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Pope John Paul II's message to Indigenous Australians

By Stephen Hagan - posted Wednesday, 27 April 2005


Winter months are special at the Hagan household as it allows us the luxury of indulging in our favourite pastime - watching North Queensland, Penrith, Port Adelaide, Essendon and Brisbane Lions Indigenous players display their exceptional talent on our television screen.

Our family, like most Indigenous people we keep company with, have moved away from the maintenance of club loyalties to a partiality for cheering on teams with significant Indigenous representation. If the team loses its Indigenous players, they also lose us as supporters. Sounds insular? Well that’s the way it is.

After a good start to the first weekend in April seeing the Cowboys and Power gain victories in their respective games I found it surreal to be flicking between free-to-air and Austar channels for a non-sporting event: updates on the passing of Pope John Paul II.

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Although baptised an Anglican I attended a Catholic Boys Boarding School and later returned to the flock when married by the country’s first Indigenous Anglican Bishop, Rt Rev Arthur Malcolm. My children attend a Lutheran Primary School and a Catholic Secondary School.

And although we aren’t churchgoers, my wife and I exhibit the same commitment to a greater-being as dyed-in-the-wool Christians do. Our god is our spirit-being who personifies our traditional cultural values.

As I became engrossed in the televised chronicle of this unpretentious but influential religious man’s life I recalled a speech he made to Indigenous people when he visited Central Australia back in 1986.

After clicking onto the Google search engine under the NATSIEC site I came across the speech in question (sourced from the Vatican) made by the Pope at Blatherskite Park, Alice Springs, on November 29, 1986.

In his inspirational speech Pope John Paul II addressed his devoted audience that day as, "Dear brothers and sisters", and proffered remarkable empathy to our plight. His views then, on land rights and the stolen generation, are poignant reading today given recent developments in Indigenous affairs.

In part Pope John Paul II said:

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For thousands of years this culture of yours was free to grow without interference by people from other places. You lived your lives in spiritual closeness to the land, with its animals, birds, fishes, waterholes, rivers, hills and mountains. You did not spoil the land, use it up, exhaust it, and then walk away from it. You realised that your land was related to the source of life.

Some of the stories from your Dreamtime legends speak powerfully of the great mysteries of human life, its frailty, its need for help, its closeness to spiritual powers and the value of the human person.

You have learned how to survive, whether on your own lands, or scattered among the towns and cities.

If you stay closely united, you are like a tree standing in the middle of a bush-fire sweeping through the timber. The leaves are scorched and the tough bark is scarred and burned; but inside the tree the sap is still flowing, and under the ground the roots are still strong. Like that tree you have endured the flames, and you still have the power to be reborn.

From the earliest times men like Archbishop Polding of Sydney opposed the legal fiction adopted by European settlers that this land was terra nullius - nobody’s country. He strongly pleaded for the rights of the Aboriginal inhabitants to keep the traditional lands on which their whole society depended. The Church still supports you today.

Let it not be said that the fair and equitable recognition of Aboriginal rights to land is discrimination. To call for the acknowledgment of the land rights of people who have never surrendered those rights is not discrimination.

Christian people of good will are saddened to realise - many of them only recently - for how long a time Aboriginal people were transported from their homelands into small areas or reserves where families were broken up, tribes split apart, children orphaned and people forced to live like exiles in a foreign country.

The establishment of a new society for Aboriginal people cannot go forward without just and mutually recognised agreements with regard to these human problems, even though their causes lie in the past. The greatest value to be achieved by such agreements, which must be implemented without causing new injustices, is respect for the dignity and growth of the human person.

On your part, you must show that you too can walk tall and command the respect which every human being expects to receive from the rest of the human family.

Politicians and other people of influence, including some men of cloth, would do well to heed these visionary, considerate words of the Pope John Paul II.

John Howard, reported on News.com on April 3, 2005, said the Pope "… was one of those people that combined great strength with tremendous compassion". Australians were lucky to have had the Pope visit in 1986 and 1995, Mr Howard said. "Australian Catholics and Australians generally remember those visits with great affection."

It’s a pity the Prime Minister only recalls the Pope’s visit and not his caring speech made to his Indigenous supporters in the Red Centre in 1986. If he had he may not be as indifferent to our people as he has been during his political reign.

In light of the respect shown by our illustrious Prime Minister to the Pope I appeal to him to spell out, in a public address, his vision for Indigenous Affairs - preferably during Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC week in the coming months.

Maybe, just maybe, his speech might be recalled in the future, like the Pope’s speech or that famous Redfern Address made on December 10, 1992 by his adversary, Paul Keating.

And while my family waits with bated breath to see if such a speech transpires, we’ll ask our new Polish guardian above to give a small blessing on weekends for our gifted brothers - north and south of the border.

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About the Author

Stephen Hagan is Editor of the National Indigenous Times, award winning author, film maker and 2006 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

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