When it comes to walking alongside the Aboriginal community, education is vital, Sherry Balcombe of Aboriginal Catholic Ministries Victoria (ACMV) has said. During an online forum hosted by St Kevin’s Parish Templestowe and St Gregory’s Doncaster on 12 April 2023, participants had the opportunity to hear from Sherry and a representative of the Opening the Doors Foundation on the work they do assisting disadvantaged Aboriginal communities.
Sherry also presented on the topic of ‘The Voice, by a Voice’, reflecting on the upcoming referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The forum was an example of what the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference meant when they recently encouraged ‘Catholic parishes, schools and agencies [to] arrange opportunities for people to come together to read and discuss the Uluru Statement [from the Heart]’.
‘We want to encourage all Australians to educate themselves as well as possible concerning the proposal to establish the Voice,’ they wrote.
While acknowledging that people may disagree ‘in good faith’ on the particulars of the Voice, the bishops of Australia urged ‘all Australians to engage in the debate productively … [using] our democratic institutions to produce a high-quality debate shaped by a genuine concern to do justice and bring healing to First Nations Peoples.’
The Parish Priest of St Kevin’s, Fr Charles Balnaves, says people need to remember that the Voice to Parliament is a new idea. ‘New ideas take time to understand,’ he says. ‘They take discussion and teasing out of perspectives. We held our online forum as a means of allowing numerous facets of “a Voice” to be opened up, discussed, pondered on, questioned, developed.’
Both Sherry Balcombe and Brigid Knight-Braniff of the Opening the Doors Foundation shared about their important work.
Sherry reflected on the origins of ACM and how ‘groundbreaking’ their work has been. From pastoral care to advocacy to education, ACM has been working with schools, parishes and other agencies to educate and enrich the lives of all Australians.
‘We’ve got so much to teach as an Aboriginal community, that we want to share, but we’ve got to have people who are willing to listen,’ she said.
Brigid likewise shared about the work of the Opening the Doors Foundation in helping to fund the educational needs of young First Nations children. The foundation helps assist families in meeting school-related needs, from books, uniforms and camps to shoes, sports gear and music lessons.
With hundreds of children every year benefiting from their assistance, many of which are also in the Catholic school system, the foundation has grown significantly since their beginning in 2001.
‘A lot of families talk about how the value of Catholic education, and having that spirituality, has been very important for a lot of families. Also having a space for them to have a strong connection to their culture,’ she said.
She also shared the testimony of First Nations woman Jedda Costa, who benefited greatly from the foundation’s generosity and helped her through school. Today, Jedda is a journalist working for the ABC, and in 2021 she won the Ray Frawley Young Journalist of the Year award.
Jedda said in her testimony, ‘Essentially I think the foundation helped me to break those generational cycles and pave the way for my nephew and the younger people in my family, so they can open doors of their own.’
Sherry said that education was a key area in Aboriginal ministries. ‘Education is one of the most important things we can give to any person,’ she said. ‘If you have an education, it’s ways to be able to break out of the cycles and to be able to lift yourself out of poverty.
We want a level playing field. We want our children to be able to advocate on our behalf, but they need an education to be able to advocate on our behalf.
In her presentation on the Voice to Parliament, Ms Balcombe spoke about the Uluru Statement from the Heart and what it is many Aboriginal people are asking. Importantly, she said the Uluru Statement ‘addresses not the politicians but the Australian people as a whole,’ inviting everyone to listen.
‘For a long time we’ve been saying, “Nothing for us without us!”’ she said. ‘This will be complex. There will be disagreement, and that’s okay. Anything worthwhile is not easy … It’s not going to be easy, and we might not get it right straight away, but we can work on it.’
A week after the online forum, St Kevin’s took some parishioners on an ‘excursion’ to ACMV, where a similar live forum was held.
‘We wanted to allow a space for hearing each other, a sacred space of conversation,’ Fr Charles says. ‘As Parish Priest, I wanted us to delve into this matter of social justice, of natural justice, of seeking to find ways forward which will radically improve the possibility of Australia growing as a nation of unity in mind, heart and spirit with our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who bring a depth of spiritual perspective that is essential in our fractured world.
I think we achieved our aim for open, honest discussion and discernment.
Main image: Mural outside the ACMV office in Thornbury. Photo by Fiona Basile.
