INDIGENOUS SPIRITUALITY

o Walk to park in Ward street. Group in a circle in shade. Take off shoes and close eyes. Try to heighten senses to the Natural Environment

o REFLECTION from Bill Neidjie ( A Gagadju Man from Kakadu)

Reader 1 “ I feel it with my body,With my blood.

Reader 2Feeling all these trees,All this country,You feel it.You can look.But feeling… that make you.

Reader 3Feeling make you.Out there in open space,He coming through your bodyLook while he blow and feel with your body,Because tree just about your brother or fatherAnd tree is watching you.

Reader 4Earth.Like your father or brother or mother,

Because you born from earth.You got to come back to earth.When you dead,You’ll come back to earth.Maybe little while yet…Then you’ll come back to earth.That’s your bone, your blood.It’s in this earth,Same as for tree…

Reader 5While you sleepingYou dream something.Tree and grass same thing.They grow with your body,With your feeling.

Reader 6If you feel sore,Headache, sore body,That mean somebody killing tree ore grass.

Reader 7You feel Because your body in that tree or earth.Nobody can tell you,You got to feel it yourself”

Everyone think about these words. What do you feel? How are your senses connecting with the natural environment?

oooooooo

o Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Bauman

Dadirri is an Aboriginal word for the quality of “inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness”

Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call “contemplation”. It is about being aware.

When I am experiencing Dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on a riverbank or walk through trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need for words. A big part of Dadirri is listening. Through the years we have listened to our stories. They are told and sung, iver and over, as the seasons go by. Today we still gather around the campfires and together we hear the sacred stories.

The stories and songs sink quietly in into our minds and we hold them deep inside. In our ceremonies we celebrate the awareness of our lives as sacred.

The contemplative way of Dadirri spreads over our whole life. It renews us and brings us peace. It makes us feel whole again.

The other part of Dadirri is the stillness and quiet waiting. Aboriginal culture has taught its people to be still and wait…not to hurry things up but let things follow their natural course.

o According to Dr Stanner, an anthropologist, wrote that –

“Aboriginal religion was probably one of the least material minded, and most life-minded of any of which we have knowledge”

o Take some time to be still and feel close to the Creator.

(Now be contemplative for about 5mins)

oooooooo Activity on what do you already know about Aboriginal

culture.

Find someone who knows the answer to each one… must find 9 different people

Name an Aboriginal artist

Name an Aboriginal Music group

Name an Aboriginal sacred place

Name an Aboriginal myth/story/ creature from story

Name a prominent Aboriginal leader/ politician/ elder

Name an Aboriginal language group from Brisbane

What date was the Sorry Speech delivered in Parliament by Kevin Rudd

Name some Aboriginal words and meanings that Australians use

Name an Aboriginal poet or writer and a text.

o Come back together and then say together the Covenant Prayer with the Land.

Covenant Prayer with the Land

Today, we make a covenant with this land.As a branch is grafted onto a mature stock,So we want to be grafted onto the ancient heritage of this land,So that its life may flow through us. We commit ourselves to the land we live in and to all who belong to it,Most particularly our Indigenous people And also the newcomers to this country,Who have bound themselves to this land.We will care for it with gentleness, patience, simplicity and compassion,Rather then merely something to be bought and sold.We will see the land as a gift for which we are truly thankful,And undertake the privileged duty of respecting and looking after it.

We thank God, the Great Creator Spirit, for all the earth provides:Water, food, and all the riches above and below the ground.We undertake to use them sparingly and thoughtfully.As we enter more deeply into the Spirit of the land,We see the land as a Sacrament and Icon of our mothering Creator Spirit.Be still.Listen to the breath of the Spirit which has blown through it for ages past,Today, and always;For this is: The Spirit of the Dreaming.

- Betty Pike