(Notes of a talk to a mainly youthful audience, Syndal Baptist Church 7 December 1997)

Let me begin by telling you where I'm coming from. My family taught us that if we tried hard enough we could get anywhere. We were secure - emotionally, spiritually, financially. We worked hard: so others should work hard. And we complained that our taxes were being spent on Aboriginal people. They should be like us: why do they just sit around and drink grog?

Later, with World Vision, part of my job was to take bishops and other leaders to meet the poorest of the poor all over the world. As we talked with the poor, and those who served and empowered them, my views changed. I came to see that the vast majority of the poor of our race or other races are poor because they've been treated unjustly by the rich and powerful - in the recent or distant past.

Put it another way: as a white, well-educated, married, middle-aged healthy Western male I am the last person on the planet to understand the disadvantaged. I'm impaired by my definition of 'success'; I am intellectually/ morally/ socially handicapped in making judgments about why people don't cope with life like I do...

All the world's racist - which should be no surprise for someone who believes the Bible's teaching about the 'fallenness' of the human race: we've swapped the Creator's ideal of hospitality (my space you're welcome) for territoriality (my space keep out). I think I belong to one of the most tolerant nations in this century. Our record of welcoming refugees is, with Canada's, second-to-none.

Since 1945, and the Great Immigration program, 5.5 million people have arrived here: today, one in four Australians was born overseas. But today, support among Australians for higher immigration is virtually non-existent. A poll a year ago found that only 2 per cent wanted more migrants; 71% said immigration was too high; 20% 'about right'. The lower the income the more negative the person was about immigration.

Pauline Hansen knows all this: for her constitutency there is little or no benefit in migration: migrants take our jobs, simple as that. Also Hanson's people feel that you ought to be very selective in who you let in here: they ought to be mainly white, anglo-celtic. In Melbourne and Sydney where's the worst street crime and drug problem? Among South-east Asians in Springvale and Cabramatta... Anti-Asian feeling goes back a long way. You remember Arthur Calwell's famous comment that 'two wongs don't make a white'...

Now if the Howard government calls an election with race as an issue, we'll be vilified as a pariah by most of the world: but most nations are more racist than we are. Just this week we were talking about our daughter Lindy's stopover in Tokyo: she's flying to the U.S. with Nippon Airways. Should she walk around Tokyo alone at night? Our conclusion: it's one of the safest cities in the world. Why? Well, partly to do with Japan's commitment to ethnocentric homogeneity: they treat resident Koreans and Filipinos badly - not to mention the rape of Nanking, or the POW camps in World War 2. China's record in Tibet, Indonesia's in East Timor, the warring religious/ethnic tensions in almost every part of the world... we haven't done too badly...

But let's look tonight at the aboriginal issue.

First, an ancient story...

Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let us go out to the field.' And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' He said, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?' And the Lord said, 'What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand... Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord. (Genesis 4:8-11, 16 NRSV)

It's is a story about conflict - between two different cultures or ways of relating to the earth. Abel was a shepherd, Cain an agriculturalist. It's a story-in-miniature of the blood-stained history of the human race.

As with the Fall, and as often happens in biblical justice-drama God is on the spot immediately after the deed asking questions. At the Fall: 'Where are you?' - a personal question. Here: 'Where is your brother?' - a social question. To which Cain responds impertinently, 'Shall I shepherd the shepherd?'

Cain learns that though the corpse may be covered with earth Abel's blood cries out to God.

According to the Old Testament Scriptures blood and breath belong to God alone; whenever anyone kills another person, Yahweh, creator and protector of life becomes judge: the soil which Cain had ploughed and which had drunk his brother's blood will now deny him its fruit...

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. You shall say to him, 'Thus says the Lord: Have you killed, and also taken possession?' You shall say to him, 'Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also like up your blood.'

Ahab said to Elijah, 'Have you found me, O my enemy?' He answered, 'I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel... because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. Also concerning Jezebel the Lord said, "The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel." Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat...'

When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth over his bare flesh; he fasted, lay in the sackcloth, and went about dejectedly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: 'Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days; but in his son's days I will bring disaster on his house.' (1 Kings 21:17-24, 27-29).

