needs to recognise its sin of colonisation and its own inaction, and begin a ministry of reconciliation. We have been given an empty apology without full restitution to my people. The churches have failed to recognise how they benefited from dispossession. And theological training in universities and seminaries has to be reformed. The churches have to be de-colonized.

Real repentance is needed on the part of the churches for what they did to our peoples. We, indigenous and non-indigenous, can join together to work for a JUST RECONCILIATION as called for by Christ and develop a new narrative. ‘The truth will set us free’. We must become Christ ambassadors and God is calling us to radical change. And yet some evangelical Christians are still trying to colonise us with their Bibles. We all must begin reading the Bible through indigenous eyes.

Dr. Josephine Bourne

Insights into Torres Strait Islander Theological Perspectives

Dr. Brown began by giving a geography and history lesson of the Torres Straits Islands, distinguishing between the eastern and western islands. There are 274 islands with 17 being inhabited. Close to 5,000 people live there. One of the eastern islands was Mer where Eddie Mabo lived and mounted his famous landmark legal case against the doctrine of terra nullius. The British arrived in 1862 to assert administrative control and the London Missionary Society arrived in 1871 and every July 1st their arrival is celebrated. Dr. Bourne, who lectures in political science at the University of Queensland, is a Gumulgaw/Goemulgaw woman from the Mabulag Island, a small island of 253 people in the Bellevue Islands group where the language is Kala Lagaw Ya.

Dr. Bourne spoke about the insidious nature of colonisation, including the messing up of tribal law, especially about the politics of knowledge and the intersection between Torres Strait theology and Biblical literature. Traditional knowledge went underground with the arrival of the missionaries. Western anthropologists did not properly understand Torres Strait Island culture. Truth-telling will undo this. Knowledge is more than the five senses, and the real conversations have not been had. Everything is connected to everything else contrary to the West’s compartmentalised system. Hence, the tension between the different knowledge systems, especially the notion of sovereignty. The western notion of sovereignty legitimises violence whereas sovereignty in the Torres Strait Islands is related to the cosmos. Welcome to country is an expression of sovereignty, We have our own creation stories and the reciprocity principle is another basis of our traditional religion. Contemporary Torres Strait Island theology is now a combination of traditional indigenous theology and points of synergy and convergence with Biblical literature.

Professor Stan Grant
Yindyamarra: The Love of the Afflicted

Professor Stan Grant began his presentation with the words, “A sense of God is deep in me”, and his deep sense of Christian faith was evident throughout his presentation in this former SBS/ABC/CNN journalist. He is currently close to completing a Doctorate in Theology at Charles Sturt University where he holds the Chair of Indigenous/Australian Belonging. In 2023 he published The Queen is Dead. He is a Wiradjuri man from south-central New South Wales and he mentioned how as a child his family were homeless moving from town to town.

He began by quoting from Galatians how a love of justice comes from Christ, and how justice comes from love, and love comes down from the cross. As an indigenous man, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The answer is hope, quoting both the theologian Jurgen Moltmann and Tertullian who wrote, “Hope is patience with the lamp burnt”. Hope is so important and it is very important to keep hope alive, with our people still waiting for hope. Since the No vote, I have been listening and hoping for hope. He digressed into the proliferation of the lies and the sadism that permeate the media. He quoted Luke 23:9 where Jesus refused to answer Herod. Sometimes it is necessary to be silent.

The tribal voice is a voice tested in sorrow and destruction. I want to challenge myself by saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing”.

He ended by outlining four ‘provocations’ that trouble him. The first he began by quoting Simone Weil, “I must love being nothing; how horrible it would be to be someone”. She wrote about love, and to stop loving is to stay living in hell. The child of indifference and evil has affected my people; we need silence and the warmth of love but we are given icy pandemonium. There is no chance of listening to us. We must become nothing.

In beginning his second ‘provocation’, he quoted from Jurgen Moltmann and his experiences during WWII on how the crucifixion defines our relationship with God and how central forgiveness is to understanding the crucifixion. Thomas Hobbes has described life as short, nasty and brutish and this applies to our indigenous people. Sovereignty is about control but in fact it comes from God and from ourselves. The highest act of sovereignty is forgiveness. Stan Grant went on to reminisce about his reporting on wars, especially the very brutal war between the Serbs and the Croats. Violence destroys us, quoting Miroslav Volk, the theologian, and yet we are forgiven.

