August 2005: Indigenous Theology

In a literal sense, it’s nothing more than dots on a canvas, so I’m surprised how often it seeps into my consciousness.

When it comes, I’m swept through its dots into a grassland of changing hues, a tract of countryside soft and swaying — a homeland, a place to belong.

I’ve never met the indigenous woman from Mulan in Western Australia who created this painting (called Mungul*) that has such an ability to transport me. But I sense she has an understanding of the land — and a connection to the land — I hunger for.

Veronica Lulu’s painting makes me want to encounter where she’s come from … and where she’s coming from. And I know it’s this kind of desire that needs to be kept alive if the Uniting Church is to face the challenges of covenanting and indigenous and contextual theology Chris Budden outlines this month (p17).

God uses all sorts of things to spark the desire to form the loving, just and cooperative community the Bible describes and that a covenant relationship implies. For me, and no doubt countless other Australians, Sir Ronald Wilson, who died in early July, was one such inspiration.

Co-author of the Bringing Them Home report which gave voice to hundreds of indigenous Australians forcibly removed from their homes, Ron Wilson was also a President of the Uniting Church.

Speaking at the May MacLeod Lecture at the Centre for Ministry in 2000, after the Federal Government had refused to say sorry to the Stolen Generations, he said this:

“Ultimately, my faith [in a united, just and equitable Australia] rests in the people’s movement for reconciliation and its steady growth until it captures the hearts and minds of so many Australians that real and lasting change will be inevitable. And make no mistake about it, at the core of such a people’s movement will be the countless Christians who see it as a ministry of reconciliation in the Spirit of Christ to work and pray for the future of this nation.”

An indigenous artist from Mulan.

A non-indigenous man from Geraldton.

Two inspirational people.

Two individual flames keeping alight other small flames across Australia.

Dots forming a homeland …

Marjorie Lewis-Jones
*See Mungul in the Art Centre at http://www.balgoart.org.au/