Kularri Region Reconciliation Award 2011 Acceptance Speech

I am honoured to be here tonight and receive this NAIDOC reconciliation award. 

I accept it representing many who have come before me and those who will come after. 

Over one hundred years ago, priests came to live and walk beside local people, sharing faith and hope, the good and the bad times. Fr Nicholas Emo was treated with contempt when he fed and protected vulnerable people in 1895. Opponents burnt his shack and chapel before he won them over by kindness.  

Some reported Fr Worms in the 1930s because he believed that apathy was the result of ‘cutting the sacred cord’ that bound people to their culture and land. He taught Fr McKelson, who taught me, to walk gently on this land, because it belongs to other people and we are here by invitation.

Fr McKelson, Wandjira Jack Mulardy and Nyakerin John Dodo taught me to love language, for it is a window to the liyan, the rayi, or as the desert mob calls it, the kururrn of the people. They taught me that Aboriginal people and culture are strengthened by Christianity, and that Aboriginal people are very blessed with connection to land culture and people. Later the Kukatja taught me about life, language and faith in a desert context. Today I am indeed very blessed to walk in Yawuru country.

The Homelessness Outreach of which we have heard continues the work of Emo, Worms, McKelson and McMahon. We have each used the talents available to us to work in a different way, each appropriate to the time. It bears the mark of each of them, and the faith of the Catholic people of the Kimberley for the last 100 years.

Liyan mapu wa-nangka-ma juyu Kukuni, Upani, Rayipuni, kalpu kapuni 

(May God bless you from heaven, Father, Son and Holy Spirit) (Yawuru)

GimiGimi Shed, Broome, 9th July 2011.