Fr Jeremy Clarke, SJ
I am a Catholic priest, a member of the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. My family are of Irish heritage, with the first members of our family coming to Australia in the early 1800s. I grew up in Sydney and presently am based in Canberra, completing a doctorate in Chinese history at the Australian National University. Australian Jesuits first became involved in living and working with Aboriginal Australians in the late nineteenth century at Rapid Creek and Daly River in the Northern Territory. Our commitment to the cause of reconciliation, although perhaps small, has nevertheless been constant and dearly held.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
I struggle to write or say anything here about what a reconciled Australia would look like for two reasons. I am not of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent and think that for too long too many non-indigenous Australians have been describing a vision of Australia that has barely or rarely included the voices and concerns of indigenous Australians. I do not wish to add to such a list.
I also struggle to write anything because there are too many lists anyway - too many statistics about differences in health standards, about life expectancy, about access to quality education, about housing conditions and so on, that leave me despondent to the point of silence. Paul Keating's 1996 'Redfern address' urging all Australians first to open our hearts in order that we might achieve real and genuine reconciliation ended with the statement "I am confident that we will succeed in this decade. "Former Governor-General William Deane, also in 1996 in his Vincent Lingiari lecture "Some signposts from Daguragu", said that "much remains to be done to overcome or alleviate the terrible problems which are the present consequences of past oppression and injustice. "Ten years on our nation is still diminished because of such problems, as a people we have not succeeded as some of us had hoped.
This anniversary and this forum are, however, about hopes and shared dreams. Thus, rather than let defeat and despair have the final word, my vision of a reconciled Australia is one in which the terrible statistics about differences in standards of health, education and poverty are a thing of the past because there would be no discrepancy between indigenous Australians and non-indigenous Australians. All are healthy, all are proud.
Jeremy Clarke