His third provocation concerned time, quoting David Mowaljarlai, a First Peoples philosopher who claims, “I am only present, no longer past and no longer future. How do I live in future?” He is outside time yet Western time is always moving forward. God left when the British came and we became gods ourselves. The Alpha and the Omega – this is what Aborigines believe. He then quoted Nicholas of Cusa.

His fourth provocation is the question: can we embrace pluralism and still hold onto God? Do we supernaturalise the natural or naturalise the supernatural? The supernatural in fact must come first before the natural. We cannot separate the spiritual and the political. Stan Grant would speak of liberation as salvation. Modernity is in crisis and the ethical dimension whether in liberalism or socialism or democracy is exhausted. Finally he drew attention to Yindyamarra, Wiradjuri spirituality. He quoted his father, “Language does not tell you who you are, but where you are”.

Rev. Canon Dr Garry Deverell,
Christ as Country: Changing the Frame for Christology Gondwana

Dr. Garry Deverell is one of the three First Nations priests in the Anglican Archdiocese of Melbourne. He is a Trawloolway man from north-western Tasmania. He is a co-founder of the School of Indigenous Studies, and has published three books: Gondwana Theology (2018), The Bonds of Freedom (2008) and Contemplating Country (2023).

He began by acknowledging Bunjil as the Ancestral Creator God. This land is our country. This country is us and we are country. The Christology we received understood the incarnation of the divine in exclusively human terms. For the missionaries, Christ was primarily Jesus of Nazareth, now incarnate in the corporate body of the Church and the Sacraments. Aboriginal tradition focuses on the incarnation of the primordial reality in the dreaming of country as a patterned cosmos. Can the two traditions talk to each other?

Yes, by way of analogy in developing a Christology of country. The two traditions can talk to each other as everything is mediated through language and culture. The renderings of reality can talk to each other without swallowing the other as European theology does. If Christ is to be worshipped, it needs to be located with country as centre, not in the humanum and in terms of:

• Christ as cosmos
• Christ as seed
• Christ as staple food and drink
• Christ as ancestral voice
• Christ as teaching custodian

Christ as Cosmos: Dr. Deverell began by reading Col. 1:15-20, “His is that first birth of all creation which precedes every act of creation. Yes, in him all created things took their being, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible … … …” Christ was not just an individual human but a cosmic being. In our dreaming stories, the earth came from the stars, walking down the Milky Way. Country is a constant dying so as other can come into being.

Christ as Seed: He quoted Jn 12:23-24, “The time has come for the Son of Man to achieve his glory. Believe me when I tell you this: a grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die, or else it remains nothing more than a grain of wheat; but if it dies, then it yields rich fruit”. For John, the pinnacle of Christ’s life is the cross, not the resurrection. He dies to make room for the other. The death of a seed leads to a plant. Christ is the dying grain to give life.

Christ as Staple Food and Drink: 1 Cor. 11:23-26, “Take, eat, take and drink. And so it is the Lord’s death that you are heralding, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, until he comes”. Christ took the bread and the wine, the staple foods of the Mediterranean diet. In our Aboriginal thinking, the yam and the waters from our waters are our staple diet. It directly relates to the cycle of life on country. Jesus is always dying so as he can come again just like country.

Christ as Ancestral Voice: Hebrews 7:1,3, Heb 7:15-17. “It was this Melchisedech, King of Salem … … no name of father or mother, no pedigree … when a fresh priest arises to fulfil the type of Melchisedech, appointed, not to obey the law, with its outward observances but in the power of an unending life”. Christ and Melchisedech, his priesthood is not based on Hebrew priests but of Melchisedech who was an indigenous from creation itself, that is, country. Christ mediates the primordial priesthood. He is like Bunjil.

Christ as Teaching Custodian: Mt. 13:31-32, “The kingdom of heaven, he said, is like a grain of mustard seed, that a man has taken and sowed in his ground; of all seeds, none is so little, but when it grows up it is greater than any garden herb; it grows into a tree so that all the birds come and settle in its branches”. Many of Christ’s observations are built on the non-human. Christ is country but also a teacher about country, just as we hear about country from our ancestors and elders.

What are the implications for a common Christian ethic on country? We have a God who is the ecosphere, not simply concerned only with humans. The command to love our neighbour must include our furred, beaked and feathered neighbours and additionally the command to love the movements of the rivers, the clouds and the seas. The naming of evil might now include the naming of colonial assaults on country.