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendents of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors... Upon you [will] come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered... (Excerpts Matthew 23:29-35)

Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs... This generation [will] be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah... Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. (Excerpts Luke 11:47-51).

You stiff-necked people... are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law... and yet you have not kept it. (Acts 7:51-53)

When Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.' Then the people as a whole answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children!' ... After flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. (Matthew 27:24-26. All NRSV).

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** Members of the Ya-idthma-dthang tribe have passed on this story: In the high country of North-east Victoria, near Mt Buffalo, 'they buried our babies in the ground with only their heads above the ground. All in a row they were. Then they had a test to see who could kick the babies' heads off the furtherest. One man clubbed a babies' head off from horseback. Then they spent most of the day raping the women, most of them were then tortured to death by sticking sharp things like spears up their vaginas until they died. They tied the men's hands behind their backs, then cut off their [genitals] and watched them run around screaming until they died. They killed in other bad ways too.' (Jan Roberts, Massacres to Mining: The Colonization of Aboriginal Australia, Dove, 1985, pp. 19-20).

** Governor Macquarie issued an edict than any unarmed group of Aborigines of more than six could be shot. Here in Victoria there were an estimated 15,500 when the white invaders came: in 1861 there were 2,340.

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** In 1985 I was invited to address a National Christian Aborigines' Conference in Port Augusta. It was a wonderful experience: one night they told me that beyond the lights and the campfires were nearly 1000 people, mostly aboriginal people. I don't know of any other occasion when so many Aboriginal people were in one place to hear the Christian Good News. But that week I was shown around an Aboriginal settlement: most of the houses were wrecked, and my (white) guide said 'You could have built the Sydney Opera House over again with the money they've spent here. The government builds houses for these people, and they pull them apart for firewood when their friends visit on a cold night.'

** A couple of years ago I spent five days on two islands in the Bass Strait -islands of wild and rugged beauty. (Certainly wild: 65 known shipwrecks lie around these islands). We were there on a 'pilgrimage of listening' - twelve of us - to worship, pray, listen to aboriginal people, think in silence, and to repent...

I shared in some new experiences, like eating muttonbird, seeing the milky way in all its glory, and writing a poem (which I'll read later). We concluded, Taize-style, kneeling around a cross formed with candles in the shape of the Southern Cross...

Hands up those who were taught Tasmanian aborigines died out with Truganini in 1876? The Anglican priest appointed by his bishop to minister to aboriginals on Flinders Island told me there are 7000 Tasmanian people who call themselves 'aboriginal'...

So what happened? A brief history lesson:

* Worldwide colonialism began in the 1500s.

* Since then the world's 300 million indigenous and tribal peoples have suffered terribly from European conquest of their ancestral lands, through diseases and alcoholism and particularly through the loss of dignity, identity and self-respect.

* When the 'first fleet' arrived in 1788 there were an estimated 750,000 Aboriginals in Australia (7000 in Tasmania). In 1920 that number had fallen to 60,000. In 1971 Aboriginals were included in the national census for the first time.

For our purposes, here's what you need to know about what happened to the Tasmanian aboriginal people (I've culled some of the following from Henry Reynolds' 'Fate of a Free People: A Radical Re-examination of the Tasmanian Wars' Penguin, 1995).

** British settlement began in Van Dieman's Land in 1803-4. Massacres began 3 May 1804 at Risdon when the 102 Regiment of the British Army shot dead 50 Oyster Bay people, including women and children. The Tasmanians had approached without spears and with green boughs in their hands, as a sign of peace. The commanding officer said afterwards he didn't think the Aborigines would be any use to the British.

'The Black War' lasted seven years - 1824 to 1831. Atrocities were committed by both sides, but although black men were castrated and black women raped, there wasn't any record of rape committed by Aboriginals against any white woman.

Governor George Arthur mobilized all available settlers and convicts to form the infamous 'black line', with 2200 men moving across the island over a six-week period, to try in a pincer movement to herd the remaining Aboriginals to the south east. They captured an old man and a child.

