Glenn Loughrey
10 November 2024
This is part two of an article in which Canon Loughrey reflects on what is needed to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Here, he explains how First Peoples engage with their environment and each other, and why this is different to how Second Nations people might understand the world.
Aboriginal culture is the result of 65,000 years of implemented research which was and continues to be peer reviewed in yarning circles. This deep time history is responsible for the difference in cultures. Western Eurocentric culture had its beginning in the 15th century, and as Sir Peter Gluckman, President of the International Science Council has said, modern science is only a few hundred years old.
The ideas that follow are therefore not the basis of magic or secret Aboriginal business, but of the circle of relational, contextual, contemporary birthed knowledge – a hermeneutic cycle renewing in real time. Unlike much of Western knowledge, these ideas are not owned by siloed systems be they science, academia or religion. They belong to all and are shared across cultural borders.
Custodial ethic
A key idea underpinning our existence as a people is the custodial ethic. It is often used in Acknowledgements and Welcomes with little understanding of what it means for us. It is often translated as “caring for” which conjures up a range of emotions and trite interactions, but it is more than that.
For Indigenous people, it is the Ten Commandments, Sermon on the Mount and other religious and secular ethical statements condensed into three words – respect, responsibility and reciprocity.
Respect and responsibility are inclusive of self, family, community, and all our kin we share this space with. The concept is one of wholeness and belonging as a person in relation with a web of others they are responsible to and for. This is not the place for the radical individual, but for one who always acts for the good of the whole.
Read more: Artwork highlights God’s presence in Indigenous story
Reciprocity reminds us that who we care for is equally responsible for respecting us by caring for us. This underpins our relationships with all created things so that we never take, use or appropriate anything or anyone for our own selfish purposes. To do so will disconnect the free flow of wellbeing for all.
The principle of the custodial ethic is about our relationship with all. It is internodal – each one of us is a node connected in so many ways to each other and the created world. The diminishment of any node in that complex interconnection diminishes all others.
It is why every drop of water in what we call a river is central to that body of connected droplets being called a river, and a healthy and health-giving flow. One droplet out of the flow diminishes the right of that body to be called a river.
Seven generational
Our concept of future development and planning emanates from the custodial ethic idea. Any action taken on any matter is viewed not just in the window of the immediate but in both its sustainability over a long period and its benefit for those yet to be born, human and non-human, animate and inanimate. Aunty Anne Poelina from the Mutawarra/Fitzroy River and eminent scientist describes this as ‘forever development’ – development for, and sustainable beyond the future.
It is thinking with a seven-generation horizon. Much of how we engage with our country and people is related to this concept. It is key to the idea of the custodial ethic and ensures that we always have enough and there is always enough for all we share the space with.
Will what we need be here in seven generations? What do we have to do to make that possible? Is this decision, idea or practice sustainable and deliverable over a long period so that those yet to be born will have what they need to thrive?
Murnong daisy cultivation, fish and eel traps, harvesting of animals and plants for food, movement of people and more all are predicated on this idea. It is not designed to maximise production or lifestyle.
It is designed to provide sufficiently for needs now, into the future, and beyond. It is not extractive, but interactive, with the welfare of all in mind.
Every’when and six dimensional visioning
Our concept of time and space is closely related to the seven generational idea. While we do plan for seven generations it is not linear, or specific outcome driven. It is process focussed, and the process is the outcome.
Every’when describes the idea that we live in segments of time in the same space. Past, present and future are not separate and linear but intertwined in this moment we are in now. We do not leave the past in the past or what is to come to the future, they both interact, inform, influence how we live now.
In other words, we live in the every’when every’where and in every moment of existence. What has been and what will be are experienced now.
Western Eurocentric thinking identifies an up/down mode of being fixated on our individual location between what is up and what is down, an inherited trait from our Christian forefathers.
First People are fixed by their place amid the circle defined by the horizons, sky country and the earth below – we stand in the middle of the circle which is the space we are custodians of.
Read more: People of faith invited to listen, learn Indigenous perspectives of Voice
Our custodial responsibilities are not tied specifically to the place of our birth or our heritage, but to the circle of horizons defined by each step we take. We are responsible for the every’where in the every’when.
This space is multi-dimensional. It is not defined by our reason but is alive, spirited and sensuous in such a way as to defy our reason. Non-human and inanimate and animate, matter is sentient, able to communicate, move, change, evolve in ways beyond our normal Western enlightenment understanding.
It is how our ancestors and spirit beings interact and communicate, educate and discipline, and make themselves known in our daily lives.
Six-dimensional living requires us to let go of what we are certain of and allow ourselves to accept that all created beings, and creation itself has vitality, voice and vocation as real as our own.
Ceremony
Being is ceremony, it is not a personal practice. Life is ceremony and the practice of ceremony. It is embodiment of lore in each moment of existence.
While ceremony is often seen as a specific act or ritual, it is in fact living the life gifted in celebration with all other life, near and far, past, present or future, seen or unseen.
It is the enactment of the custodial ethic in all its embodiments even to the point of disappearing as an individual and becoming country. In doing so you treat every act or thought as an expression of the deepest and most sacred ceremonial practice.
Read more: Indigenous spirituality gathering aims to help Christians echo truth and love
It is no less so. Dr Tyson Yunkaporta from Deakin University, in collaboration with Indigenous people across the world, has developed a protocol for working with our knowledge systems. It is mandatory reading for non-Indigenous people. There is lore to be enacted, otherwise danger hovers nearby.
If you have got this far in reading this, you will see that the key difference, the genetic gap, so to speak, between Aboriginal and Western Eurocentric cultures is the central building block of society.
In our culture it is the primacy of the communal, the community, the intertwining spider web of relational belonging against which every action, every thought, every act is assessed, accepted or rejected. This is unlike Western Eurocentric culture where the individual is emperor.
And that is where your cultural genetic re-engineering, the deep work necessary for the betterment of all, must begin.
Maybe you are concerned this doesn’t sound Christian or Biblical. I suggest the journey of the First and Second Testaments along with Jesus’ deep immersion in the ancient story of the Hebrews evident in his teachings, and also reflected in the writings of Paul, provides a bridge between these two ancient spiritualities.
The Venerable Canon Uncle Glenn Loughrey is Archdeacon for Reconciliation, First Nations Recognition and Treaty. Part one of this article was published in the November 2024 edition of The Melbourne Anglican. It was originally a paper Canon Loughrey delivered at a recent public forum on reconciliation.
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