Anglican Bishop Richard Treloar of Gippsland spoke directly when he addressed the Yoorrook Justice Commission May 1: “It’s pretty hard to preach the gospel on stolen land.”
Australia is only beginning come to terms with its First Nations people. There’s a push for national truth-telling, but the Yoorrook Justice Commission, in the state of Victoria, is the only justice commission yet established.
Roman Catholic and Uniting (Protestant) church representatives appeared at the commission alongside Anglicans. They were asked about their churches’ roles in the colonial venture in Australia since 1788, and their participation in missions, places of confinement, and orphanages for Aboriginal people.
“Our church partnered with the colonial government to implement policies and practices that were and continue to be profoundly harmful to First Nations people in Victoria,” Bishop Treloar said, adding that these actions were grounded in “deep-seated and pervasive racism from which our church is far from immune.”
He said the “original sin” of Australia’s colonization was a “complete disregard for the rights of the Indigenous population and acting without consent.”
It’s a point the Yoorrook commissioners drove home hard. They cited a “linguicide,” or churches’ culpability in silencing the Indigenous languages. They asked about the negation of Indigenous people’s spirituality.
And they asked how much churches have invested to help Indigenous people reclaim their culture and identity, “which the organizations that you represent knowingly and strategically took away from our people.”
Solid support is a particularly sore point for churches, as many grants of land occurred, and in many cases, churches still occupy those sites. Stolen land is less obvious if it has been washed through many changes of title.
Anglicans have made national apologies, in 1988, on the 200th anniversary of the first Church of England service in Australia, and from General Synod in 1998 for churches’ complicity and silence on a report titled Bringing Them Home.
But for the hard questions about real redress, there are no hard answers.
The Rev. Garry Deverell, canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne and a trawlwoolway man from northern lutruwita/Tasmania, told TLC he had said everything he needed to say in an article for the ABC. “Scraps from the table” sums it up, and Canon Deverell said that despite plenty of handwringing, “the church has no concept of what justice for mob might look like, nor are they inclined to give it much thought.”
He is deeply saddened that churches seem unable to repent, to do everything possible to heal the wounds they have caused.
“The paradox, here, is that Aboriginal people — most of whom have nothing to do with the church anymore — are very often better at following Jesus than settlers are. Our own dreaming traditions teach us to share what we have with others … so that everyone may live both sustainably and equitably on the gift that is country,” Canon Deverell wrote.
Further north, the Rev. Canon Auntie Di Langham is director of reconciliation for the Diocese of Newcastle. She said that although church leaders spoke in support of the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, parishioners were often dubious or even hostile, “almost as though they were doing me a favor and not realizing that this was about their own growth as a church.”
She has been a member of the Anglican National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council since 1994. “During that time the debate for reparation has always been an issue,” she told TLC. “Most churches are built on community meeting grounds.”
For five years, until 2007, the council tried to present a covenant to the Australian churches that allowed 10 percent of the sale prices of churches to support the council. General Synod voted no. The proposal became “A faith and affirmation document” stripped of any mention of money.
“The church saw no reason to make reparation and still does not,” Canon Langham said.
She pictures the Anglican Church of Australia as a bit like an exotic houseplant.
“It came to Australia and did not listen to the people of the land. The church still does not recognize, in a true sense, the spirituality of the First Nations people. I believe both spiritualities can walk beside each other. Our people have been here for 65,000 years. Our spirituality belongs to this land,” she said.
Langham added: “It has taken 235 years to create the mess we have. So I guess we should expect slow progress.
“If I am sounding despondent, I think it is the norm for most Aboriginal people. It is a large stone to grind down so that bread can be made and shared.”