By 1831, 175 Europeans had been killed, 200 wounded, 347 houses plundered or burnt. At least 700 Aboriginals were killed in the war. Meanwhile the European population grew from 5000 in 1820 to 24,000 in 1830.

Many (most?) of the Europeans believed Aboriginals were an inferior race; some that they were the missing link between monkeys and humans; some that they were 'savages' who ought to be exterminated...

In 1870 the last full-blood male Aboriginal Tasmanian (William Lane) died; in 1876 Truganini, the last full-blood female died.

In the 1980s over 100 Aboriginal people died in the custody of the Australian police and prison systems. Finally, in 1987 the Australian Government formed a 'Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody'. Four years and $30 million later it released a damning report.

One of our retreatants is a prison chaplain. He said, 'Aboriginal people need each other. When they are isolated in an institution - any institution - they die...'

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The Stolen Generations

Senator John Herron said recently that the reason the Government hasn't formally apologized to the aboriginal people for what happened in the past, is that 'such an apology could imply that present generations are in some way responsible and accountable for the actions of earlier generations, actions that were sanctioned by the laws of the time, and that were believed to be in the best interests of the children concerned.' But Senator Herron, those laws were immoral. Are you really saying that because the Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis legally, that's all there is to it? Hitler argued that Jews befouled the world...

There's a moral and social problem here. Our Prime Minister apparently believes that part-aboriginal children were taken from their mothers for 'social welfare reasons'. But as Professor Robert Manne and others have pointed out, this legislation was driven by a completely different motive - a racist one (the problem of the so-called half-caste). These children were labelled, almost zoologically, as cross-breeds, quadroons, octoroons... For example, the Perth Sunday Times in 1927: 'Central Australia's half-caste problem... must be tackled boldly and immediately. The greater danger, experts agree, is that three races will develop in Australia - white, black, and the pathetic sinister third race which is neither.' In W.A. laws were passed in 1936 giving the Chief Protector of Aborigines, A.O. Neville, near-complete control over the lives of all Aborigines up to the age of 21, including the capacity to encourage marriages between 'half-caste' females and European males and to all but prohibit marriages between 'half-castes' and 'full bloods'. The basic idea: in the fullness of time this policy would ensure the extinction of full-blood Aborigines. Mr Neville, in April 1937, placed before his colleagues at the first national governmental conference on Aborigines, the following question: 'Are we going to have a population of 1,000,000 blacks in the Commonwealth, or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia?'

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Eddie Mabo's family lived on an island for thousands of years but we assumed that they didn't own it because they hadn't bought it. The High Court (in 1992) decided that under common law, the basis of all our laws, Mabo's tribe _did_ own the island since they have had possession of it for so long. That is where native title comes from. It's not freehold title or leasehold title. It doesn't mean that the Aborigines own the land in the sense that householders own their backyard but it does mean they have the right to continue using the land as they always have. The Mabo case exploded the myth of 'terra nullius' (land belonging to no-one).

The Mabo decision states that anyone who 'purchases' land gets the right of exclusive use, i.e. when you buy or lease land this "extinguishes" native title: you can refuse Aborigines the right to hunt on it, for instance, if you wish. People also assumed that _leasing_ land from the government also extinguished Native Title. (But the case in Mabo bore virtually no relation to the situation of mainland Australia. There was and is a huge ethnic, cultural and economic divide between a group of islands within cooee of Papua New Guinea, populated by Melanesians who had a settled agricultural lifestyle with long-standing systems of land tenure, and mainland Australia, populated by an ethnically unique population of hunter-gatherers, with no notion of settlement or land ownership.) The Wik decision challenged that last assumption. It stated that if you only lease the land from the government, native title coexists with your (leasehold) title. So, leasehold does not extinguish Native Title, but it does take precedence over it. Native title holders cannot tell leaseholders how they may and may not use the land, as long as the lease holders act according to the conditions of their lease. Problem: what happens when leaseholders want to "upgrade" the nature of their leases?

