Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime and watched Enough Rope by Andrew Denton.
His first Interview was with Tania Major who is the current Young Australian of the Year.
She...had...me...glued...
Here is the interview if you want to watch/read it.
I grew up in Cairns (I completely understand the whole no wearing shoes to school) where the Aboriginal/Islander kids out numbered the white kids and then moved to WA where I did not school with ONE indiginous kid. I have been to Port Hedland on mission trips and worked in a couple of communities.
This young woman was so passionate about bringing change that it was so contagious. She got me all passionate!
The question I was left with was, What can I do? What are we as 'the church' doing about this major crisis in our country.
Here is one interesting fact that they mentioned last night that I will leave you with:
"Before the ‘67 referendum, Aboriginal people were classified as Fauna under the Act."
WHAT will you do?
28.8.07
Enough Rope and not enough sleep...
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3 comments:
What to do? I don't know if I have any answers of particlar value.
You know what I am not interested in seeing? I am not interested in going to another official gathering where they bring in an Aboriginal person and invite them to the front to say, "akanaba tooohooki touni poohroochi kanzanar." (That is gibberish, btw...not my attempt at Noongar.) Then they say, "That is Noongar for 'We recognise the Noongar people as the traditional owners of this land.'" and they walk off the stage and aren't invited to take part in the proceedings any further.
I am tired of every gathering having a token Aboriginal get up and "do something" aboriginal. It is like people finding out I speak Japanese and saying, "Say something in Japanese." It is wierd - because it is meaningless. They won't understand, it isn't a way for us to communicate and it is just a show. Is THAT what we want? No. But that is what we get more often than not, with the lipservice being paid to reconciliation.
I am a Yank, so I try to keep quiet about issues like this, but I had somebody here in Oz tell me once, "I want to go to America because I want to study racial issues, and I understand there are serious problems in the U.S." I doubt that person will ever learn anything about race relations. Why? Because they can't recognise the issues when they are staring them in the face. There are racial issues in the US? Yes. But do you have to travel there to study racial stress? HA!
You know what we need to do? We need to treat people who are different from us like they AREN'T fauna -- made for our viewing pleasure. We need to ask ourselves, and them, if there are ways we can relate to them as fellow human beings. That is the right kind of relationship. ...and that is what reconciliation is. It is being brought back into right relationship.
There's my rant for the day. :-D
Thats a really good point. "being brought back into right relationship" although I highly doubt we were EVER in a right relationship.
I also dont mean that the church is to head off and preach them to death. But actually DO something in the communities.
I have no idea what but I am interested to see if people have ideas or if there is something that we can get on board with.
Agreed. We didn't ever have a "right relationship", but I am suggesting we should still be seeking to bring it back to where it should be. That is what I mean when I say "back to right relationship". It is like reconciliation w/ God. We didn't start with a right relationship, but we can "come back to a right relationship" because we can come back to where we should have been all along. ;-)
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