Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’ And
when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother
Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your
brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’
And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s
blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed
from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your
brother’s blood from your hand… Then Cain went away from the
presence of the Lord. (Genesis 4:8-11, 16 NRSV)

This is not a story of Yahweh preferring cowboys to farmers.

It’s a story about the human predicament
then and now.

The name ‘Cain’ derives from the verb ‘to get’,
– probably an ironic indication of humankind’s sinful
acquisitive nature.

‘Abel’ means ‘breath’
– probably hinting at life’s transience.

(Meister Eckhart and other saints and mystics
have taught us that the essence of true spirituality
is in ‘subtraction’ rather than ‘addition’.
Consumerist propaganda bombards us with messages
that we are incomplete until we have acquired this or that.)

It’s is a story about conflict – between two different cultures
or ways of relating to the earth.
Abel was a shepherd, Cain an agriculturalist.
It’s a story-in-miniature of the blood-stained history
of the human race.

As with the Fall,
and as often happens in biblical justice-drama
God is on the spot immediately after the deed
asking questions.
At the Fall: ‘Where are you?’ – a personal question.
Here: ‘Where is your brother?’ – a social question.
To which Cain responds impertinently,
‘Shall I shepherd the shepherd?’

Cain learns that though the corpse may be covered with earth
Abel’s blood cries out to God.

According to the Old Testament Scriptures
blood and breath belong to God alone;
whenever anyone kills another person,
Yahweh, creator and protector of life
becomes judge: the soil which Cain had ploughed
and which had drunk his brother’s blood
will now deny him its fruit…

Like Judas later, Cain was more sorry for himself
rather than being truly repentant.

And humans are still expelled from Paradise…

Here’s a paragraph from James Bonwick’s ‘The Lost Tasmanian Race’:
‘The woolly-haired Tasmanian no longer sings blithely on the
gum-tree tiers, or twines the snowy clematis blossom for a bridal
garland. Our awakened interest in their condition comes too late.
The bell tolls their knell, and the Aeolian music of the she-oak
is now their requiem. We cover our faces while the deep and solemn
voice of our common Father echoes through the soul, ‘Where is your
brother?’

Last week I spent five days on two islands in the Bass Strait –
islands of wild and rugged beauty
(Certainly wild: 65 known shipwrecks lie around these islands)

We were there on a ‘pilgrimage of listening’ – twelve of us – to
worship, pray, listen to aboriginal people, think in silence, and
to repent…

I shared in some new experiences, like eating muttonbird, seeing
the milky way in all its glory, and writing a poem (which I’ll
read later). We concluded, Taize-style, kneeling around a cross
formed with candles in the shape of the Southern Cross…

Hands up those who were taught Tasmanian aborigines died out with
Truganini in 1876?

The Anglican priest appointed by his bishop to minister to
aboriginals on Flinders Island told me there are 7000 Tasmanian
people who call themselves ‘aboriginal’…

So what happened?

• Worldwide colonialism began in the 1500s.
• Since then the world’s 300 million indigenous and tribal peoples
  have suffered terribly from European conquest of their
  ancestral lands, through diseases and alcoholism and particularly
  through the loss of dignity, identity and self-respect.

• When the ‘first fleet’ arrived in 1788 there were an estimated
  750,000 Aboriginals in Australia (7000 in Tasmania). In 1920 that
  number had fallen to 60,000. In 1971 Aboriginals were included in
  the national census for the first time.

• For our purposes, here’s what you need to know about what
  happened to the Tasmanian aboriginal people (I’ve culled some of
  the following from Henry Reynolds’ new book ‘Fate of a Free
  People: A Radical Re-examination of the Tasmanian Wars’ Penguin,
  1995).

• British settlement began in Van Dieman’s Land in 1803-4

Massacres began 3 May 1804 at Risdon when the 102 Regiment of the
British Army shot dead 50 Oyster Bay people, including women and
children. The Tasmanians had approached without spears and with
green boughs in their hands, as a sign of peace. The commanding
officer said afterwards he didn’t think the Aborigines would be
any use to the British.

• ‘The Black War’ lasted seven years – 1824 to 1831. Atrocities
  were committed by both sides, but although black men were
  castrated and black women raped, there wasn’t any record of rape
  committed by Aboriginals against any white woman.

• Governor George Arthur mobilized all available settlers and
  convicts to form the infamous ‘black line’, with 2200 men
  moving across the island over a six-week period, to try in a
  pincer movement to herd the remaining Aboriginals to the south
  east. They captured an old man and a child.

• By 1831, 175 Europeans had been killed, 200 wounded, 347 houses
  plundered or burnt. At least 700 Aboriginals were killed in the
  war. Meanwhile the European population grew from 5000 in 1820 to
  24,000 in 1830.

