We are all indigenous

We are all indigenous people.  Most of us, however, have long lost our connection to our place.

Indigenous Australians have a rich and tangible connection to these lands now called Australia. They can trace their heritage back 60,000 years according to science.  I can trace my family tree back three generations now.  That just starts to get to people who came to Australia from other places.  None of them came from Scotland, but with "Scott" as a surname, red hair and skin that frizzles in the sun, I guess that's where I come from.  I have some great family traditions, a sense of pride and precious relationships going back two generations.  But further back than that I have pretty much nothing - a few stories that have been handed down and some old newspaper clippings.  Pretty paltry compared with 60,000 years and places that are still scared, and oral traditions and languages that are still alive.  It is a rich and wonderful heritage that Indigenous Australians hold.  Those of us it are rightly jealous and are alone and adrift by comparison.

With the Scottish, there is probably some English is my heritage.  My children have some Chinese heritage as well.  Like most Australians our heritage is mixed and a bit of a mystery.  You have to look to the newest of Australians to find heritages of one culture only.  Most Indigenous Australians have a mixed heritage - some that is Indigenous to Australia, some that is not.  So, if we classifying everyone as conquered or conqueror and assume that the people of today carry all the prejudices and all the responsibilities of their ancestors, we get to a paradoxical place where Ingenuous Australians who have non-Indigenous heritage are both conquered and conquerors - oppressed and oppressors.  So let's not divide people using this artificial binary.  We are all Australians.  We are all responsible for injustices that were done and for unjust systems that persist.  We are make use of the benefits of the invasion.  What we need is a way forward that doesn't polarise us.

People with Indigenous Australian heritage are paving that way.  Their rich, 60 millennia old heritage is being shared.  When there is a big event a local person welcomes everyone to their land.  They don't tell them where the fence is or ask them to pay or even make rules about how the land is to be used.  They just welcome them.  People with Indigenous heritage are leading the way in preserving their culture, their sacred sites, their ancient ways of being.  The are preserving them not just for themselves but for all Australians.  We are all enriched by the presence and preservation of sacred sites, culture and language.  I can say I live on the land of the oldest living continuous culture.  A land that still holds the people who were first given charge of it by the Creator - the oldest living culture on earth.  This is my heritage too because it has been shared with me.  At smaller events when someone recognises the people of the country we are meeting on, I am reminded of the generosity of people who welcome others to their land - perhaps this is because they are in touch with the reality that they were given it in the first place.

So I am rightly jealous of Indigenous people - people of Indigenous Heritage - it is a gift passed down to be shared not a polarising classification of peoples to put them at odds with each other.  But there is one more important thing to be said.

As I listened to brothers of Indigenous heritage I heard a little of their pride, but I soon heard a much more disturbing truth.  Overwhelming the pride of owning 60,000 years of living culture is the reality that an indigenous heritage means carrying 230 years of debilitating, demeaning oppression in your genes.  The most prominent thing about being Aboriginal is knowing your ancestors were treated as second-class citizens for the last fifty years, and that they were treated as less than human for the 180 years before that.  I might be jealous, missing of a long, rich and stable culture that has continuity right back to the Creation but I am not jealous of massive rates of incarceration, appalling health and education levels and prejudice which still allows murder in custody for which no one is held to account.

We are all indigenous people.  We are almost all people of mixed heritage.  We all own our history.  We all own our future.  Together we will find our place.  Welcome to country.  

Mission by Partnership

Working in partnership with local indigenous organisations has a lot going for it.  Locals know the language and the culture without needing years of training!  And they are more likely to be around long-term and cost less to support.  Most importantly, taking expatriates out of the front-line empowers locals to step into that space, empowering them and achieving better missional outcomes at the same time.  This is the illusive "localisation" that many NGO's seek.  I got to say some of those things when I was interviewed by Wesley Mission about Global Mission Partners.  Watch the interview here.

What is the gospel truth about Coronavirus?

How to Christians understand the spread of Coronavirus?

Coronavirus appears to have originated in the wet food markets of Wuhan where live, often wild, animals are sold for food.  The sellers there struggle to make a living so many use their animal cages as a bed, guarding their livestock while they sleep.  This kind of close contact, it appears, provided the opportunity for the transfer of the virus from animals to humans.  See here for an Indigenous Australian insight.

When we give to the poor like the marketeers of Wuhan, we often do so out of compassion, out of a sense of responsibility and of solidarity.  These are all good motivations, but this example reminds us that there are solid self-interest, self-care, self-safety motives for giving to the poor. God has set us in a connected world.  What we do affects others.  The whole creation, not just the people, groans for the kingdom to come (Rom 8:22).  In a recent new story featured an oyster farmer who had inherited the farm from his father.  He was bemoaning the fact that he could not pass it on to his children.  It no longer produced oysters at a level that could sustain a family business.  The temperature of the water had changed.  We had all helped to change the temperature of the water.  The Coronavirus health message is clear: The health of the poorest in the global community is critical to the health of the whole global community.  In concerning ourselves with their health we will find our own healing (Is 58:7-9).

God is in the business of directing the history of nations.  Repeatedly in the prophets we hear how the Lord of history God determines the future of the nations (Is 2:4).  Is this what is happening now?  Because the virus travels person to person, it’s epicentres are the places where people travel most – first Milan and now New York – the places of those who have the wealth and inclination to travel.  It is as if God is saying, “Don’t think you can be assured of protection in your modern rich environments.  I have power that can unsettle even these.”  God is resisting and bringing low the proud (Luke 1:51-52).

I have always taken our dog for a morning walk so I know the local morning walkers.  These days my wife joins me, and we use the commuting time that we have saved to go for a longer walk.  There are a lot more walkers these days.  Families are rediscovering jig-saw puzzles and warm ways of being together.  And the simple joys of a book or a garden and many familiar things that we have been rushing past, have shown their true value.  What is God saying?  “Life does not consist in busyness or consumption or power!’ It never has!  All the essentials of life; love, relationship and spiritual sustenance are still fully and freely available.

Churches have had to stop and rethink what it means to be church now we can’t put on a big show on Sunday.  At our church, we have never engaged with each other with such joy and such depth.  Churches are dropping notes in letterboxes, not just of their members, but across their communities, offering to lend a hand.  We are the people who are unflustered by pandemics.  We stand in the constancy of Christ’s living presence.  We stand in the compassionate and courageous tradition of Christians who risked their lives to give victims of an earlier pandemic from Romans streets to a proper burial.  This is our time to offer our communities a steady, compassionate hand and a pathway to Christ.

Slowly the virus is making its way to places as poor or poorer than the wet markets of Wuhan. To countries where hospitals and health care are a shadow of those in Milan and New York and Sydney.  Their only real protection is their isolation from the rest of the world.  In South Sudan the only cases are four UN workers.  The general population can’t afford to travel.  In places like this, if Coronavirus got started it would have an untameable impact.  What is God saying here but to get outside of ourselves and engage our compassion, our sense of responsibility and of solidarity, and help – to give generously?  It will be an act of self-care that will help to heal us.