In the questions that followed, Dr. Deverell was challenged on sacrifice and the shedding of blood. And another comment focused on sin in the Genesis narrative. We have five things: language, culture, law, kinship and ceremony. There is no place for hell. Our culture has been colonised, including our way of thinking. We cannot see it all.

Associate Professor Glenn Loughrey, another Anglican Aboriginal priest, spoke of how our indigenous culture has always been matriarchal. Aunties hold knowledge whereas white patriarchal hegemony wants to take everything and possess everything. 65,000 of our people died in the search for land for sheep and cattle. We inhabit a theology that does not work for us. Being Aboriginal is enough!.

John Lochowiak
Evolving Role of the Australian Catholic Churches in the Inculturation of the Liturgy

John, who has been the head of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Catholic Council whose offices are in Adelaide, was born in Coober Pedy. The next NATSICC Assembly will be held in Newcastle in 2025. He began his presentation by singing a spiritual song using two of his tribal languages and playing the tap sticks. He emphasised the importance of respect and of the acknowledgement and welcome to country as reflecting the ethical duty of care. While there were 6 million Yes votes, we cannot do it on our own. He mentioned there had only ever been one First Nations priest, namely Patrick Dodson, who had fallen out with the bishops over incorporating indigenous elements into the liturgy. Lochowiak quoted Deacon Boniface (1937-2019), the first Aboriginal deacon, that “we knew God before the arrival of the Great Southern Land. The Biblical stories are like our stories”. Aborigines have been living synodality since time memorial. John Lochowiak spoke of the world view of the Tjukurrpa as built around the trinity (three-in-one) of the physical world, the human world and the sacred world, and this has helped him accept the Trinity.

Inculturation involves educating the community and sharing stories, including explaining the totem system. Only 50% of Catholics voted Yes. People in the pews do not understand our culture and could not see the connections. He told a final story of a priest and the archbishop who on one occasion had baptized 500 Aboriginal people. A bit later, the archbishop sees them all participating in a corroboree and says to himself, “this is wrong, this is pagan’, and he went up to stop them but saw that the priest was enthusiastically dancing in the celebratory, thanksgiving corroboree. So the archbishop too joined in.

He mentioned that the first National Aboriginal Liturgy was held fifty years ago at Melbourne’s 1973 International Eucharistic Congress.

Naomi Wolfe,
Rebuilding Theological Houses for Better Hospitality

Naomi Wolfe is a Trawloolway woman from north-west Tasmania and director of the Academic Programs at NAIITS College (North American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies to which Whitley College in Melbourne is linked). She comes out of the Anglican and Catholic traditions. She also lectures at the Australian Catholic University. She is an expert on the first century historian Flavius Josephus. She began by telling us how her Aunt Eileen had been a victim of the 2009 Victorian bushfires in which 173 people had been victims. She struggled in her grief until she fully appreciated the Christian faith.

There is now an expectation that young Aboriginals will go onto university, and we older ones must encourage them. She studied in NAIITS and also in Western institutions.

Now I want programs to be religiously rigorous and academically rigorous. We must de-colonise our own thinking. Theology is dying because there are fewer students.

Reflecting on Isaias 45:12, “It was I who framed the earth, and created man to dwell in it; it was my hands that spread out the heavens, my voice that marshalled the starry host”, she asked, why could the colonial Church not see us as humans made in the image of God? Why could they not see the value of our ceremonies? The indigenous understand ceremony. The churches are finding it hard to divorce themselves from their colonial heritage. There must be truth telling and truth acceptance of which there is so little. We are patronized by the theological houses and seminaries. God is our validation. We must de-colonise what they teach and defuse the various angers and begin healing. What will non-indigenous Christians do to stop colonialization thinking?

Rev. Dr. Katalina Tahaafe Williams
Conspiracies of Hope

Dr. Katalina Tahaafe Williams is a Pasifika woman who is in charge of the central Uniting Church in Perth. She asked the question, ‘how do we theologise on stolen land? All churches were complicit in dispossession and colonization. But we have a problem with hope. As a Christian one must be helpful and hopeful. But hope never works for the hopeless. Hope is the technique of the oppressor. It offers change without change. It is the psychological tool of the coloniser. It predicates the non-realism of those dispossessed.

