“THIS country is alive, there are so many amazing stories,” Aunty Pat Anderson said.
“And most Australians just don’t know.”
Aunty Pat has been a leading human rights advocate for decades, and joined Archbishop Mark Coleridge in conversation before speaking at Evangelisation Brisbane’s Reconciliation Dinner on September 6.
Aunty Pat’s work has seen her co-chair the council that delivered the Uluru Statement from the Heart, appear before the United Nations and lead a number of health and justice projects throughout Australia.
For her, listening is the first step for the Church in what has been a long journey for indigenous communities.
“We’ve been doing this a really long time,” she said.
“Each generation has had a go at doing something, always focusing on getting a better arrangement for us.
“More recognition, not using in the legal sense now, but just in the ordinary sense, more recognition.
“Who we are, what we do and it’s still really hard to get that across.”
Archbishop Coleridge echoed this sentiment.
“I’ve come to see very clearly that it has to begin by people like me listening to people like Aunty Pat,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
“Listening is harder than it sounds.
“The word is easy to say, though it is actually very hard to do, to really listen to another person.
“But you have got to go through and give indigenous people space and time to tell the story and for us to just listen and receive.”
In talking about what it really means to be the Church in Australia, Archbishop Coleridge said reconciliation was at its core.
“A kind of genuinely Australian Catholic Church, what does it look like?” he said.
“I think we have just got to listen to indigenous voices and believe that we have a hell of a lot to learn.
“In the past we’ve said you gotta learn from us. But we never really believed that we could,” he said.
“In other words, a new kind of mutuality.”
The Reconciliation Dinner was sold out as the archdiocese celebrated and recognised the gifts and contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
