This week is Reconciliation Week, and I addressed this issue in our Secondary Assembly.
At 8pm on 30th October 1938, over the CBS Radio Network in the United States, Orson Welles broadcast a radio episode based on the book The War of the Worlds. The episode is infamous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was actually taking place. The first half of Welles’s broadcast had a “breaking news” style of storytelling which, alongside the Mercury Theatre on the Air’s lack of commercial interruptions, meant that the first break in the drama came after all of the alarming “news” reports had taken place.
In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation. Welles apologised at a hastily called news conference the next morning, and no punitive action was taken. The broadcast and subsequent publicity brought the 23-year-old Welles to the attention of the general public and gave him the reputation of an innovative storyteller and “trickster.”
How would we respond if aliens landed in our streets and began dragging us out of our houses, killing us, and herding us into camps?
Such events were all a fiction for Orson Welles and his audience.
Of course, if you are a refugee, you know that safety can very quickly turn into vulnerability and harm. Changes in politics can dislocate us.
This was also a fact for the Indigenous people of this nation. As the lyrics of Goanna’s song Solid Rock observe:
Well, they were standin’ on the shore one day
They saw the white sails in the sun
It wasn’t long before they felt the sting
White man, white law, white gun …
The sailors were alien invaders.
My ancestors were the equivalent of the aliens to our Indigenous people.
On Monday, we commemorated the apology by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with Sorry Day. I recall the conversations around the calls for a national apology—first when John Howard was Prime Minister, and then subsequently with Kevin Rudd. A popular sentiment objecting to an apology was expressed as, “What has it got to do with me? I didn’t do anything!”
As I listened, I wondered what my answer to that question might be.
What do I know about racism and intimidation? Nothing. I am white, male, 194cm tall, well-educated and born here.
I was a member of the Commonwealth Games team that represented Australia in Edinburgh in 1986. Thirty-two of the eligible fifty-nine countries—largely African, Asian and Caribbean states—boycotted the event because of the then British government's policy of maintaining sporting links with apartheid South Africa. An international cloud around racism had already shaped the climate of the Games. One afternoon early in our residency at the Village, four Black athletes went out of their way to avoid three of us as we walked to the cafeteria. Perhaps it was a sign of our political and personal naivety, but we took their suspicion of us personally. We failed to see ourselves as representatives of a class, culture and ethnicity that had oppressed others. In that moment, we committed to meeting these men and connecting personally. So, we pursued them for the next ten days. We met with some of those men on our final night in Edinburgh. We felt that our attempt to reach out to them was a small measure of connection that might contribute to reducing the tyranny of stereotypes. I recall this quest with a measure of embarrassment for its naivety, and yet also with some satisfaction that we attempted some connection.
As Christians, we are called to care for the “widows, orphans and the poor.” We are those who are purposed by Christ to reach for people who are marginalised and vulnerable.
We are given the spirit of reconciliation: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” (2 Corinthians 5:17–19)
Whilst this speaks of a spiritual reconciliation, there are also bonds of humanity to restore as we serve others.
What does this mean for our community?
We must be people who move to people—who connect with those who are different from us. We need to be people who choose to leave the comfort of our position and cross the room to connect with people who are new, different, lost or vulnerable.
As Christians, we acknowledge the primacy of generational transfer. I may not bear the guilt of my ancestors, but I will be part of the solution and redress both the sins of commission and omission.
We need to be a community that celebrates the difference in heritage and still embraces the humanity of people.
This is how we should approach all people.
This is how we need to approach our Indigenous brothers and sisters.