Statement from the HeartA Process for Justice

Canon Hon. A.Prof. Uncle Glenn Loughrey's 2023 Grafton Synod sermon

... In the name of the God of Holy Dreaming, and of Jesus Christ our elder and of the Creator Spirit.

Amen - Isa 49:5-6

Our readings for this evening celebrate the birth of John the Baptist and connect the prophesy of Isaiah to the life of John in Acts. The Psalms reading acts as the fulcrum between the past and the present, the shift from a one nation focus on the task of the Messiah to the idea of an extensive, inclusive kin-dom.

John C. Holbert writes:

"This servant was initially summoned to reconstitute the remnant of the Israelite exiles, but Isaiah suddenly realizes that such a task is too small, too trivial. No, this servant will now be sent as a 'light to the nations,' in order that God's 'salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.'"

The birth or gift of John to the world is integral to this transformation. His naming gives us a glimpse into God’s changing vision for his creation. While Israel remains his first people he begins to reach out and touch the world he loves. John is the forerunner to God's gift to the whole world.

The Statement from the Heart is a spirit document offering the gift of transformational forgiveness and inclusion, not just for Aboriginal people but for all Australians. A contemplative reading of the Statement will uncover the invitation to all to shift from an I focussed world to one where all benefit from the aspirations embedded in it. This statement reminds of the basis of First peoples kinship, relationship based belonging – there is no I in MOB.

On August 14, 2024, my Wiradjuri mob will remember the declaration of martial law by Governor Brisbane against us in Bathurst, NSW. The war of extermination, as it was described, had commenced in January, and didn’t cease, if it ever has, until December of 1824.

This was a war between the Wiradjuri nation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It wasn’t the action of disparate squatters, but a declared war between nations. Once the "impenetrable" Blue Mountains were crossed in 1813, the colony expanded onto the fertile plains of the west.

…… when Governor Thomas Brisbane came to power a flood of land grants were made. The influx of colonists (impacted) the traditional food sources and sacred sites of the Wiradjuri. By early 1824, war had broken out, with the Wiradjuri adopting a guerrilla style approach under their leader Windradyne.

In 1824, 16 Aboriginals were killed by soldiers on the Cudgegong River near Mudgee, not far from where I grew up, after contact resulted in the death of a shepherd.

The incident at Cudgegong was the beginning of the war of extermination propagated in the Mudgee area by the owner of the property, George Cox. Cox, it is alleged, proclaimed publicly, “the only way to deal with these vermin is to exterminate them – women and children included”. Over the years this unleashed hunting parties, poisoning with flour and water, and stirruping, an act too gruesome to describe here. The violence that ensued has been spoken about by friends of mine as part of an unwanted history in their family stories. By 1876 no local people remained.

The area around Mudgee did indeed live up to the title given to the wars – the war of extermination. In the 1960’s when I lived there as a young child, my father warned us not to eat or drink anything that we didn’t know where it came from. And when we asked why, he would simply say “poison, poison water, poison flour.”