Читать книгу Liberating the Will of Australia - Geoffrey Burn - Страница 9

This photograph was taken by myself in Canberra on the National Day of Healing in May 2005. The paving in front of the billboard formed the stage on which Aboriginal artists performed: dancing, playing music, and singing.1 The billboard for the Australian Ballet performance is attached to wooden fencing around a construction site. The title of the ballet is White, and its strap line is “Escape into a timeless white world of elegance, style and gorgeous music.”2 On the top of this poster is a smaller one, partially covering the poster about the wonders of whiteness, but not removing it, nor hiding it from view, declaring the National Day of Healing. How can a nation that is very conscious of constructing itself deal with its past and go into the future in a way that is more than just placing a sticking plaster over the deep-seated myth of normality of whiteness portrayed by the dominant culture, where the First Peoples are more than just an interesting spectacle to be watched by a mixed crowd? How can the welfare of all the peoples be assured in this great land?

With the rise of instantaneous, “as it happened” news coverage, events get fragmented into pieces that the audience then impressionistically reassembles to fit their pre-judgments. But time is precisely what you need to think of things that are new—things that exceed the conventional wisdom.3

. . . increasingly we become constitutionally ill-disposed to that slow work of listening, reflecting, deliberating . . . 4

I am inviting you to take time to think new things, things that exceed conventional wisdom, for conventional wisdom has failed. Most people in Australia would not want to cause harm to the First Peoples in Australia but welfare metrics show that harm continues to be done. There have been many developments in recent decades in the relationships between the First Peoples in Australia and those who came after, but Indigenous women and men, who have been at the forefront of the struggle for decades, despair that they have grown old and tired, and they feel that little has been achieved. Jackie Huggins writes:

We older leaders were young and energetic once, but we have grown weary from repeated defeats. The tiredness sets into our bones. Our hearts ache to think of our elders who lived through small wins only to see even greater losses. What we gain we do not grasp for long. For Indigenous people, powerlessness and impermanence go hand in hand.5

Reflecting on his decades of work for the welfare of First Peoples, Galarrwuy Yunupingu wrote a powerful lament in an article in 2008. I urge you to read the entire article, where wave after wave of prose reflect the waves of power that he has experienced crashing over him and his people. Here is a small extract that captures some of the feeling of his article:

I am seeing now that too much of the past is for nothing. I have walked the corridors of power; I have negotiated and cajoled and praised and begged prime ministers and ministers, travelled the world and been feted; I have opened the doors to men of power and prestige; I have had a place at the table of the best and the brightest in the Australian nation—and at times success has seemed so close, yet it always slips away. And behind me, in the world of my father, the Yolngu world is always under threat, being swallowed up by whitefellas.

This is a weight that is bearing down on me; it is a pressure that I feel now every moment of my life—it frustrates me and drives me crazy; at night it is like a splinter in my mind. The solutions to the future, simple though I thought they were, have become harder and harder to grasp. I have learnt from experience that nothing is ever what it seems.6

The purpose of this book is to understand why it is that many First Peoples in Australia find themselves in the position so eloquently expressed by Jackie Huggins and Galarrwuy Yunupingu, and also to ask whether anything can be done about it. In particular, it is answering two questions:

•Why does harm continue to be done to the First Peoples in Australia, even when good is intended?

•Is there a way into the future which does not continue to perpetuate this harmful dynamic?

A consultation process with the Indigenous Peoples in Australia, an unprecedented act of listening in Australian history, resulted in a report from the Referendum Council, which contains the Uluru Statement from the Heart.7 This is a statement of what the First Peoples feel they need in order to be safe in Australia. The consultation process resulted in proposals for three reforms: voice, treaty and truth.8 The Voice is about Indigenous Peoples having some control over policies that affect them. Treaty is about the unfinished business of the occupation of The Land without making any agreements with those who were already there. Truth is about telling the multiple histories and making peace after what has happened. Politicians have been rushing to do nothing with it. The Uluru Statement of the Heart was not only addressed to politicians, but to all the peoples in Australia. What are we to do with it? The report raises an important subsidiary question that will also be addressed by this book:

•If the changes requested in the report from the Referendum Council and the Uluru Statement from the Heart are implemented, will it deliver security and space for the First Peoples to thrive?

The answers to these questions are easy to state, but it will take the whole book to explore and comprehend them, because they require a different sort of thinking, seeing things in a different way. The answers to the questions, challenging, incomprehensible and unimaginable as they may be at this point, are as follows:

•Harm continues to be done to the First Peoples in Australia because the failure to negotiate a just way of living with those who were already in the land, when the first British incomers arrived, has become bound up in the essential nature of Australia.

