ALFREDO Barahona, has a message to Australian Catholics as the Church navigates a path of reconciliation with First Nations peoples – let’s practice what we preach.
“We preach compassion, we preach forgiveness, we preach truth – so let’s practice it,” Mr Barahona, an indigenous descendant from central America and a truth telling and healing expert, said.
He’s in Australia to support the Australian Blanket Exercise – a project that helps the wider community understand the painful history of First Nations peoples.
Mr Barahona was also a guest panellist at the Laurel Blow Speaker Series held at ACU’s Banyo campus in Brisbane on October 6th, appearing with a First Nations Canadian Connor Sarazin (via video link), and highly respected Queensland indigenous Catholic educator Thelma Parker, who now works for Reconciliation Australia developing truth telling programs across the country.
Facilitated by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the panel explored how healing can be achieved between First Nations peoples and the wider community by sharing the often painful history and impacts of colonialism.
Optimistic about the prospect of reconciliation with First Nations peoples, Ms Parker, a Warluarra and Kalkadoon woman, said there is still healing that needed to take place, but “collectively we could do this together”.
She explained that on her father’s country near Mount Isa in western Queensland, there remain painful memories of a hanging tree where her people were taken to be killed.
“My mother, my grandmother – we had to bury those bones of our people underneath the hanging tree,” she said.
“The chain on that hanging tree is still there.
“For us, our healing is a big part of who we are. Our healing provides strength so we can keep on continuing to tell the truth of what has gone on.”
Mr Barahona said Australia is not unique in facing up to its colonial past and the atrocities inflicted on First Nations peoples – many countries are still grappling with the same issues.
“It is a big job recovering our heritage,” Mr Barahona said, reflecting on the reconciliation projects he has spearheaded in countries including Ecuador, Guatemala, the Philippines and in Canada.
“We don’t need to hurt each other. We don’t need to attack each other. We don’t need to humiliate each other. We can hold each other and help one another.”
Mr Barahona is originally from Cuzcatlan, a Maya – Pipil territory part of what is now known as El Salvador. His Catholic family fled to Canada as refugees in the 1980s.
He now works for the Toronto-based KAIROS Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, where he focuses on developing meaningful relationships and solidarity between Indigenous peoples and newcomers to Canada.
His organisation takes practical, truth-telling projects – called “blanket exercises” to countries around the world, working with a variety of community and church groups.
“I think it is important for us if we call ourselves Christians to recognise the damage that has been done and how mistaken we have been to think that the Lord wants us to come and take somebody else’s land and to turn somebody else into something that they’re not,” he said.
“My relationship with the creator, my relationship with the spirit world – I treasure that, and I want that to be respected.
“And I need to respect that relationship that others have, spiritually speaking.”
