{"id":4067,"date":"2013-06-03T15:17:07","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T05:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=4067"},"modified":"2022-08-05T14:11:12","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T14:11:12","slug":"reflecting-on-national-reconciliation-week-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2013\/06\/03\/reflecting-on-national-reconciliation-week-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on National Reconciliation Week 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20130602<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBlessed is the spot, and the house, and the place\u2026\u201d The words sung by the a capella choir filled the Sydney Baha\u2019i Temple with glorious harmonies accompanied by the rumbling thunder of the storm outside.\u00a0 I shut my eyes and allowed the sounds to resonate through me.\u00a0 Beauty and emotion intertwined in that moment.<\/p>\n

The effort to drive through the wind and rain to attend the special service for National Reconciliation Week at the Baha\u2019i Temple was worth it.\u00a0 We imbibed the teachings of holy writings from around the world which exhort those who read them to treat everyone with justice, to create a peaceful world.\u00a0\u00a0 After the service I was fortunate enough to hear Bettina King, an Aboriginal lawyer, and Professor Shane Houston, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sydney, speak about reconciliation.<\/p>\n

It was the end of a tumultuous week.\u00a0 During National Reconciliation Week Australians had celebrated indigenous achievement and remembered a difficult past.\u00a0 We had also despaired when we were confronted by further evidence that our society fails to achieve the standards of inclusiveness, fairness and kindness that we aspire to.<\/p>\n

\"Head<\/a>
Professor Shane Houston and Bettina King at the Sydney Baha’i Temple Information Centre yesterday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

National Reconciliation Week<\/a> is about listening, learning and action.\u00a0 Listening: This requires a pause in our speech and the internal chatter of our mind.\u00a0 It requires us to focus all our thoughts on what the speaker is saying, to reflect on what they have said.\u00a0 Bettina King emphasised the importance of listening to Aboriginal people.\u00a0 She described Aborigines as story tellers.\u00a0 We only have to choose to listen.<\/p>\n

Learning: through this process we add to our skills and knowledge in order to improve our contribution to society.\u00a0 Listening is an important first step in learning. Shane Houston described reconciliation as a process of learning from our past, of understanding that everyone is different.\u00a0 From this we understand that everyone has a right to be different.<\/p>\n

Aboriginal people are still recovering from the horrendous damage done to their families and social fabric by past government policies of forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their parents solely because of their race. \u00a0These policies ended years ago but the damage is continuing to hurt Aboriginal people today. Houston said that the impact of the stolen generations on the children of those who were forcibly removed is tremendous.\u00a0 He referred to the trauma-informed practices developed by professionals dealing with victims of wars including soldiers and argued that Australia needs professionals similarly trained to deal with Aboriginal people still suffering from the trauma of our violent past.<\/p>\n

King referred to cultural competency courses designed to teach non-indigenous people the skills required to work effectively with Aboriginal people.\u00a0 She is concerned that people who complete such courses may believe that they are fully equipped to deal with all Aboriginal people they meet, that they now know it all.\u00a0 She pointed out that Aboriginal people are diverse.\u00a0 One course cannot teach students about all the Australian Aboriginal cultures.<\/p>\n

It is clear from what King and Houston said that listening and learning for reconciliation should be a life-long endeavour.<\/p>\n

Action must be the outcome of listening and learning.\u00a0 If action does not occur then one has to question whether the listening and learning were effective. There are many ways to act.\u00a0 We could repeat what we did this week flinging around the \u2018racist\u2019 label, pointing to the faults of others, pondering whether we are a \u2018racist country\u2019.\u00a0 Trying to compare ourselves with others to see whether we are less racist than them or pondering where our country sits on some global scale of racism strikes me as a pointless exercise.\u00a0 Too often that enables us to avoid the most essential step in stamping out racism – reflecting on our own actions and endeavouring to do better.<\/p>\n

Each of us has a personal responsibility to work on ourselves and expunge these impediments to our development and relations with others.<\/p>\n

Yet amidst the name calling and the expressions of shock this week there was some valuable discussion.\u00a0 The sad incidents exposed the insidious prejudice which weaves its way through our culture.\u00a0 We are better able to see that we have been imbued with racist attitudes while we were growing up. As adults our prejudices continue to be fed through jokes, unspoken assumptions, blindness to the needs and cultures of others.\u00a0 The spotlight is quite rightly on \u2018casual racism\u2019, the light-hearted banter that cloaks many racist remarks.\u00a0 I think back to a conversation I had as a child with another child where we worked out that the Irish jokes were effectively nasty comments about Irish people. \u00a0We agreed not to repeat these jokes again.\u00a0 We need to take that step with all jokes that portray ethnic or religious groups in a shabby manner.<\/p>\n

Reconciliation to me is about personal action.\u00a0 It requires constant listening, learning and self-reflection.<\/p>\n

This is why I want to read books by indigenous authors.\u00a0 I want to hear about Australian history from Aboriginal people as well as from non-indigenous historians.\u00a0 I want to increase my understanding of the experiences of Aboriginal people living today through listening to their stories.<\/p>\n

It was appropriate that Lisa Hill chose this week to announce that the Indigenous Writers Week book reviewing challenge<\/a> will be held again during NAIDOC Week<\/a>, 7-14 July.\u00a0 I enjoyed participating last year and have saved a couple of books for this year\u2019s challenge, Paint me Black<\/i><\/a> by Claire Henty-Gebert and My Ngarrindjeri Calling <\/i><\/a>by Doreen Kartinyeri and Sue Anderson.<\/p>\n

The disturbing incidents this week have caused us pain but we can turn this into a healing pain.\u00a0 As Shane Houston said, we have to embrace difficult things in order to build a better society.\u00a0 My attendance at these talks and reading history is part of educating myself but that is not enough.<\/p>\n

The next step for me is to become a more effective agent for change.<\/p>\n

Addendum<\/h4>\n