Mission-in-reverse is something that can begin through seeking opportunities to engage. It may begin by way of a gift. For me my story holds both.
Before I came to South Australia I had spent time learning Maori language and working for a Maori Anglican diocese, the Hui Amorangi ki te Manawa o Te Wheke, in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty of Aotearoa New Zealand. For six months I had lived immersed in Tikanga Maori (Maori culture). This experience was a combination of me pursuing opportunities to learn and a wonderful God-moment invitation from the Hui Amorangi. I could feel myself changing as they took me under their wing. When it turned out my path was heading to South Australia I was concerned. I was well aware that relationships cannot be forced, the indigenous population here is much smaller proportionately, and invasion is “the primary defining context.”22 I
arrived excited about the job I had been offered but grieving my loss of connection to indigenous knowledge and understanding.
In my first week here I met Aunty Denise Champion, an Adnyamathanha woman from the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, a storyteller and leader in the Uniting
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Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC). She had been invited by Rev Dr Steve Taylor, the principal of Uniting College for Leadership and Theology, to speak at an intensive taking place at the college, my new place of employment. I also met Uncle Nelson Varcoe, a Ngarinndjeri-Narungga man, and Aunty Denise’s daughter Candace. I made sure to talk with Aunty Denise and Uncle Nelson. The opportunity to engage with Candace happened later. Meeting them proved to be a wonderful gift. Uncle Nelson was the first of the three I spoke with. He showed me a piece of his art and explained it to me. He then showed me a map of Aboriginal nations in Australia and told the grievous story of the coastal peoples of Southern Australia, whose women were taken, raped, and abandoned on Kangaroo Island – the sacred island of the dead, which he warned me not to travel to – or killed by visiting mariners. Listening to him I was offered my first chance to appreciate and to grieve for Aboriginal cultural history. In the carpark before the week ended I had the opportunity to speak with Aunty Denise. I suspect I was too talkative in my keenness to connect. She was gracious, however, and in the course of conversation mentioned a dream she had to write a book of her reflections around her Muda.23 Something cautioned me to hold back. I
listened and I remembered.
Meanwhile Ian Dempster, the Resource Officer for the UAICC in South Australia, who was there that day, recommended I read books by the Australian historian Henry Reynolds. I took his advice and from there began devouring all books I could find, including Maybe Tomorrow by Boori Monty Pryor, and My Place by Sally Morgan.24 I
found these books moving, shocking, upsetting and deeply challenging.
I met Aunty Denise and Uncle Nelson again through gatherings of the Covenanting Committee of the Synod of the Uniting Church in South Australia, which I joined, and then Aunty Denise agreed to help take a college group Walking on Country.25 In
planning for it there was a meeting in December at my home, which extended into dinner and storytelling over food.
Later I was told that in the Adnyamathanha worldview it is in sitting together over a meal that people become family.
23 Muda is the Adnyamathanha word for worldview as contained in law, ceremony and stories.
24 Boori Monty Pryor with Meme McDonald, Maybe Tomorrow (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998); Sally Morgan, My Place (Melbourne, Penguin, 1988).
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Walking on Country happened two months later in February on Ngarrindjeri country at Camp Coorong. Rev Dr Tracy Spencer, a Uniting Church minister who has walked her own soul-finding journey with Aboriginal peoples, facilitated the trip while Uncle Tom Trevorrow, who sadly passed away not long after, and Aunty Denise aided her in teaching us. Uncle Tom was plain about the pain of his people and their country – his brother was Bruce Trevorrow, who was stolen at the age of thirteen months –but he also introduced us to the wonder of Ngarrindjeri culture, their deep love of the land and knowledge of it, their arts, stories and spirituality. Meanwhile Aunty Denise chose to share (for me more) from her own story and culture, again mentioning in passing that she would love to write a book. It seemed appropriate to speak and so I asked if she would be interested to make her dream happen if I could find funding. She said yes but she was wary. A white anthropologist, Dorothy Tunbridge had come to the Adnyamathanha, and recorded their Dreaming Stories.26 Once done, she published
them, claimed copyright and never returned. Today Adnyamathanha have to pay her royalties if they tell their own stories in the version she wrote down. Feeling betrayed they have withdrawn her book from sale.