Peace does not preclude anger – a theme under-explored in theology. But it needs to be carefully managed as Jesus did in the Temple. There is such a thing as prophetic anger, and involves speaking truth to power. There is such a thing as the misappropriation of victimhood and anger can be used against the collective amnesia of the churches. We know from addiction and mental health studies about the conspiracy of hope where hope is falsely used. Cultural and religious mobilisation can be supportive to change and to counteract the culture of hopelessness. We will need to form communities of hope where First Nations people can be supported in full collaboration to resist the racism of the majority of the Australian people.

Rev. Dr. Denise Champion
Creator, Mother Earth and Our Place in Her Family

Dr. Denise Champion is from the Adnyamathanha Nation in the Flinders Ranges. She is an ordained minister of the Uniting Church of Australia. God created people to be stewards of the land and the Aboriginal people lived at peace with the land before being pushed off the land. Nakedness was a sign of the idyllic nature of Aboriginal land with Big Brother Son and Grandfather Mountains. The land is our mother and humans were formed from its clay. And we will return to the earth. It hurts us when we see our earth being destroyed. It is like being raped. And we must understand the pain of Mother Earth. Thus we must care for our mother because the earth mother feeds us.

The land speaks to us and too much noise as everyday living can get in the way. We need to go out on country and sit and listen. Our elders would mimic the sounds and songs of the birds and weave them into stories as part of the right relationship with the Creator.

 

 

PANEL SESSIONS

There were a series of panel sessions comprising three panellists who made short presentations. For this report, I will select those that were noteworthy. Remember that every speaker is indigenous.

Mikenzie King
Is Land My Mother? An Australian Aboriginal Theology of Custodianship and Connection to Country
Mikenzie Ling is a young Wiradjuri woman who gave a presentation of her Master’s thesis. She asked First Nations pastors and theologians the question, Is the Land My Mother?

She grew not connected to country. My personal journey has been one of reconnecting to my Aboriginality and connecting to land. Indigenous theology begins with land which must be intrinsically tied to life. The custodianship of land affirms the sovereignty of God and our connection to God. The Creator God revealed himself through land, our stories, our rituals. And we have our land and sky theories.

Land is entity and is our family. The earth is a living unity. Treating land as less than sacred is central to colonial Christianity. Indigenous sovereignty was disrupted by the invasion. The Church undermined Aboriginal sovereignty and our custodianship, and contemporary theology has to visit and engage with this in greater depth. We have become visitors to our own land.

Neil Pattel
The Over-Representation of Indigenous Youth in the Criminal Justice System

Neil Pattel is a prison officer and youth worker in Townsville. He presented the results of his Master’s thesis. Youth crime is endemic in indigenous communities. And various past interventions have all failed. The figures show that 59% of all youth detainees in Australia are indigenous. And there are many factors. Indigenous youth are 25 more times to be imprisoned than non-indigenous youth. Worse, 85% of 12 and 13 year-olds are indigenous. It is due to the colonial legacy: poverty, unemployment and so on and the assimilationist policies of the 1950s. Unfortunately many indigenous youth leave school in Year 9.

Auntie Jean Phillips

The University of Divinity awarded a Doctorate of Divinity (honoris causa) to Auntie Jean Phillips for her sixty years of Aboriginal service. She has a Baptist background. She began by speaking about her growing up on the Cherbourg Mission in Queensland which has been described as a seedbed for Aboriginal religious leadership. She spoke about her work with the Aboriginal Inland Service and the Bible College at Singleton. She praised the wonderful Aboriginal pastors who unfortunately were not invited into white society. We Aboriginal missionaries were not fully supported by the churches. “Please, get to know us”.

 

 

RESPONSES BY CHURCH LEADERS

On the fourth day of the conference, the leaders of the nation’s churches or their representatives were invited to respond to what they had heard.

Lt. Colonel Greg Morgan
Salvation Army

The Salvation Army was one of the sponsors of the Conference. He acknowledged the land of the Wurundjeri people. He said it was a privilege to listen and learn so “I come humbly’”. There is deep work still to be done. There is an indigenous advisory council and also an indigenous ministry unit and a territorian reconciliation unit. The priorities are
1. Truth telling to hear the stories,
2. Social justice and advocacy,
3. Commitment to cultural immersion experiences, including for trainees,
4. Returning artefacts and
5. Engaging in how to respond to requests.

