This past October I attended made a pilgrimage from Arltunga to Santa Teresa in Central Australia. I made this pilgrimage with about 20 members of the Aboriginal Commission of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. There was a social justice theme to this pilgrimage. It began with a smoking service for us and we were blessed and given permisson to visit Arltunga site, now abandoned. During WWII (when the Northern Territory was under martial law) the aboriginal community of Alice Springs was ejected, houses, chattels and all, and sent to this desert location at a moments notice. (To be fair to the government this was instigated by the threat of meningitis.) The aboriginal community was forced to live at Arltunga for about 10 years under difficult desert conditions. The location was on an abandoned gold mine and the ground water had become toxic. There were many early deaths. Fortunately, the bishop was able to buy a place at Santa Teresa outside Alice Springs, a good place, where the community now lives today. They have wonderful aboriginal artists living there and it was a joy to be with them at the end of the journey. There were welcoming ceremonies, a smoking service with a spiritual advisor and visits to sacred places in the area.
At the end of the pilgrimage I attended the triennial meeting of Catholic Aboriginal leaders from all over Australia -- about 600 people in all with about 8 bishops, and with some whites as guests. I attended as a delegate from the state of Victoria. The meeting was an excellent opportunity for me to meet long-term aboriginal friends from the NT, especially from Wadeye, which I visit frequently. The meeting at Alice Springs was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul IIs visit there. He had made a powerful statement in 1996 in favour of indigenous cultures, especially powerful in Australia. The aboriginal community was saying, I suspect, that the Pope's message was being lost or forgotten.
I returned to the United States from Australia in December to teach the History of Medieval Thought and Culture once again, and a graduate course doing a close reading in a key text of Thomas Aquinas, the Disputed Question, the De Veritate. In March I read a paper at the annual Medieval Association of the Pacific, which met this year at UCLA (my old Alma Mater). This is an academic society of professors of medieval studies in universities and colleges on the West Coast. My paper, Money in Transition, was about the development of money in the 14th century and the work of Nicole Oresme.
I had to put on hold my plans to conduct a course on aboriginal land and religion until I could find sufficient grant money to help my student defray costs for a flight to Australia. This course was, and is, to be conducted in conjunction with the Centre for Religion and Education at the GTU.