I went away quietly mulling things over and while sharing what I was learning with another they offered to fund the book via an unconditional loan to be repaid as books were sold.
In May I received a request from Aunty Denise. She had work for a college topic outstanding and was wondering if she could spend time with me to finish it, orally. On the agreed date I brought along the contract for the unconditional loan and at an appropriate moment showed it to her. The material she was sharing with me I felt was profound and worthy of publication. It was certainly opening my eyes to knowledge and ideas I had not encountered before. She decided to sign. I humbly offered to ghost write for her, mindful of her oral fluency but reluctance to write. The project was on. Over the next months we met as Aunty Denise’s timetabled allowed and whenever she was ready. For the next February’s Walking on Country we decided to take a pilgrimage to her country in the Flinders. By then I was keen to hear the stories in situ, for I had learned that every Muda is geographically located. There were stories and reflections during the day, late conversations into the night in shared accommodation, lessons in bush tucker cooking, walks on country, and opportunities to take photos.
26 Dorothy Tunbridge in association with the Nepabunna Aboriginal School and the Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, Flinders Ranges Dreaming (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1988).
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The following May we were in the final stages, me reading to her in her own words, checking language together, and confirming the structure I had suggested. Paintings, drawings and photos were created and collated.
I found photographing and painting her country created for me a deeper link to it for now I knew and had walked its stories. Meanwhile it was delightful to read to Aunty Denise her own words and witness her genuine amazement over their insight and wisdom.
The book was launched two and a half years after a conversation in a carpark. Why do I tell all this?
I feel that in the process of learning to listen, to practice humility and to wait I have been finding my soul.
This relationship, unfolding over time, has opened me to the wonders of an ancient culture and the tears of its history under colonisation. Aunty Denise has told me that Adnyamathanha are more open than most Aboriginal nations about sharing their culture but the elders tell things in pieces, revealing only what they think you are ready to know and respect, giving you more when they judge you are ready for it.
This method is an ancient one of testing listening, comprehension, concentration, willingness to learn and grow, memory and patience. The compulsive, rash, foolhardy, disrespectful and napuchi (cheeky) did not survive here. And so I was told the same story many times over, given new detail each time and new interpretation, offered deeper understanding and tested in patience.The process of listening, I have discovered, is not simply about words. There is a form, a different kind of logic from what I have been trained in, in what Aunty Denise was offering me. I had to learn a different way of listening, to hold stories in my head, weave threads of teaching and the relating of connections into my memory, and wait for their grounding until literally I walked on the ground they came from. She spoke of Yarta Wandatha: the land is speaking, the people are speaking. This is not a process of hearing only the words of humans but of learning to listen to the Spirit in the land and its messages for us.
Let anyone with ears, listen! (Matt 11:15)
The academic part of me became excited as I realised that Aunty Denise was doing something with her God-knowledge that is different from standard processes of theology that place God into a culture or stand God against culture. I asked her
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questions about method. Surprised, she responded and revealed an extremely sophisticated hermeneutic underlying her reflections. Genuine listening holds many gifts: not only does one learn to appreciate another as described in their own words but sometimes as an outsider one can point out riches taken as understood by the insider. This is the point at which mutuality truly becomes possible.
While she has since caught my excitement as she attends conferences and is able to explain what she is doing, at the time the contrast for me was stark: I was excited about method; she was excited because the book would be her legacy for her children. It was a salient reminder to me of the importance of people and culture and memory. In the end this project has been not so much about ideas as about relationship. And in the process something mutually good and life-giving has been created. Is this what reconciliation looks like?