•The only way to stop harming the First Peoples in Australia is for Australia to repent of the way that is was founded, where repentance is more than an apology, but requires the willingness to renegotiate the very foundations of the nation.

•Without this repentance, implementing the Uluru Statement of the Heart will not be safe for the First Peoples in Australia.

The argument that is being made in this book will be summarized in the following paragraph. This will then be expanded in the rest of the Overture, introducing the structure and argument of the whole book.

In summary, the argument of the book is as follows. What has become known as the nation of Australia was founded on the failure to negotiate a way of living with those who were already in the land. The nation was bound at its birth to a way of living that denied the truth of what was found. For reasons that will become apparent later, this will be called the Root Sin. In particular, the nation and its law were founded on the legal fiction—in this case, also a falsehood—that the land was unoccupied. This remains true whether this concept, terra nullius, was worked out at the time or only as a later legal explanation and justification of the situation that ensued. A key theological concept, bound willing, will be introduced. Bound willing explains how actions that flow from such binding result in the further binding of the will, which is so drastic that often, even when people want to choose that which is good, harm is done, because those thus bound are unable to see what good is. This is critical for understanding why harm often continues to be done to the First Peoples in Australia, even when good is intended. This situation will continue in perpetuity unless there is deep repentance by Australia. Repentance is more than an apology; repentance must undo the Root Sin. But repentance is only part of the process; the other part is forgiveness. Forgiveness is not simply accepting an apology: forgiveness names the wrongdoing and makes demands about what must be done in order to put things right. Repentance makes the space for those who have been harmed to be able to explore the full depths of the harm that has been done and so be clear about what must be done in order to move into the future in freedom. Forgiveness cannot be given until there has been an acceptable repentance. This means that repentance and forgiveness are intertwined processes, negotiations about what must be done to right the wrongs of the past, a process where the end cannot be known from the beginning. Whilst the book will discuss both repentance and forgiveness, the focus will be on the moral imperative for the nation of Australia to repent of the Root Sin. The process of repentance and forgiveness is a deeply hopeful process because it is working in harmony with the way that God is working in the world. More than that, the generosity of God is generative, meaning that creative things will emerge during such a process which could not have been imagined at the beginning, as gifts of God. At the end of the process, all who have been involved will recognize that justice has been established, a deeper justice than could have been imagined at the beginning. Whatever has managed to be addressed by this process will no longer cause damage in the future.

There are two distinct audiences who are being addressed by this book. I am hoping, firstly, that what is written will enable First Peoples to understand why their problems have proved so difficult to resolve, that it will be a moment of revelation and of seeing, an “Aha” moment. Further, I hope that it will embolden them to continue to demand repentance from Australia, being forthright in naming everything that must be done before forgiveness can be given. The refusal to stop speaking takes a lot of courage and resource and I hope that they will be encouraged and strengthened to keep stating what must be done. In some ways, I hope that this book will clarify and focus their demands. Secondly, I am also hoping that reading this book will also be a moment of revelation and of seeing for the rest of the peoples in Australia, that it will clarify their confusion about why harm continues to be done, even when good is intended. For this second group of people, there is also a moral imperative: there must be repentance in order to stop the perpetuation of harm into the future. Only repentance will make a safe space for the First Peoples to be able to express and to be given all that is needed in order for them flourish as peoples, to remove Galarrwuy Yunipingu’s splinter, to enable Jackie Huggins and all her people to stand refreshed and able to exercise rightful power towards their futures.

It is very early in the book to have to define terms, but the message of this book is quite subtle and care needs to be taken with the terminology that is used, so that what is being said can be clear. For example, the name Australia is commonly used to refer both to a land mass and also a nation whose establishment began at least as early as the landing of the First Fleet. People speak of “Australians,” a term which includes all citizens that the nation of Australia claims as its own, without acknowledging that some of these people, not least many First Peoples, have at least a difficult, if not an ambivalent, relationship with, or a downright denial of, the nation of Australia as it is currently constructed. It is important to use words in such a way that what is said can be as precise as possible, whilst not making accidental assimilative assertions by how language is used, and also not using language in a way that offends those who are being written about. Therefore, the following terminology will be used in the rest of this book:

•The Land will be used when writing of the whole ecosystem of the land mass that is commonly called Australia and its waters, independent of any claims of relationship to it by any people who live there. It is important that this should not be called Australia, for this confuses The Land with the nation that has established itself on The Land, with particular laws and relationships to The Land, and relationships with others who also live in The Land, who have different relationships to The Land.

