CHURCH, business and government representatives will take part with indigenous leaders in a national roundtable this week to discuss new ways of tackling problems such as domestic violence and alcoholism in indigenous communities.
The Catholic Church will be represented at the Canberra meeting on Tuesday by Jesuit Father Greg Jordan of Brisbane.
Fr Jordan said although he did not have a direct link with Aboriginal people, he would bring to the roundtable his experience of working with families, through long ties with the Australian Family Association, extensive reading on family issues and pastoral experience.
This was along with “a powerful sympathy” for the Aboriginal people, who had been the victims of “cultural stripping”, just as his Irish forebears had been.
Their art, their song and their languages, had been stripped from them in their encounter with white culture, he said.
Fr Jordan also said that all families, white or black, were insufficiently supported by government. Current government policy did not provide the necessary underpinning for families.
