Indigenous affairs
LAST week, prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson called on Australia’s Aboriginal community to draw on the experience of Jewish people in never forgetting their history, while striving to overcome injustice and racism.
Pearson asserted that the Jewish community provides an example of how to “maintain a community and a sense of peoplehood, religion, tradition, culture, history over millennia and yet, at the same time, engage at the cutting edge of whatever the world has to offer”.
We can indeed be proud of our achievements in this country. The Jewish community has built a solid web of organisations, schools and welfare institutions that have empowered us with the resources, education and support network to be a vibrant and active force for social change in Australia and overseas.
In terms of our engagement with the Aboriginal community — the sector of our national community suffering the highest levels of disadvantage — several Jews have been key players in the movement towards reconciliation, from Jim Spigelman’s involvement in the 1965 Freedom Rides to Ron Castan’s pivotal role in the Mabo case.
In 1988, then-justice Marcus Einfeld, in his role as head of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, visited Toomelah — a remote Aboriginal community in northern NSW — and was shocked by what he saw. The inhumane living conditions and the lack of basic services such as electricity, sewerage and clean water moved him to tears.
The Toomelah Report, which was the outcome of that visit, stated that “no Australian citizen should be living in such conditions in 1988, especially when the conditions are determined and provided by the organs of the government”. The report made a range of recommendations, many of which were later implemented.
For the past five years, groups of Jewish university students have been visiting Toomelah and the neighbouring community Boggabilla to run school-holiday activities for the kids. The program is called Derech Eretz, but they know us as the Jewish mob.
Over the years we have built a special relationship with the community based on trust and partnership. Social and economic problems still plague Toomelah and the elders continue to fight for a way out of the quagmire.
We are constantly inspired by the resilience of the elders, who never give up on their community, and who treat us with so much warmth, openness and love. The children, who are overflowing with enthusiasm and curiosity, eagerly await our trips every six months, and our bonds with them continue to be strengthened.
Engaging with Aboriginal culture enriches us as Australians and human beings, and gives us an insight into this people and their ancient culture. The Aboriginal people could definitely look to our community when it comes to preservation of culture, memorialisation of past genocide and community unity. But in turn, the Jewish people have so much to learn from the Aboriginal community: humility, a sense of connectedness, an understanding of this land and how it breathes.
Two years ago, the seminal event in the reconciliation movement took place when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said sorry to the victims of the stolen generation and called for a “future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity”.
The winds of reconciliation are gaining pace across Australia, and Derech Eretz, in a small way, is an attempt at working towards the goal of a more unified Australia that recognises and values this country’s Aboriginal history and people.
When reflecting on his long career as an advocate for Aboriginal rights, the late Ron Castan stated that “my determination not to stand by and see the Jewish people downtrodden and persecuted was meaningless if I was standing by and seeing another oppressed people downtrodden and persecuted within my own country”.
It is my hope that more members of our community will stand up and play their part in listening to indigenous Australians and becoming active in healing the searing wounds of this country’s discriminatory policies and colonial past. Pearson generously stated that the Jewish community “fights relentlessly against discrimination”. Let us all make sure that we deserve that praise.
Gary Samowitz is the CEO of Jewish Aid Australia.
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