Indigenous concerns

Suggested ways forward from Yearly Meeting 2005

• Learn the black history of your area
• Support the local Aboriginal corporation
• Don’t underestimate your own power to change opinions
• Listen!!
• Encourage local Friends to discuss the concept and Pay the Rent
• Listen to each other’s experiences and meetings with Indigenous people, one on one, and make an opportunity to sort through our own racism and reactions, and share our own sense of alienation from the land
• Go to events popular with or organised by Aboriginal people.
• Visit Aboriginal communities. Especially valuable to be in situations where ‘White’ is in the minority.
• Hold a workshop in Cunnamulla – if they and David want us!
• Take the opportunity to interact with Aboriginal people when it arises
• Read information and research to understand the issues, and correct myths.
• Educate ourselves regarding Aboriginal culture and its value. Read Backhouse lecture.
• Develop Waratah’s paper on Sovereignty.
• Issue press releases on our concerns.
• Join in listening and Heart Circles with those Friends working in this area.
• Support Aboriginal people attending Court.
• Develop a ‘common language’ to communicate experience, and move beyond a legalistic framework.
• Start where Aboriginal people are at – use deep listening, and empathy.
• Make connections and introductions to Aboriginal people – e.g. when camping.
• Use Aboriginal wisdom in Quaker newsletters.
• Discuss Aboriginal spirituality at Yearly Meeting.
• Support and develop Aboriginal language programs with properly qualified people, and make sure these are funded.
• Join a reconciliation group.
• Explore and challenge ourselves: ‘What has happened to Reconciliation energy since the bridge walk?’
• Establish links with Aboriginal people through shared projects.
• Hold ‘Friends’ Fridays’ with speakers to share their experiences.
• Develop and use mediation skills: mediation is a Quaker role.
• Create safe environments where trust and sharing can happen.
• Don’t always expect a positive response from reconciliation attempts.
• Seek invitations to meet various groups and generations to participate and help out.
• Be open to opportunities! Don’t project our feelings onto Indigenous people.
• Support Aboriginal businesses.
• Go slowly with new friendships.
• Be seen to care. Visit the Aboriginal embassy and take food.
• Find a way forward by assuming there is a way forward!

Friends and Indigenous Peoples

A testimony to social justice and racial equality has been part of the Quaker witness to the world since the inception of our Religious Society of Friends in Britain in the 17th century ...

In 1691 William Penn signed a treaty of friendship with the Delaware tribes of American Indians, arranging for fair payments for lands taken…John Woolman, in 1756 persuaded Quakers in Philadelphia to pay for land stolen from the Indians by others.

In the 19th century, two British Friends, James Backhouse and George Washington Walker (pictured right) travelled through the Australian colonies and were forthright in their statements to influential figures in Australia and Britain concerning the cruelty and injustice meted to the Australian Aborigines, especially urging payment for land taken from them.

(From paragraph 5.22 of this we can say; Australian Quaker life, faith and thought, 2003.)

From the Indigenous Concerns Workshop

In October 2004, the Indigenous Concerns Committee held a workshop to look at Friends' relationships with Indigenous peoples which recommended a number of ways forward:

Engaging Friends in Indigenous Concerns.

• Focus on changing hearts rather than outward action.
• Provide safe opportunities for one-to-one listening, and worship sharing to share stories of personal experiences of meeting Indigenous people.
• Provide opportunity to explore Indigenous concerns through discussing the new Advices and Queries.
• Use existing structures within the Meeting (e.g. Quaker basics, Friends Friday, after-Meeting discussion).
• Ask for an invitation from an Aboriginal community to visit (cross-cultural course like the one by Canberra Friends with Wiradjuri Elders at Condobolin).
• For those already engaged, reflect on their own process of engagement, teasing out the strands.
• Use the Canadian Friends Service Committee meditation (in their kit).
• Include Indigenous wisdom in Quaker newsletters.

Strengthening Links

• Organise groups of Friends to travel into the outback and camp and have a fund to assist this.
• Support Friends in Darwin and Alice Springs areas who are engaged in Indigenous concerns.
• Go to events popular with/organised by Aboriginal people, and publicise these among Friends.
• Visit and support Aboriginal Hostels and associated activities.
• Support the Regional Meeting correspondents to the Yearly Meeting Committee with information, and encourage interest in the Committee’s doings.
• Include at least one Regional Meeting correspondent (in rotation) in each telephone link-up/meeting of the YMICC.
• Establish an e-mail network, allowing for those not on e-mail to receive alternative communication.
• Organise another workshop like this one (e.g. in Cunnamulla) next year.
• The Canberra Regional Meeting residential weekend in July 2005 at Albury could include a session on Indigenous concerns.
• Support FWCC representatives with information about Indigenous concerns, to keep this on FWCC agenda regionally and globally.

Supporting Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination

• Prepare an Emu Feathers publication on Sovereignty and Self-Determination to help Friends understand these concepts as Indigenous Australians do.
• Support the development of Aboriginal language programs through lobbying, finance, encouraging related publications and materials, and linking any material to self-determination and cultural identity.

For further information, contact David Purnell.