•Australia will refer to the nation-state that is commonly called by this name and the states and territories of Australia and any other bodies constituted by legal systems arising from British settlements in The Land.

•Australian law will refer to the legal system, founded in British law, which has developed since the original colonization of The Land by the first British incomers, and which is the legal system of Australia. It also refers to all the legal systems of the states and territories of Australia and any other tiers of government which can pass laws that are based on the same foundations.

•First Peoples means those who are descended from those who were present in The Land when the first British people started to live there and who have chosen to identify as such. Such peoples “define themselves according to their lineages and cultures that tie them to places and ways of life that existed long before colonisation.”9 Sometimes they are also called the “Indigenous Peoples of Australia” or “Indigenous Australians,” but that risks assimilating them into the Australian national project, eliding their multiple layers of identity and overlooking the way that Australia was founded. Instead, I will use “Indigenous Peoples in Australia,” allowing them to state their own relationship to the nation of Australia.

•Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander will be used when it is important to distinguish between things pertaining to these two different First Peoples. The terms “First Peoples,” “Aboriginal,” and “Torres Strait Islanders” have become the acceptable way of referring to peoples in these groups.

•Subsequent Peoples means anyone who does not trace her primary descent as coming from the First Peoples. This includes all those descended from the first British settlers, or from those who have come subsequently, who see themselves primarily as citizens of Australia, choosing to submit themselves to Australian law. It includes those incomers who are not yet citizens. Sometimes I will speak of “we.” When I do this, I am primarily acknowledging that I too am part of the Subsequent Peoples and that this book is also being addressed to myself.

Clearly, any encounters between peoples change all of those who are involved and so these categories overlap. In particular, many First Peoples have multiple layers of identity and have varying commitments to the different parts of their heritage. Some sit easily with this but for others it is deeply traumatic.10 Whilst this is important, this fuzziness in naming has no impact on the central argument of this book, which is about how the foundational denial of the identity of the inhabitants of The Land has insinuated itself into the very fabric of the Australian nation and its legal system, and, therefore, what must be done in order to rescue not only the First Peoples, but all the peoples in Australia, from its devastating effects.

There is much emotive language used in describing the history following the arrival of the first Europeans who established themselves in The Land. This is partly because of the perspective from which the story is told but it is also because there are multiple stories to tell and no one wants their story to be lost or to be treated as secondary to the overarching narrative of someone else. What is indisputable, however, is that no treaty was made between those who were already living in The Land and those who came two and a half centuries ago. From this has grown a nation, called Australia, which is founded on a failure to recognize the full humanity of those already living in The Land. It did not recognize any of: their identities as peoples, their territorial lands, their languages, and their culture.11 This failure, right at the beginning, continues to work its way out today, and will continue to do so in the future, unless it is properly addressed. It is the reason why the First Peoples in Australia always feel as if they are under siege and why interventions, well-intentioned or otherwise, continue to fail to deliver all that is hoped of them.

Recently, it has become popular in Australia to talk about three parts of the “Australian story.” Even the final report from the Referendum Council indulges in this process of myth creation.12 The first phase was the settlement by the First Peoples; the second was the coming of the First Fleet; and the third is the arrival of generations of migrants from all parts of the world. There is a fundamental flaw in this myth, namely that, ontologically, there are only two phases: the history before the arrival of the First Fleet, and the history afterwards. The reason for this is that the arrival of the First Fleet saw the beginnings of Australian law, and all those who acknowledge this law, whether they were been born in the country or have arrived since, are essentially the same in that they live in a system founded on the Root Sin. No one who is born into the country, or who comes to the country from elsewhere, can say that they are not part of the problem, for, in accepting the notion of the nation of Australia and its legal system, they are part of continuing the problem. Further, it simply is not true when the report from the Referendum Council states that “there is no doubt our constitutional system, our system of government, the rule of law, and our public institutions inherited from Britain are the heritage of the Australian people and enure for the benefit of all of us, including the First Peoples”:13 it is exactly these institutions which continue to have a detrimental effect on the First Peoples in Australia because they are founded on the nonexistence of these peoples.

The culture in Australia is changing, with a greater willingness to acknowledge the past and a greater commitment to agreement-making and seeking to put things right. This is hard work and its value is not to be underestimated. Nevertheless, the Root Sin has not been addressed. If all the harm done to the First Peoples in Australia is like a tree that has grown from the Root Sin, then what has been happening is that some of the branches of have been lopped off, but the Root Sin is still firmly in the ground and continues to put forth more branches, whilst providing life to those branches which have not yet been removed, consequently continuing to damage the First Peoples in Australia. That is, what is happening is not enough and the roots need to be dug out. This issue is the primary focus of this book.

