Truth-telling about our history and the issues which divide us today is key to knowing who we really are as Australians, claimed Mike Brown, one of the team members of IofCA’s Trustbuilding program, at a forum in Adelaide in August.
Mike Brown spoke alongside Glenise Coulthard AM, an Adnyamathanha health worker and the longest-serving director of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. While Glenise used photos to graphically depict the struggle and pride of generations of her ancestors removed from their lands in the Flinders Ranges, Mike drew on facing his family’s involvement in frontier violence in that same land of the Flinders. His great-great uncle, James Brown, was murdered in 1852 by Aboriginal tribesmen on whose land the Brown brothers had occupied, and 17 armed men had taken bloody revenge.
With about 80 people convened by Pilgrim Church and the Unley Allies Group, Glenise and Mike led a dialogue on Truth-telling and truth-listening: walking together. Some points from Mike’s talk:
Both truth-telling and listening are so important, said Mike. ‘People say, “Why weren’t we told?” But did we really want to hear it? The great Australian silence is perpetuated largely by a great Australian deafness, our stubborn resistance to hear what is being told to us, over and over: not just a history of dispossession and humiliation, but the pain and frustration of people struggling to Close the Gap today.’
Outlining his journey of 40 years since discovering this hidden family history, Mike found that ‘when you open the door of your mind and heart to an area of pain in your country and the people involved in it, then other doors open, opportunities for truthfulness and healing arise, and the Spirit shows authentic ways of Walking Together.’
Mike and his wife Jean have begun a dialogue with a local Ngarrindjeri language group on the South Coast of SA where they now live about creating a truth-telling and listening process. For 35 years before the official British settlement of South Australia in 1836, the Ngarrindjeri faced a generation of mostly cruel treatment by the ‘Sealers and Whalers’ operating on Kangaroo Island, trading in seal-skins, oil and kidnapped women. By the time British settled the South Coast, venereal disease and smallpox were wiping out Indigenous communities.
Listening to the living memories of Ngarrdinjeri has uncovered stories not only from this past but also present: one pointed to a building still called ‘The Registry’ in Pt Elliot where the Browns live, where a grandmother had to register every fortnight to get rations of flour, tea, sugar. And how he was made to feel shame at local schools because of his Aboriginality – but then also copped shame from by some ‘Nunga’ relatives for not being dark enough.
‘Truth-telling and listening can take us out from a personal search to truth in our nation,’ said Mike. ‘Our governments need to take this process seriously: as the Victorian government has done, with the remarkable Yoorrook Commission. But like the Apology, let’s not wait for governments.
‘Truth-telling is needed on all those levels: pre-colonial, early white settlement, living memories and what is experienced today.’ Significantly, Ngarrindjeri friends agree sharing stories of one’s legacy is needed equally across our multi-ethnic society among people who have come to Australia with huge burdens of grief and trauma.
‘Truth-hearing with First Peoples could open up a process of national healing across and between communities,’ concluded Mike. ‘We live in an age of half-truths, fake news and outright lies, used for power, money, revenge and to divides us. “The truth shall set you free” – when we as Australians know the truth about ourselves and our country through deep listening, we can be freed enough to find who we really are as an Australian people, to help our country find its soul.’
For more details please email Mike Brown: mike.brown@iofc.org