Essentially there are two positions on this:

1) The native title holders and the leaseholders should negotiate such upgrades. That is, people ought to get along. (This is the position of Labor, The Democrats, The Greens and Senator Brian Harradine)

2) The leaseholders ought to be able to do whatever they want. Native title should be extinguished as desired and Aborigines should be suitably compensated. (This is the position of the Government and Senator Pauline Hanson).

We can't tonight look in detail at the Government's 10-point plan - it's getting messed up in the Senate anyway. But it tries to sort out such simple-to-complex issues as * What happens if the government decides to build a dam or power line on your freehold/leashold/native-title property, or resume it for a highway? * When a lease expires or comes up for renewal, what happens to the native title? * What about the powers of Federal/State/local governments? * What if nobody wants some land - should it revert to its native owners? * What sort of traditional access should aboriginals be able to prove - for example what if they were tossed off their land two generations ago? (And how can such claims be verified? Remember Hindmarsh Island?) * What about negotiating for mining rights to their land - should it be before exploration? (Should all mining rights remain with the Crown?) * How long should we give this whole negotiating process (the so-called "sunset" clause)

There does need to be a mopping up exercise in terms of legislation that will spell out how Aboriginal people can access the land. Questions of alcohol, guns, camping, and so on need to be spelt out. (Is this sort of exercise best dealt with through regional and local agreements rather than by Commonwealth legislative fiat?)

Mr Howard said farmers earn 53% of national income so they ought to be given precedence and it should be done quickly. One a.r.c'er put it well (I think): the Government's plan lives up to Deputy Tim's description "bucket loads of extinguishment", and would be a cause of lasting shame for generations to come. Aboriginal Reconciliation is an issue that will not go away simply because you extinguish native title and offer money in return. In fact that misunderstands the Aboriginal position. They don't want money, they want to able to use the land they've lived on for thousands of years. If we can't learn to live together their struggle for independence will get harder, militance will increase and everything we've seen up until now will look like a picnic in comparison. But apparently our fearless leader is unable to see the difference between a deeply felt connection to the land and a big fat cheque. This could be a disaster for all involved (except the lawyers, who would get very rich).

Another arc'er put it in these terms: Aborigines have mostly already moved so far into the lifestyles, culture and mores of the wider society that there is no going back. If you want an explosion, set up two types of law, one of which is racially based, then sit back and watch things percolate for a while. Unless there is one law, and equality under the law, this society will experience a lot of turmoil. (My comment: can you spot the fallacy here?)

Already extreme positions are forming, on both sides: Pat Dodson has recently been quoted as promising "blood in the streets" and "war between black and white". He has also been quoted as calling Mr Howard "a moral cockroach".

So any basic understanding of the issues involved in Mabo and Wik have to be premised on an understanding of how this country was settled and how whitefellas moved on to the land and the consequences of that movement. There appears to be no acknowledgment of this given in the public statements of most pastoralists and their organisatons.

Some people have taken the trouble to listen and to learn. In the last four years mining companies have learned that - by and large - they can achieve what they want by sitting down and talking to Aboriginal people. Agreement may take a little longer to achieve because of Aboriginal decision making processes, but in the end the results will be there. Pastoralists like Camilla Cowley - for whom this whole process has been a spiritual experience of major proportions - have listened. However, so much misinformation has been spread by some - not all - primary producer organisations as well as the National Party that ignorant people have been inflamed.

A major problem in the whole issue is that large and significant sections of the Australian community don't see why they should have to sit down and talk to blackfellas. There is a cleavage in our community. There are those who want to get on with business and talk dollars, land management, development, etc. and act in that context only. There are others who, while not ignoring business demands, land management and land use issues and development, want to take a broad view. They are happy to embark on processes of consultation and reconciliation. They are happy to learn more and find out how we can travel together in this country.

Unfortunately, the signals coming from the Howard Government fall in to the former context rather than the latter.

This country is at a watershed on Wik. If, as a nation, we embark on the niggardly road we will pay the penalty in the sort of nation we will become. On the other hand, if we take this as an opportunity not only to restore justice and become reconciled to one another but also to find new and more mature ways of communicating with one another, we can grow at a national level and within our national identity.