It will be argued that Christian theology has the power to both give a deep enough explanation of the problem as well as help us to know what must be done to resolve it. I am aware that the church and its theology have often been part of the problem for the First Peoples in Australia. The church has participated in programs that have led to people being alienated from their land and losing some or all of those systems which supported their existence in The Land, indeed their very existence; theology became a weapon. This is something that I deeply regret. Nonetheless, it is in returning to find deeper meanings of various theological concepts that hope for the future can be found—a real hope, not a just pious desire. Theology is needed because the problem is a spiritual one. It is hoped that the theology that is developed here is restorative, that it can be a healing lens through which to see what has been happening and what needs to happen in order to put it right.

The outline of the book is as follows.

The First Movement, Binding, lays out the theological foundations for understanding how the Root Sin continues to work its way out today. It begins by introducing the concept of bound willing. I will be drawing heavily on the work of Alistair McFadyen in order to explain the dynamics of bound willing.14 In his book, he uses two case studies—child sexual abuse and the Nazi holocaust—to explain, develop, and test the doctrine of bound willing and the nature of salvation, the liberating work of God to release people from all that binds them. These case studies of traumatic and incomprehensible events show how theology gives both a deeper understanding of the dynamics of complex problems and also how release from these problems can come about. It is important to understand that I am not suggesting that the situation in Australia is like either of these case studies. Rather, understanding the underlying dynamics of these examples gives a new way of looking at what has happened in Australia since the coming of the first Europeans, which is key to understanding why harm continues to be done to the First Peoples in Australia, even when good is intended, as well as showing the way out of this continuing problem. The second case study is important because it helps to shift the perspective from individualism to see the dynamics of how whole nations can become gripped and driven by forces of which they are not fully aware, and where the individual is caught up in systems from which there seems to be no escape. These theological concepts are then used to interpret the biblical book of Ezekiel in a way that may be unfamiliar to many readers, but a way which is truer to the theological worldview of its writer. It will be seen that the original people addressed by Ezekiel believed that they were being adversely affected by the sins of their forebears, things for which they themselves were not responsible. They wanted to draw a line under the past and say that they were not the same as their ancestors. Ezekiel, however, says that the actions of his hearers are in continuity with those of their forebears and that they are responsible for the outworking of the past in the present. He calls on the present generation to repent, to turn away from these actions, to turn to God. The message of Ezekiel to his nation, that it continues to sin in the ways of its ancestors, is applicable to Australia today; it is not possible to draw a line under the past because Australia is bound up in continuing to damage the First Peoples in ways that are firmly rooted in its past. Both the theological foundational material and the study of Ezekiel raise the possibility of change through repentance. A final section in the First Movement begins to show how bound willing helps us to understand what has been happening in Australia, especially where policies that were meant to be good have caused harm.

I have chosen the term “movement” rather than the more common “part” because it captures the idea that the situation is not static. The First Movement is entitled “Binding” because the direction of travel is towards being more deeply trapped in the results of the Root Sin, whilst the Second Movement is called “Loosing” because it is about what must be done in order to free all the peoples in Australia from the effect of the binding.

Having started with a musical metaphor, the part of the book that follows the First Movement has been called the Intermezzo, for it rehearses some of the themes of the First and Second Movements. It is a study of the history of land through the courts and legislature over a period of half a century. This is a critical topic because Aboriginal identity is bound up in The Land and so it is a good barometer of how Australia treats its relationships with its First Peoples. More than that, it provides an extended example of whether the theological idea of bound willing gives us any insights into the dynamics of the situation. It will be concluded that there were some significant acts of repentance, namely various Lands Acts, but even these introduced new ways of damaging the First Peoples because of the ways that they were set up and in the way that claims had to be made. Other actions, such as Native Title Acts, have proved much less stable and are the ones which most obviously show both unintentional and intentional destructive behavior by politicians and judges in managing them, behavior which is in continuity with the Root Sin. Most of all, all of this work was inherently limited, for it was only asking whether the claims in the laws of the First Peoples could also be recognized in Australian law and only for land for which there was no stronger title claim. This is logical, of course, for Australian law could not step outside itself to renegotiate its foundation in negotiation with the laws of the First Peoples. But this is just another way of saying that the process was not strong enough to address the Root Sin in the foundation of Australia.

