The Pope’s focus on everyday lives of indigenous Amazon peoples in apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia offers the Australian Catholic Church a template for listening to and becoming equal partners with this country’s First Peoples.
Aboriginal elder and author Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr writes and speaks about a spiritual practice among the people of the Daly River region called ‘dadirri’. The word, from the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languages, captures the process of listening to the deep spring that is inside each of us.
Dadirri is an attentiveness to what’s happening in ourselves and around us. It’s about opening up and being receptive.
‘It is something like what you call “contemplation”’, writes Ungunmerr. ‘When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again.’
Since the final document from the Synod on the Amazon was released last October, I’ve been reflecting on what it would mean for the more than 130,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholics in Australia.
The bishops at the Amazon Synod engaged in a process of listening to the voices of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region. Among the most widely discussed topics at the synod was the lack of vocations to help open up the Eucharist to indigenous Catholic communities in this region – something that’s also evident in Australia, where there are currently no Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Catholic priests.
FOCUS ON EVERYDAY LIVES
The Pope’s apostolic exhortation, Querida Amazonia, released this week, was much anticipated in Western Catholic circles, with both progressives and conservatives hoping for ammunition for their own battles on the issues of clerical celibacy and women deacons.
It was something of a surprise, then, that the Pope’s final exhortation chose not to engage on those topics at all. Instead, the Pope focused on the everyday lives of indigenous people in the Amazon region, and how those ways of life are being threatened by environmental destruction.
The absence of any new changes in those hot-button topics means the exhortation has been met with anger and disappointment in some places, and with cautious acceptance in others.
Many people in the Western world want and need some movement, or some clarity, from the Church on these issues. So any discussion, even if it’s related to the experiences of peoples whose lives and experiences are completely dissimilar to those in the West, gets viewed through that lens.
In the midst of these responses, however, my mind comes back to dadirri.
One of the issues in the Catholic Church is that despite calling itself a universal religion, it’s tradition and teaching have been predominantly shaped by Western minds. One of the main reasons the Amazon Synod was called was to counter in some way this euro-centrism. It’s ironic then, that the Church so easily fell into seeing the outcomes of the synod through Western perspectives.
OPEN OURSELVES TO THE SPIRIT
But what might we hear if instead of bringing our own concerns to the discussion we opened ourselves up to what the spirit was saying? What would happen if we allowed ourselves to enter more deeply into the experiences of the indigenous peoples in the Church, not just in the Amazon but in our own midst here in Australia?
I believe that’s at the heart of what Pope Francis has tried to do in this exhortation. What he engages with is a complex, human reality. First and foremost, that reality is dominated by the terrible legacy of colonisation, and its ongoing impact on indigenous lives. We can’t engage in conversation about indigenous Catholicism without understanding that reality and accepting the Church’s part in that history. Any relationship created between indigenous and non-indigenous Catholics will always be coloured by colonisation.
Second, we need to acknowledge that the modern way of life that we’re building has far-reaching environmental impacts, which are felt most strongly in these vulnerable communities. Situated alongside this are the values systems and ways of life of indigenous communities. These are often seen as in conflict with ‘civilisation’, but in fact they offer valuable insights as we try to seek more sustainable ways to live in communion with creation in an era of climate change, resource scarcity and environmental degradation.
EQUAL PARTNERS
What’s being addressed is more than just the question of how to bring the Eucharist to indigenous communities lacking in vocations. It’s relationships – between indigenous communities and the global Catholic community, between indigenous communities and our society, and between all of us and our natural world. For us Catholics, the challenge is how we can stop being part of the colonisation process and instead become equal partners with our indigenous brothers and sisters in building a better world.
There are challenges in this relationship that are still left unanswered. If our relationship with indigenous brothers and sisters is truly one of listening and receptiveness, then we also should consider the value of the cultural practices that sustained indigenous communities before European colonisation.
In that context, it may be worthwhile to ask whether ideas of priestly life which developed in the Western Church are the only way that Christian priesthood might be practised. We can already see the richness that indigenous communities bring to our understanding of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Could we be more receptive to indigenous models of spiritual life as well? That’s not considered in this exhortation.
LISTEN TO EACH OTHER
Dadirri makes us whole, according to Ungunmerr. ‘Inculturation elevates and fulfils’, writes Pope Francis in his exhortation. If we get to that point of listening and understanding and receptiveness to indigenous cultures, then who knows what changes might take place in our global Catholic Church.
‘We ourselves had to spend many years learning about the white man's ways’, writes Ungunmerr. ‘Some of the learning was forced; but in many cases people tried hard over a long time, to learn the new ways.’
‘We have learned to speak the white man's language. We have listened to what he had to say. This learning and listening should go both ways. We would like people in Australia to take time to listen to us. We are hoping people will come closer. We keep on longing for the things that we have always hoped for - respect and understanding.’
Image: Indigenous Brazilian Young Man Portrait from Guarani Ethnicity – Getty