Through Aboriginal Eyes
By Anne Pattel-Grey
Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991. 159 pp.
Reviewed by Annolise Truman
This book, which details Aboriginal experience, much of it traumatic and death-dealing, not only presents historical and current injustices from the perspective of the oppressed; it invites non-Aboriginals to make a radical shift in awareness by acknowledging indigenous culture and valuing the Aboriginal way of seeing reality.
Anne Pattel-Greg is an Aboriginal woman from northern Queensland. She is executive secretary of the Aboriginal and Islander Commission of the Australian Council of Churches, vice-chairperson of the NSW Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, a candidate for ministry in the Uniting Church and a PhD candidate at Sydney University.
While she writes from a Christian point of view, her Christianity is expressed through her Aboriginality. "Aboriginal spiritual traditions teach us a positive way of living in harmony with the land that is respectful to ourselves and to all of God's creation", she writes. "Christian people and religious hierarchies from the European tradition have been especially limited in their ability to see the profound religious and spiritual qualities of the Aboriginal tradition."
To white eyes it may seem strange to include in a single book issues as apparently diverse as spirituality, land rights, deaths in custody, the role of Australian churches, Aboriginal theology and statistics on health, employment, education, imprisonment, income and mortality. Yet Pattel-Grey can see the connectedness in these "contradictions". She and other Aboriginal people have lived them daily.
In her opening chapters, the author outlines the dispossession of the original inhabitants and the subsequent crimes committed to disguise the lie of terra nullius. She takes a hard look at how Aboriginal people are still kept from being self-
determining by inadequate land rights (non-existent in some states) and continuing institutional racism — as borne out by the statistics in the back of the book and by the official reluctance to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
She throws down the gauntlet to the churches to live the gospel in the way of Christ, who strove for the liberation of the suffering, the poor and the disheartened. For her it is clear that the church must have a single theological and social focus — commitment to the poor. She exhorts the churches to embrace this radical theology as well as giving land back to Aboriginal people and supporting specific Aboriginal-run projects.
A major point throughout is that it is critically important for non-indigenous Australians to listen to Aboriginal people speaking of their struggle themselves. The Aboriginal and Islander Commission (AIC) is one such voice. Members of the group were responsible for organising the January 1988 March for Freedom, Justice and Hope which brought together 20,000 Aboriginal and 30,000 non-Aboriginal Australians in a march through the streets of Sydney.
Other powerful examples of Aboriginal people speaking for themselves are the personal testimonies of some of the AIC members. These inspiring people relate their experience of racism and oppression and their vision of a just and equal society in which Aboriginal culture and spirituality will be respected and valued by all Australians.
Anne Pattel-Grey's book challenges non-Aboriginal Australians to recognise that Aboriginal people are fully capable of liberating themselves. They do not need white people to speak for them. Rather, our task is our own liberation, and our role is to listen to a people who have been listening for 60,000 years. Then we may be freed not only from the false concept of terra nullius, but also from its underlying myths of progress and development, capitalism and consumerism, which are costing us our sanity, our communities and our earth.