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Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanders
A
leading edge in the Uniting Church's justice work is
its efforts to bring indigenous and non-indigenous Australians
together and to support the indigenous community generally.
Reconciliation, land rights and indigenous leadership
training are among areas in which the church is engaged.
As
early 1978, the newly-formed Uniting Church found itself
in the midst of a struggle between the rights of Aborigines
at Aurukun and Mornington Island (former Presbyterian
missions) and the Queensland Government, which was anxious
to allow mining to proceed.
Queensland
Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen granted a 1,900 square
kilometre mining lease to a mining consortium under
extremely favourable conditions. With support from the
church, the Aurukun people challenged the legislation,
eventually winning their case in the Queensland Supreme
Court. But they ultimately lost it when the Queensland
Government appealed to the Privy Council in England.
The
Uniting Church's Commission for World Mission had determined
that relationship to the land was all-important to Aborigines.
A fighting fund set up by the church, used for community
organising at Aurukun and Mornington Island, raised
over $100,000.
On
the other side of Australia, the Noonkanbah crisis also
helped identify the Uniting Church position on land
rights and mining. Noonkanbah was a cattle station that
had been purchased by the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission
for two groups of Aborigines. They had earlier been
employed there but had walked off the station in protest
at wretched conditions. From the mid-1970s, the Aborigines
at Noonkanbah worked to make it a viable enterprise.
Oil
was discovered at sacred sites near Noonkanbah, and
although the Heritage Act protected the site, this was
overridden by the Western Australian Minister for Mines.
Uniting Church members were among a group of people
arrested for peaceful protest against the government's
decision to proceed with mining. Again the Uniting Church
learned of the significance of land rights to Aboriginal
people -- and the cost involved in supporting them.
Congress
and covenanting
In
1982, Aboriginal and Islander leaders of the Uniting
Church from across Australia met at Crystal Creek, near
Townsville. They resolved to form the Uniting Aboriginal
and Islander Christian Congress to take responsibility
for ministry with indigenous people in Australia and
encourage the development of indigenous leadership.
The
Congress was formally established in 1985. At one of
its first meetings it expressed grave disappointment
at the Hawke Government's abandonment of universal land
rights.
A
decade after events at Aurukun, 1988 -- Australia's
bicentenary -- provided a perfect opportunity to make
white Australia aware of the Aboriginal side of history.
The March for Freedom, Justice and Hope in 1988, bringing
together Aborigines from all over Australia to celebrate
their survival, was the vision of the late Rev. Charles
Harris.
It
was also in 1988 that the Uniting Church pledged itself
to a covenanting process initiated by the Congress.
Covenanting, a biblical concept, in this case meant
the developing of relationships between indigenous and
non-indigenous people at all levels of the Uniting Church.
It attempted to address the question of "How are
we to live together when 200 years of injustice and
violence have divided our people?"
The
Uniting Church made a detailed submission to the National
Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Islander
Children from their Parents. At the meeting of its Assembly
in 2000 the church called on the Federal Government
to appropriately deal with the issue of the stolen generations
through a national apology and a tribunal process which
would, hopefully, enable the real pain and trauma of
those effected by indigenous child removal policies
to be addressed in a non-adversarial way. The Uniting
Church was particularly concerned that the Government
had been unable to deal with this issue in a way that
assisted the healing process for the nation in general
and stolen generations people in particular.
Visit:
http://www.covenanting.unitinged.org.au/welcome.html
http://www.covenanting.unitinged.org.au/library.html#resol
http://nat.uca.org.au/agencies/uaicc.htm
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