Respect, Tolerance and Reconciliation Rather than Opposition and Denial: Indigenous Spirituality, Land, and the Future of Religion in Australia

Abstract

This paper, composed by an Indigenous Australian, who has been for many years national Race Discrimination Commissioner, discusses the future of religion in Australian society from the perspective of the anthropological, cultural and spiritual heritage of Indigenous Australians, who comprise the longest surviving culture in the world (over 60,000 years). Pervasive in every aspect of Indigenous life is a traditional spirituality, “the Dreaming”, that is also essentially tied to the Land. While Indigenous culture and the Christianity brought by missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can co-exist, contemporary Indigenous wellbeing is inseparable from spiritual wellbeing and in particular secure ownership of the land. Indigenous peoples of the world have a particular collective value as holders of a living heritage about the meaning of what it really is to be a human in relation to the natural world. The second half of the paper clarifies and reflects upon the reaction to research conducted by the author when Race Discrimination Commissioner and certain preliminary findings of that research. In the face of negative reaction in some quarters it is argued that people of faith should have nothing to fear about proposals to enshrine freedom of religion and belief in law.