Greetings,

July is Black History Month in Australia, a month which aims to showcase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, heritage and cultures.  It seeks to acknowledge and celebrate First Australians’ achievements and contributions.  Black History Month commences with NAIDOC week.

The theme for NAIDOC 2021 is “Heal Country!”  According to www.naidoc.org.au this calls for “all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.”

“Country is more than a place and inherent to our identity.  Country that we speak about like a person, sustaining our lives in every aspect – spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially and culturally.”

I was recently listening to Rev Dr Garry Worete Deverell, proud Trawloolway man and Anglican cleric, who spoke of country as text and related it to other ‘texts’ we engage with.  For Garry, the ‘text’ of the church always seemed quite colonial and so he returned his first text, the one he learnt as a child, the text of landscape and country.

Garry says that while First People’s talk about listening to country it is not something magical as others often imagine it.  Rather, it is just paying attention to what is going on.  When we do this, we are able to treat country in the same way that God treats us – in truth, in generosity and in covenant.

May we embrace the 2021 NAIDOC theme in the hope that when Country is healed our nation will also be healed.

Blessings – Heather.