• Many (most?) of the Europeans believed Aboriginals were an
  inferior race; some that they were the missing link between
  monkeys and humans; some that they were ‘savages’ who ought to be
  exterminated…

• In 1830, a builder and Methodist lay preacher, George Augustus
  Robinson went on a ‘Friendly Mission’ to negotiate a settlement.
  The Aboriginal remnant agreed to vacate Tasmania, and moved to
  Flinders Island (1833-1847). There Robinson tried to make the
  Aboriginals into Black Englishpeople, built East-London type
  terrace cottages for them, and taught them a catechism (with
  graphic questions and answers about heaven and hell). Eg. ‘What
  will God do to the world by and by?’ Burn it. What sort of place
  is heaven? A fine place. What sort of place is hell? A place of
  torment.

  But the exile was a disaster: over 200 Aboriginals died, and the
  47 survivors were relocated back to Oyster Cove, on mainland
  Tasmania.

• Reynolds’ book centres around a petition presented to Queen
  Victoria signed by eight Aboriginal men who described themselves
  as a ‘free people’ who voluntarily gave up their country to the
  Governor (and complained that though they’d kept their side of the
  deal, the whites hadn’t)

• In 1870 the last full-blood male Aboriginal Tasmanian (William
  Lane) died; in 1876 Truganini, the last full-blood female died.

• But nine Aboriginal women had been abducted by sealers, and
  two married sealers voluntarily, and their descendents form the
  present Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

• Flinders Island Hotel had a separate bar for Aboriginals
  until the 1950s. They told us of a Chocolate Waltz won by group of
  Aboriginal young people, and the MC had to be forced to give them
  the prize!

• At Wybelenna (which means ‘Black Man’s Houses’) a few years
  ago, some aboriginal people put markers on the aboriginal graves.
  They lasted two days: someone dug them all up and destroyed them
  one night, but the white graves were left undisturbed…

• The UN proclaimed the years 1990 to 2000 as the International
  Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.

• There has been remarkable progress since 1945
  (then since 1989 in Eastern Europe)
  It’s one of history’s success stories.

• In the 1980s over 100 Aboriginal people died in the custody of
  the Australian police and prison systems. Finally, in 1987 the
  Australian Government formed a ‘Royal Commission into Aboriginal
  Deaths in Custody’. Four years and $30 million later it released a
  damning report.

One of our retreatants is a prison chaplain. He said, ‘Aboriginal
people need each other. When they are isolated in an institution –
any institution – they die…’

• In the Mabo case (1992), the High Court of Australia exploded
  the myth of ‘terra nullius’ (land belonging to no-one).

• We have been talking recently about a treaty between white and
  Aboriginal Australians. Mr Galarrwury Yunupingu from Arnhem Land
  has said: ‘What we want from a treaty is the creation of a just
  and mature society which black and white Australians can enjoy
  together. A treaty which recognizes our rights and our status will
  provide the basis for building a society in which people live in
  mutual respect. To those people who say they support the concept
  of ‘One Australia’ I can only say that I agree. There should be
  one Australia and we should be part of it. But our part should be
  on our terms.’

WHAT HAPPENED TO 7000 TASMANIAN ABORIGINALS?

Some were taken to Victoria as mistresses of white men. Others
captured and married to sealers living on islands off the
Tasmanian coast.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

(Australia is the most multi-cultural country in the world. One in
three Australians were born overseas or their parents were born
overseas)

• Realize, with Margaret Mead:
  ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens
  can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has’

• And realize, sure, that we can’t turn back the clock.
  But, whatever our political views (left-wing, right-wing, or
  wingless)
  we can agree with Prime Minister Paul Keating when he launched
  the International Year for the Indigenous 10 December 1992:

  ‘[We must] recognize that the problem starts with us
  non-Aboriginal Australians.
  It begins, I think, with that act of recognition.
  Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
  We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of
  life.
  We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
  We committed the murders.
  We took the children from their mothers.
  As a nation, we face the challenge of the consequences of
  dispossession, conquest, brutal treatment and equally inhuman
  neglect of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – the
  first Australians.’

• Following two invitations in the 1980s to speak to national
  Aboriginal Christian conferences,
  I wrote to 40 Aboriginal Christian leaders, asking them
  this question.
  Their views on land rights varied across the political spectrum
  from very radical to quite conservative
  but they were unanimous about one thing:
  ‘Please, we would like white Australians to listen to our pain’

• Then we can agree (and is this too big an ‘ask’?)
  that aboriginal people ought to be consulted about their present
  and future. (‘White Australians have done so much to/against/for
  us but forgot to ask us ‘Is it OK?’)

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go
down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now
in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession.
You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Have you killed, and
also taken possession?’ You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord:
In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will
also like up your blood.’