The Second Movement, Loosing, is about what needs to be done in order to liberate Australia from the Root Sin. The first section introduces the theological concepts of repentance and forgiveness. Critically, it will be seen that repentance is more than a confession or an apology, but also involves putting right the harm that was done. Apologizing accepts the instability of an unknown future, where things must change. Repentance creates a space for the victims to be able to express everything (absolutely everything, not just what they think is politically possible) that they need (not just desires, but what is really needed) in order to regain their life. Likewise, forgiveness does not overlook what has been done and can only be given when there has been true repentance. Neither forgiveness nor repentance can stand alone, but they are intertwined in a process, the result of which is the establishment of justice. The second section is a case study of the church in Corinth in the middle of the first century CE. The reason for making this study is to show that repentance for the church in Corinth had to involve the total reordering of all of their social and economic relationships; nothing short of a complete change in the foundations of their life would be a repentance of the problems in their community. A byproduct of this study is that the word “reconciliation” is given a fuller and deeper meaning. People have rightly become very wary of using this term in Australia because it has never been properly defined and its misuse has caused much grief. Strictly speaking, the process of reconciliation describes the process of parties negotiating repentance and forgiveness, and the parties will have become reconciled when this has been achieved. The point at which reconciliation is reached is also the point at which it will be noticed that justice has been established, a deeper justice that could not have been imagined at the beginning of the process, a justice that comes as a gift of God. The final section of the Second Movement returns to the situation in Australia and to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The whole of the book has been moving towards the point of asking what must be done in Australia in order to stop harm being done to the First Peoples in Australia. The answer is that the nation of Australia must repent of the Root Sin. Necessarily, there are multiple local elements to this because of all of the actions that have followed on from the Root Sin, but the national repentance of the Root Sin is essential. The question that must be asked about any process involving the nation of Australia and the First Peoples is whether the actions of the nation of Australia are a true and real repentance of the Root Sin. There is an important question as to whether the Uluru Statement from the Heart is asking enough of Australia before forgiveness is given. A reconciliatory process has to begin somewhere and the generous offer made by in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a move of the First Peoples towards forgiveness. I remain, however, deeply concerned by this offer, for it seems to be both premature and it also does not seem to be asking for enough. Whilst it has been informed by what seems politically possible, if it is not met by a genuine repentance by the Australian nation, then its acceptance by the Australian nation will only entangle it in the power of the Root Sin, completely disabling it, and it will not be able to achieve what is hoped for by the First Peoples in Australia.

The book will be brought together in the Finale, which includes a personal story of my own, where I was addressed by a very different land, when I first understood the nature of the new beginning that could come out the mess of the past.

This book is not about blame. Blame puts the focus in the wrong place, trying to find people at fault and then punishing them in some way because of their fault. Blame takes the focus away from looking carefully at the problem and what needs to be done to fix it. Blame also assumes that the problem is in the past, rather than being continually reproduced in the present. Instead, we need to allow ourselves to be challenged by the reality of the situation and then act courageously to do what needs to be done to put it right. There is a will in Australia to do good for the First Peoples in Australia. This book is about liberating that will, so that all the peoples of The Land, and The Land itself, can flourish. I hope that you will find that this book is ultimately a message of hope, that there is a way out so that the all peoples who dwell in The Land can coexist for the welfare of all.

Before embarking on the First Movement, there are two final things that need to be said at this point, concerning the scope of this work and the level of this book.

Concerning the scope of this work, whilst it is focused on Australia, and all the examples are drawn from Australia, the theological development is applicable to all colonized peoples. I hope that the insights contained here will be developed by others to help them understand their own contexts.

Any book must have a particular audience in mind. I am hoping that this is accessible to all the peoples in Australia. I have tried to walk the narrow way between having an academically rigorous and theologically sound narrative whilst also keeping it accessible to all who may wish to read it. Sometimes this means that the book progresses by means of assertion rather than engagement with the views of others. Those who wish to also see the arguments behind some of my assertions are referred to my thesis,15 but must be aware that my thinking has progressed in the ten years since I completed my thesis, and what is presented here is somewhat more nuanced. Moreover, my earlier work developed the theology of reconciliation and considered what the reconciliation might look like in Australia, where the purpose of this book is much narrower, focusing on the Root Sin and what must be done about it, for it still has not been addressed in Australia. With this in mind, I have made extensive use of endnotes. Some of the endnotes are simply an acknowledgement of my sources, but others are notes for further reflection by those who wish to take the ideas further. It should be possible to grasp the central ideas of this book without referring to the endnotes at all, but the endnotes are an important resource for deeper reflection on what is being raised in body of the book.

I hope that you will take the time to consider old things and new as they are presented in this book: time to listen, reflect, deliberate and act.