It has been transformative but we are on a journey.

Rev. John Gilmore President,
National Council of Churches of Australia

I live in Naarm (Melbourne). The National Council of Churches of Australia accepts the special place of Aborigines and how they have suffered intergenerational trauma. As it says in the Book of Job, I want to sit up and listen. He recalled the dispute in the early Church about whether non-Jewish Christians should be circumcised or not as paralleling the direction that must be taken in theology.

Rev. Sharon Hollis, President,
Uniting Church of Australia

The Uniting Church had been a sponsor of the conference. We must own the history for it is our sin. It is our desire to lament and do more; we have not honoured our covenant, we are not an honourable partner. We are the second peoples and we need to speak and speak of our racism. And accept the European voraciousness to take and to dominate. I want every member of the Uniting Church to be accountable. Do not let us off the hook. Rev. Hollis made every Uniting Church member in the audience stand and own the process.

Bishop Keith Joseph
Anglican Bishop of North Queensland

Before his appointment to North Queensland Bishop Keith had worked in the Solomon Islands. He has 20 priests in his diocese of whom 9 are indigenous. His diocese has autonomous indigenous councils. But its biggest problem is lack of money and the bishop gets no help from any other diocese.

He spoke of Australia’s 23 Anglican dioceses each of which is independent. We now have an Aboriginal bishop. The history has been sour. He especially implored clergy to come north to the Torres Strait Islands, and there was a need to interact more with the Melanesian peoples.

Bishop Charles Gauci,
Catholic Bishop of Darwin

Bishop Gauci was scheduled to speak but sent a note saying he had too many pastoral engagements. He chairs the relevant bishops’ commission. He sent along Fr. Don Benedetti, a Missionary of God’s Love and a prison chaplain in the Northern Territory. He is in charge of St. Martin de Porres Church in Darwin which was given to the local indigenous community following Pope John Paul’s visit to Alice Springs in 1986. Fr. Benedetti was accompanied by Dean Chisholm, an indigenous seminarian, who is due to be ordained this year.

The 1986 speech of Pope John Paul II was recalled calling for justice, and NATSICC was initiated in 1989 to advise the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. On the question of a treaty, he wants his people to advise him.

Rev. Rob Knighthouse, representative
Churches of Christ

He said that the Church’s indigenous unit continues to wrestle with the issues, and indigenous churches had been formed. The aim was to build a healthier future.

Jane Hope
Quaker

She is currently doing a Masters Course in Spiritual Direction. She began by mentioning that her own family had arrived in 1841. She acknowledged the lie of terra nullius, the land theft and all the other lies. She gave a short history of how the Society of Friends began in the UK. She said that indigenous theology is transformative, and emphasised the importance of truth acceptance.

Rev. Dr. Peter Crutchly,
Director of the Council of World Mission and Evangelism,
World Council of Churches

Peter Crutchley had previously worked for the London Missionary Society. ‘I speak from the midst of the colonial missionary project’. He quoted Luke 18: 1-8 the parable of the auntie and the judge. We need to lay down our sinfulness. The British Empire says, It is not enough. White regret is not enough IT IS NOT ENOUGH. Whiteness is a cannibal, devouring the land, the people, the money. Aborigines do not feel safe in white churches. A new world is badly needed. Anne Pattel-Gray is a member of our Council.

The session was rounded off by Professor Gabielle McMillan, the Deputy Chancellor of the University of Divinity, who said that the Conference had vindicated the Council’s decision to establish a School of Indigenous Studies and thanked all participants.

The final word of the conference came from Professor Anne Pattel-Gray. She strongly stated that she wants to see the churches driving the agenda for a treaty and we have to hold the churches accountable. We are all called to be prophetic. It is your sin, the sin of white Christians, that we carry. We are so beaten by oppression. We have buried too many of our peoples before their time. You are locking up our children. Do not be silent any more. The media won’t listen to us but they may listen to you. Use God’s power to bring a treaty, to act justly, we want to be able to flourish and thrive. You have too many assets and too much land. Let us be open to God in this conversation. Let it be the beginning of our future. We do not want to remain in the margins. Open the doors and let us in. And we are still hurting from the referendum.

The conference concluded with those who wished to make a formal pledge to support Australia’s First Nations Peoples. The closing worship was focused on Bunjil and Jesus.