Ayr Force …

Day 25: Tuesday 17 April (9pm, Ayr)

“At first white people did not understand us, they shot the black fella and the black fella speared the white fella. I do not speak badly of those people who do not understand. I want to teach all people, black and white, about the land and our way of living with it. Ignorance is the reason for a lot of racism. If people will listen to our way, they will understand why we live in the country of our grandparents and why we must have strong land rights. If people lose their land, their law is broken and their spirit dies.”

(Nganyinytja, Order of Australia (AM) and co-founder of Spirit of the Land Foundation)

 

“If non-indigenous and indigenous young people come together to learn about each other’s cultures, to learn the real history of this country and acknowledge it, this will hopefully improve the way we all interact.”

(Tania Major, Young Australian of the Year 2007 and Regional Councillor for ATSIC)

 

Today I finally got to spend some time with Eddie, to understand what it is that he wants from the Reconciliation Action Plan. As chairperson for Gudjuda, it’s pretty key that I have his thoughts on the topic, so we walked through my draft in readiness for me to meet the board members on Thursday!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been talking to Steve and Shelley over Easter about what reconciliation might be about. I’ve been a little nervous as I see it as a controversial topic in many ways because everyone has their own views and perceptions, or misconceptions as the case may be. Discussing reconciliation with many other people has really evolved my thinking - which it should do! With all these new insights, I was keen to see what Eddie’s strong personal feelings might be. Just as he has shown with his visions for Gudjuda, he proved to be all about forward thinking with reconciliation too and so he has also helped me to evolve a little more.

We spent quite some time today talking through his views and synthesising these into key points for our document, relating them back to what reconciliation might mean for Gudjuda. We’ll finalise these over the next week as I meet with the board, so they will continue to evolve, but here’s a few early kernels of thought that you might be interested in. Maybe you want to start thinking about reconciliation to form your own views of it too.

·         Reconciliation is about all people sharing their vast experience with the entire community, both indigenous and non-indigenous, whether culturally, socially, economically or environmentally (As with any culture, there are indigenous people who are less aware of the richness of their culture than I am, so it’s important that learning is unrestricted on both sides; also, being aware of other people's history and culture encourages understanding and healing and both of those enable reconciliation)

·         It’s about implementing initiatives to break the cycles of unemployment, poverty, physical and chemical abuse and allow healing to commence, again, within indigenous and non-indigenous communities (As we so often see, unfortunately, negative cycles exist within both indigenous and non-indigenous communities, so there should be no distinction when it comes to helping people to find a way out of these socio-economic situations)

·         It’s about strengthening the community environment, through sustainable businesses and employment opportunities, retaining skills within the communities and returning benefits to the communities (We talked about the impact of traineeships within the Burdekin region as an example and the impact this has on townships; training means that the resources stay within the community and the financial benefits that those skilled employees generate stay there too; Eddie’s vision is for the benefits to be given back to the communities, so that we grow the benefits again and again, and for all people)

There were many other equally important ideas, but at least the few thoughts above can begin to show you how there is focus on themes like equality as well as a focus on the future coming through. While it is impossible to forget the past, there is less attention on redressing the wrongs of those times.

I’ll continue work on the plan tomorrow, but I’m also attending a lunchtime workshop providing help for the local community to own their own homes - Eddie will be there to deliver a Welcome to Country ceremony. I think I might also need a smoking ceremony for the little gecko that has been crawling around my room for the past three days! Just so long as he keeps quiet, we'll get along fine!