It is well to remember that native title claims will affect, in the main, only certain sections of the country. Victorians have little to worry about. The rule of thumb being the more blackfellas were killed off or the survivors were dispossessed and divorced from their law and customs and traditional lands the less likelihood there is of native title impact. In areas where law, custom and tradition have survived native title will have impact. In the main those most affected will be Western Australia, the Northern Territory and North Queensland.

In 1993 the Baptist World Alliance Special Commission on Racism, chaired by Jimmy Carter, found that racism is everywhere, religion may fuel racism, that humans have always discriminated against people with different skins and/or ideas. Jimmy Carter's conclusion: 'The Savior whom we worship calls all of us to be one people, equal before God. Our Lord leaves no room for racism or prejudice against other human beings.'

What can we do?

[1] Realize, with Margaret Mead: 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it's the only thing that ever has'

[2] And realize, sure, that we can't turn back the clock. But, whatever our political views (left-wing, right-wing, or wingless) we can agree with Prime Minister Paul Keating when he launched the International Year for the Indigenous Peoples 10 December 1992:

'[We must] recognize that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We stole their traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. As a nation, we face the challenge of the consequences of dispossession, conquest, brutal treatment and equally inhuman neglect of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - the first Australians.'

Following two invitations in the 1980s to speak to national Aboriginal Christian conferences, I wrote to 40 Aboriginal Christian leaders, asking their wisdom on this question. Their views on land rights varied across the political spectrum from very radical to quite conservative but they were unanimous about one thing: 'Please, we would like white Australians to listen to our pain'...

At some time, a wie adviser will suggest to our Prime Minister that he say something like this to aboriginal people: 'I need you to help me understand our different cultures. Your bond with the land is different to ours. And your relationship to your ancestors is different too: you feel a kinship with them which is real (the stars in the heavens are the campfires of your ancestors) whereas we whites are interested in our forbears mainly as a hobby...'

The aboriginal people have suffered terribly. They simply want to be _heard_. Why does that have to be hard for the rest of us?

And remember:

* 'The worst evils in the world are not committed by evil people, but by good people who do not know they are not doing good' (Reinhold Niebuhr)

* [All the biblical teaching about social justice can be summarized]: 'Social justice is about who owns what and returning it to them.'

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** At Wybelenna, on Flinders Island (which means 'Black Man's Houses') a few years ago, some aboriginal people put markers on the aboriginal graves. They lasted two days: someone dug them all up and destroyed them one night, but the white graves were left undisturbed...

I sat in that sad place, and watched a watched a flock of red-breasted robins, and wrote the only poem I've ever published:

SINS OF GENTLE-FOLK

Gentle robins, red and black, flitting here and flitting there, foraging among the graves... What dark secrets lie beneath this soil?

Gentle kooris, sad and wistful - for a dream-time killed and buried by foreign 'Christian' civilizers... Where's dignity, identity now?

Gentle farm-folk, toiling, reaping on forefathers' stolen, fertile land, some red-necked - and others wondering Why the fuss? We were not there...

Gentle Christian, guilty? musing what's all this to do with me? Listen! Learn! Lament! and ask What, Lord, will you have me do?

Gentle Jesus, friend of outcasts when beneath your Southern Cross red blood stained the earth again: Were you wailing with their kin?

Gentle-folk did you to death - were not aware of what they did... And judgment-day has come to us: 'Where are you when I need mercy?'

Rowland Croucher

[Written at Wybelenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania, in an aboriginal graveyard, attended by a flock of red-breasted robins. April 1995]

My thanks to several regulars on the Internet newsgroup aus.religion.christian and to Brigid Walsh for their help...

Further reading: Frank Brennan's 'Reconciling Our Differences: A Christian Approach to Recognizing Aboriginal Land Rights' (Aurora Books 1992) and 'Sharing the Country: The Case for an Agreement Between Black and White Australians' (Penguin 1994). Write to Frank Brennan's Uniya Social Justice Centre, PO Box 522, Kings cross, NSW 2011 (Phone 02 9356 3888) for their 'Reconciliation and Wik Kit'.