Ahab said to Elijah, ‘Have you found me, O my enemy?’ He answered,
‘I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is
evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you; I
will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or
free, in Israel… because you have provoked me to anger and have
caused Israel to sin. Also concerning Jezebel the Lord said, “The
dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel.” Anyone
belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and
anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air
shall eat…’

When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth
over his bare flesh; he fasted, lay in the sackcloth, and went
about dejectedly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the
Tishbite: ‘Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me?
Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the
disaster in his days; but in his son’s days I will bring disaster
on his house.’ (1 Kings 21:17-24, 27-29).

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the
tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous,
and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we
would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the
prophets.’ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are
descendents of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the
measure of your ancestors… Upon you [will] come all the
righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to
the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered…
(Excerpts Matthew 23:29-35)

Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your
ancestors killed. So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of
your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs…
This generation [will] be charged with the blood of all the
prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of
Abel to the blood of Zechariah… Yes, I tell you, it will be
charged against this generation. (Excerpts Luke 11:47-51).

You stiff-necked people… are forever opposing the Holy Spirit,
just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your
ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming
of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and
murderers. You are the ones that received the law… and yet you
have not kept it. (Acts 7:51-53)

When Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot
was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the
crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it
yourselves.’ Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on
us and on our children!’ … After flogging Jesus, he handed him
over to be crucified. (Matthew 27:24-26. All NRSV).

SINS OF GENTLE-FOLK

Gentle robins, red and black,
flitting here and flitting there,
foraging among the graves…
What dark secrets lie beneath this soil?

Gentle kooris, sad and wistful –
for a dream-time killed and buried
by foreign ‘Christian’ civilizers…
Where’s dignity, identity now?

Gentle farm-folk, toiling, reaping
on forefathers’ stolen, fertile land,
some red-necked – and others wondering
Why the fuss? We were not there…

Gentle Christian, guilty? musing
what’s all this to do with me?
Listen! Learn! Lament! and ask
What, Lord, will you have me do?

Gentle Jesus, friend of outcasts
when beneath your Southern Cross
red blood stained the earth again:
Were you wailing with their kin?

Gentle-folk did you to death –
were not aware of what they did…
And judgment-day has come to us:
‘Where are you when I need mercy?’

Rowland Croucher

[Written at Wybelenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania, in an aboriginal
graveyard, attended by a flock of red-breasted robins. April 1995]

PRAYERS

God who gave this land its shape and its colour,
You who have walked in it from the beginning of time,
Who moulds its mountains and valleys and rivers, and level out
its plains,
Who gives the eucalypts their bark and their oil,
who paints the wattles yellow,
and the desert peas scarlet,
God we worship you and we adore you…

In the processes of history
you have brought to this great land people from many nations
to live together.
We give thanks for those Aboriginal and other Australians
who during the last two centuries
have tried to live with justice, compassion and respect
and have attempted to develop understanding across racial,
cultural and denominational differences,
who have walked lightly and lived gently on the land.

We confess that often we have not shared the land with justice.
We pray for the will to change and make amends.

[Silence]

Our relationships have been marred by misunderstanding,
lack of respect and racism.
We pray for the will to change and make amends.

[Silence]

My brothers and sisters, if we say we have no sin
we deceive ourselves and do not tell the truth.
If we confess our sins,
God keeps covenant faithfulness and forgives us our sins.
So we hear the words of Christ: ‘Your sins are forgiven!’
Thanks be to God.

[Silence]

Lord Jesus Christ, in your suffering and death,
and your abandonment on the Cross
you show your solidarity with all who suffer unjustly.

God, teach us to follow in the way of Christ
and to cry out with those who protest the injustice of their lot.

In raising Jesus from the dead, you have given us hope
that the last word is not death but life,
not abandonment but love that holds us tightly.

Help us always to hold onto the vision of the unity of the whole
Church,
and to do separately only those things which we cannot do
together.
Hold before us also the vision that your will is life for all your
creation,
and to protest and struggle against the forces of death.
Help us to live as brothers and sisters in the one family into
which you have brought us.
Help us to build a community
in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal live together in harmony,
where we stand together,
listen to one another and understand and respect each other.

Amen.

(Adapted from prayers for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
and Reconciliation, 28 May – 4 June, 1995)

HYMN: WE CANNOT MEASURE HOW YOU HEAL

(Tune: Ye banks and braes, key F)

We cannot measure how you heal
Or answer every sufferer’s prayer.
Yet we believe your grace responds
Where faith and doubt unite to care.
Your hands, though bloodied on the cross
Survive to hold and heal and warn,
To carry all through death to life
And cradle children yet unborn.

The pain that will not go away,
The guilt that clings from things long past,
The fear of what the future holds,
Are present as if meant to last.
But present too is love which tends
The hurt we never hoped to find,
The private agonies inside,
The memories that haunt the mind.

