Dead and living mangroves, Roebuck Bay, Broome, Western Australia.
Photo : CAS.
This is the wood of the cross on which hung the Saviour of the world.
Come, let us worship.
For the Lord has risen.
Alleluia.

Issue 1, March 2007, Highlights:

Easter Message

Vatican Dossier

Wonders of the Kimberley - Frogs

Talkabout Kimberley
Social Justice Statement, 2006

Broome Launch

Fr Brian McCoy

Farewell to Fr. Kevin McKelson SAC

Graduation Address - Fr Ray Hevern SAC

KCP Magazine

Fr Brian McCoy sj was a guest speaker at the launch of the Australian Bishops’ Social Justice Sunday Statement, in La Perouse NSW in September 2006. This is an abridged version of his speech

In visiting an Aboriginal community recently I was reminded of a Kukatja desert saying: marlakarti nyawa, kurranyu nyinama. Literally, ‘look back if you want to go forward’. It is one of those wisdom sayings that, at first sight, appears to be a paradox. How can we go forward it we are looking backwards? What this saying reveals is a valuable Indigenous insight: to be human is to be intimately connected with one’s past. Marlakarti nyawa means more than ‘let’s have a quick look, see what happened in the past and then move on’, as some of our political and community leaders sometimes propose. It means to look within and deeply engage our past. It is to allow the meaning of what is past to be revealed within our present. It is to recognise how our past has shaped and moulded us, and how it has made us the people we are today. Only then, when we honestly and deeply know how our past continues to live within the present, can we kurranyu nyinama. Only then, can we safely, honestly and purposefully move forward.

When Pope John Paul II spoke in Alice Springs twenty years ago, he offered the assembled group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the image of a tree. They were like a tree, he suggested, that had been burned and scarred but had also survived. This earthy image continues to resonate with many people today. An ancient way of life has been badly wounded by the effects of colonisation, but it continues to hold life and share that life with others. There is evidence of a resilience and deeper strength that lies within the hurts and sufferings of the past. However, what also holds true and what can so often be denied, is that if we seriously engage our past, we, the non-Indigenous people, will recognise that we have also been burned and scarred as well. In our failure to establish a dignified and just relationship with Indigenous people we have suffered, and we are diminished as a nation as a result. It is this relationship – its pain, as also its promise and hope of healing – that this Social Justice Statement calls us to acknowledge and address today.

Above all, the Statement reminds us, we need to listen to Indigenous voices...As the voices of other Indigenous people have been silenced through the demise of ATSIC, and as important political decisions continue to be made without elected consultation, we need even more today to pay attention to those voices…We need also to listen to the hurts, angers and frustrations that emerge from this wounded relationship. There is increasing evidence that the fire of colonisation often spread unchecked and unacknowledged throughout our history. Such a fire threatens once again as with recent changes to the Native Title legislation, the gradual eroding of communal [land] title and the threat to abolish the Northern Territory permit system. In recent months, and from a range of Government ministers, we have heard of the need for the introduction of a new paternalism and the abolition of remote outstation communities…The need to engage our past so that we might find a way forward is not a new or radical one. And, it is not only Indigenous people who remind us that our past reveals and challenges our present. Christians have believed for centuries, as they have tried to live the Christian gospel, that they needed regularly to return to the company of Jesus at the Last Supper and on the Cross.

We know that, at the heart of our country, we share this ancient land. We share a past that calls us to courageously remember its place within our present…The invitation by this year’s Social Justice Statement, as was the message of Pope John Paul II twenty years ago, is to encourage us to stop, marlakarti nyawa, look back, so that kurranyu nyinama, we can move forward. However, we will only move forward, and we will only find dignity and justice for our Indigenous sisters and brothers, if we can turn around and allow our Indigenous past to be recognised for the place and the relationship it lives within us now.

[Fr Brian is a Fellow for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research,
La Trobe University and a past Parish Priest of Balgo-Kutjungka.]
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