November 30.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Pope John Paul II’s address
Excerpts from the address given by Pope John Paul II to Indigenous people at Alice Springs on 29 November, 1986.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
...for thousands of years you have lived in this land and fashioned a culture that endures to this day. And during all this time, the Spirit of God has been with you. Your “Dreaming”, which influences your lives so strongly that, no matter what happens, you remain for ever people of your culture, is your own way of touching the mystery of God's Spirit in you and in creation. You must keep your striving for God and hold on to it in your lives.
The rock paintings and the discovered evidence of your ancient tools and implements indicate the presence of your age-old culture and prove your ancient occupancy of this land.
Your culture, which shows the lasting genius and dignity of your race, must not be allowed to disappear. Do not think that your gifts are worth so little that you should no longer bother to maintain them. Share them with each other and teach them to your children. Your songs, your stories, your paintings, your dances, your languages, must never be lost...
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, water-holes, rivers, hills and mountains. Through your closeness to the land you touched the sacredness of [humanity's] relationship with God, for the land was the proof of a power in life greater than ourselves. You did not spoil the land, use it up, exhaust it, and then walk away from it. You realized that your land was related to the source of life...
Your careful attention to details of kinship spoke of your reverence for birth, life and human generation. You knew that children...need a time to grow in laughter and to play, secure in the knowledge that they belong to their people.
You had a great respect for the need which people have for law, as a guide to living fairly with each other. So you created a legal system...closely adapted to the country in which you lived your lives. It made your society orderly. It was one of the reasons why you survived in this land. You marked the growth of your young men and women with ceremonies of discipline and taught them responsibility as they came to maturity...
The culture which this long and careful growth produced was not prepared for the sudden meeting with another people, with different customs and traditions, who came to your country nearly 200 years ago. They were different from Aboriginal people. Their traditions, organization of their lives, and their attitudes to the land were quite strange to you. Their law too was quite different. These people had knowledge, money and power; and they brought with them some patterns of behaviour from which the Aboriginal people were unable to protect themselves.
The effects of some of those forces are still active among you today. Many of you have been dispossessed of your traditional lands, and separated from your tribal ways, though some of you still have your traditional culture. Some of you are establishing Aboriginal communities in the towns and cities. For others there is no real place for camp-fires and kinship observances except on the fringes of country towns. There, work is hard to find, and education in a different cultural background is difficult. The discrimination caused by racism is a daily experience.
You have learned how to survive, whether on your own lands or scattered among the towns and cities...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...what can now be done to remedy the deeds of yesterday must not be put off till tomorrow.
Acknowledgment: Reprinted with permission from the The Pope In Australia: Collected Homilies and Talks (St Pauls Publications, Strathfield, 1986).