So some have come who need your help,
And some have come to make amends,
As hands which shaped and saved the world
Are present in the touch of friends.
Lord, let your Spirit meet us here
To mend the body, mind and soul,
To disentangle peace from pain
And make your broken people whole.

(Iona Community)

A Benediction: May the Holy Spirit be your strength, guide, healer
and source of reconciliation with yourself, with God, and with
others, all your days. Amen.

Date: Mon, 08 May 1995 08:30:20 +0000 (ACS) From:
(Neil Waller) Subject: Re:
Cain/Aussie: ‘Where is your brother?’ sermonin-reply-to:

(message from Rowland Croucher on Sun, 07 May 1995 15:23:33 +1000
(EST))To: Messa ge-id:
<9505072300.AA0>

I must correct your historical facts on the sad demise of the full
blood Tasmanians. You have made a common mistake that most
Australians make: that Trucanninie was the last full-blood
woman. As well as the women companions of the Bass Strait
Sealers there were 3 women taken by simi lar sealers to Kangaroo
Island. At least two of these women outlived Trucannie: my
ancestor “Betty Thomas” who died in 1878 and Suke who died in
1888, the last confirmed full blood female (Cassandra Pybus
claims in her book “Community of Thieves” that one Fanny Cochraine
who died in Hobart in 1905 was the last). This is but a small
point and does not in any way detract from your message for which
I congratulate you. PS: the Everett in Tasmania family may well
be descended from the Sealer Everett on KI – he was a companion
of my ancestor Nat Thomas who arrived on KI in 1827.

Kind Regards Neil Waller

[Later post]:

Rowland My spelling (and if you look closely there are actually 2
different spellings) of Truganini is I guess just phonetic and no
more should be assumed than that! The women on Kangaroo Island
were out of the influence of the Tasmanian Government so I suppose
they did not come into consideration when the last of the
Tasmanian people died in that colony. “Betty” Thomas’s elder
daughter Mary was the first recorded child of a European settler
born in South Australia in May 1833. Various books on the history
of Kangaroo Island contain photos of Mary. (A particularly good
book is “This Southern Land ” by Jean Nunn. The Tasmanian library
may have a copy). There is a considerable amount of folk-lore
surrounding Suke which you may care to use to illustrate
mateship. Apparently in later life she had a companion named Sal,
a woman from near Port Lincoln. Sal had lost part of her foot in
a fire and was lame. Suke was blind. For many years the two women
came into Stokes Bay on the North Coast of KI to draw Government
Rations, the lame Sal leading the blind Suke. When Sal died in
the bush Suke made her way into Stokes Bay and led a party back to
Sal feeling the way with her feet. She never found her. Suke died
near Antechamber Bay a little while later in 1888. You must
wonder about the emotions of these women who lived most of their
lives apart from their people. (And in deed of all migrants –
what yearning did they have for their culture and people and
homeland?) There is another KI connection to the last of the
Tasmanians: Robert Wallen, often refered to as “Governor Wallen”
who arrived on KI in 1819 had a Tasmanian companion and by her a
son, Robert whom he sent to Hobart for an education. The young
Robert was said to be a pall bearer at William Lanne’s funeral. By
the way the Everett on Kangaroo Island was James who lived for a
time at Antechamber Bay (on Backstairs Passage).

Regards Neil Waller

In aus.religion you write: ‘When Australian Aboriginal babies are
buried alive with their heads above the ground, and the British
‘civilizers’ have a competition to see how far they can kick those
heads – with the parents forced to watch?’ I have heard of it
before, but no-one seems to know where and when it was supposed
to have happened. Do you happen to to know a reference where it
is mentioned? It’s in a book ‘Massacres to Mining’ by Jan
Someone: a good bookshop will only need the title to get it for
you.

For future reference: From Massacres to Mining: the
Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia by Janine P Roberts. I
looked it up in the NSW State Library, and I have a few
comments. Firstly, it describes an incident which alledgedly
took place in NEVictoria around 1860 (date inferred from
context). The alleged villains are not identified (not even as
white): but from context are not British, but most likely
settlers. Secondly, I use the word ‘alleged’ because the evidence
that this ever took place is very weak: a third hand account passe
d anonymously to the author. Now, although this crime is almost
unbelievably a ppalling, I would not say that it could not have
taken place. No-one who knows any history or reads the news can
put limits on human brutality. Certainly mass acres and assaults
on aborigines took place. But this particular account may w ell
be wrong or exaggerated. Any tale passed through three tellers
could be fab ricated at any point and is almost certain to have
changed. As we know, these sort of things tend to grow with the
retelling. Your own interpolation of the word ‘British’, which
did _not_ appear in the written account, is a small example of
this. So I personally would be very hesitant to repeat this claim
as if it were historical fact.

Regards, Andrew Parle