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'It has been helpful to have the Pope offer the encouragement that there need not be any conflict between Christian faith and Aboriginal culture. But Aboriginal culture is often founded on religious beliefs which find and express God's self-communication outside of Christ and the Church's seven sacraments.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Culturally Enriched Through the Gospel' at the NATSICC Conference on 1 October 2012.
Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's opening keynote address at the Higher Degree Research Retreat, Rydges Eaglehawk, Canberra, 4 August 2012.
Most Australians would agree that it’s time to free the Constitution from all vestiges of racial discrimination. For this, it needs an amendment affirming the status as Indigenous Australians as equal citizens. But in the current political climate, a referendum is unlikely to produce the necessary super majority of electors in four of the six states voting in favour.
The wound of colonisation is not yet healed. The so-called Stronger Futures legislation, which will extend and deepen some of the worst aspects of the NT Intervention, is built on the falsehood that the wound does not exist or is an Aboriginal problem. But it is an Australian problem. It is our problem.
I will never forget the look on her face. I had asked her a simple question. But I had used her language. She seemed shocked that a white person would even try. Indigenous languages offer rich ways to describe and name our world, and valuable insights and knowledge for all Australians.
If Dickens wished to address the deprivation and discrimination suffered by Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers today, he would need to turn to the popular media. But even though he was superbly gifted for the genre, his telly series would most likely flop.
Too often I've opened my front door and found myself tempted by some sales pitch. So today I'd answered warily, spoke through the screen door and tried to keep the encounter brief. 'I'm sorry, but we're not interested.' The salesman knew better: 'It's because of the colour of my skin,' he replied.
Those who have been aware of racism in the Constitution and prepared to tolerate it, have effectively blessed the attitude that it's acceptable to regard Indigenous Australians as second class citizens in theory as long as we treat them as equals in practice.
I had time to spare, so I grabbed a bite to eat and found a bench in the park opposite the cathedral. I was approached by four young Aboriginal people. I told them I'd come for a funeral: 'You might have known him, Father Mick Hayes?' 'He, that tall grey one? He knew me when I was a little fella.'
Noel Pearson sees self-interest as key to the flourishing of Aboriginal communities. But traditionally self-interest did not occur to the Aboriginal mentality. In the pre-'scientific kinship system, everything was inter-related and inter-dependent. Can the concepts co-exist?
I have just returned from visiting friends in remote Aboriginal communities. It was a sad trip. A large number of young people have died in recent years, some close friends. They represent the trifecta of young peoples' deaths: car accidents, suicides and chronic disease.
Fell into riveting conversation recently. We talked about Australia's and Oregon's history with assisted suicide, the plight of Indigenous Australians, and his views on the personal and public profiles of Cardinal George Pell. Here's how it happened.
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