Reconciliation Sunday Reflection (Rebekah Clarkson)

I was honoured to be part of the Adnyamathanha Spirituality Pilgrimage.

It was actually my first time in the Flinders Ranges and it was a profound privilege to first walk on that country under the guidance of Indigenous custodians. It was a quiet couple of days – we drove in convoys to various sites, where Aunty Denise or Aunty Pauline shared stories with us, stories that had been passed down to them by their elders.

We were implored to listen – not just to the surface of the stories – but for their deeper meanings and layers, for the sounds of the country around us, and also for the stirrings of our own hearts.

Aunty Denise encouraged us to listen for 3 layers of meaning in every story:

What do we learn about how to live and how to interact with other people;
What do we learn about spirituality; and
What do we learn about the environment and how to care for it?

You either learn by listening, she said, or you learn by your mistakes.

What meanings and messages did I hear?

Don’t give up.
Look after your children.
Know what you believe in.
My decisions and actions have consequences and these will impact in some way on the wellbeing of others and the wellbeing of nature. When I make a big decision, I need to think carefully about their impact.

I also learnt that it’s important to slow down. If you don’t slow down, you can’t actually hear. Things take time. Sitting around a campfire and watching and waiting and listening are enough; they are more than enough –time spent like this is not wasted, nor is it ‘holiday’ time, but real, living, working, breathing, ‘being’ time.

We spent much of the pilgrimage sitting around campfires.

The fire pit

The centre has shifted,
spirits of home and hearth drawn outside.
Instinctively, no language needed
we drift to starlight, to the fire pit
brimming with a gratitude ancient as rain.
Its power seeps through to the bone,
coals glowing like tiny miracles.
Our ancestors stretch their ghosts
into the gloves of our fingers.

More than a companion,
it is an avatar, the heart of the map
even the clock’s hands reach for it.
The weather of our minds
feels the warm change. It satisfies us
in a way the screen’s bright flicker
leaves us hungry.
Basking, silence leavens into language
conversation expanding, rising
and we are full.

(Rachael Mead ©)

Both Aunty Denise and Aunty Pauline lamented that they didn’t listen more closely to stories and language themselves, that they didn’t ask more questions before their own elders passed away. Aunty Pauline reflected on the fact that the old people would often say the younger ones weren’t allowed to ask questions – listen or you won’t learn, they would say. She wishes she asked questions anyway.

There is such a powerful imperative to keep Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and cultures alive, and I was reminded of this again on the pilgrimage, especially as I listened to Aunty Denise’s daughter Candice speak about her responsibilities and burden to attend to country business, to learn language, to memorize the stories and be ready to tell them to the next generation. She also spoke about her responsibility to pick up the work of her ancestors in working toward reconciliation. And I thought, isn’t that the responsibility of all of us? I’ve thought this for a long time, but it hit me again, as I heard this young Indigenous woman put Reconciliation on her ‘to-do’ list for life. Non-Aboriginal Australians need to lift this burden.

One of the pilgrims asked Aunty Denise a pertinent and important question: How will we know when we are reconciled?

I would have thought we’d be closer to being reconciled when the ‘gap’ is closed – when outcomes for Indigenous Australians in health, education, life expectancy, mortality rates and employment etc. are on a par with other Australians. Denise’s response went beyond these imperatives, to a picture of a relationship that could perhaps only exist where these ‘gaps’ could not.

We will be reconciled, she said, when your grandchildren play with my grandchildren and they speak each other’s languages. Your grandchild will know some Adnyamathanha language.

How do we make that happen? I don’t even know. But I understood why Aunty Denise was so keen for us to learn simple nouns from her language (Adnyamathanha being one of over 250 Indigenous languages in Australia) to say these words out loud, to practise them. Language holds everything.

We need to find a way.

What will we inherit?

The galah and the goldfinch.
These trees but not the grasses.
Instinct.
Guilt.
History, with its lashing tail.
Obligation, passed into my hand like a stone.
My grandfather’s bible. Your mother’s pearls.
The rounded rocks lying quiet in the creek.

What will we pass on?
Only the fire can say.