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In May 2017 at Mutitjulu, in the shadow of Uluru, more than 250 delegates put their signatures on a historic statement — a petition to the people of Australia: The Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The Statement grew out of a series of regional dialogues held across the country, culminating in a National Constitutional Convention at Uluru. The purpose of these twelve dialogues and one regional meeting was to consult and educate, resulting in the most proportionally significant consultation process of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples Australia has ever seen.

Those dialogues may have been well-meaning. The 250 delegates at Mutitjulu may have gathered with much agreement.

However, someone’s truth and wisdom did not shape the discussions. Or influence the final wording. Or provide meaningful solutions.

That someone was the One True God!

A True History

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs.  This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.

No! The Biblical account does not set in place the modern-day landmasses “from the Creation”. Genesis 1:9–10 suggests “the dry land” was a singular landmass, not the various continents and islands that now exist. There is no Biblical description of the shape of “the dry land” or of its location on the surface of the globe.

It was a global catastrophe – the Flood of Noah’s time – that reshaped “the dry land” into the geography that we know today. When “the fountains of the great deep burst open” and “the floodgates of the sky were opened” (Genesis 7:11), massive hydraulic and tectonic forces broke apart “the dry land”. The “water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth” (Genesis 7:18). This flooding, and the subsequent receding of the waters, re-configured the land into new geography and topography.

The Bible clearly reveals that every human being – apart from Noah and his family – perished in the worldwide Flood (Genesis 7:23). The implication of this truth is that every people group shares the same ‘Flood history’. We are all descendants of the Noahic family. We are not separate ‘races’, but all members of ONE human race.

Following the Flood, humanity quickly began to repopulate. God’s command was to “fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1), but humanity – with everyone speaking the same language – attempted to “make for ourselves a name” and hold together in one location (Genesis 11:1–4). God confused the languages and “scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:8).

The ancestors of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples were there at Babel, just as the ancestors of every other people group. Those ancestors then grouped together on the basis of who spoke an understandable language. They then began to migrate across the globe. And some came across the then land-bridge from South-East Asia – in successive migration waves – into Australia.

Not “time immemorial”. Not in a vague distant dreaming! No, in the timeframe of Biblical history.

And 60,000 years? I know there are different opinions among Christians about the chronology of Genesis. Some understand the Hebrew word yom (‘day’) in Genesis 1 to refer to long indeterminate periods of time. Some – myself included – understand the word to refer to literal twenty-four-hour days (as it is not used in a metaphorical sense).

One has to perform a significant feat of linguistic ‘gymnastics’ to fit millions of years of an evolutionary timeframe into the Biblical account of origins. If the Bible is read simply and plainly, history is only a few thousand years in length. Not millions! Not hundreds of thousands! Not even tens of thousands! The naturalistic evolutionary story has got it wrong.

A True Spirituality

This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.

The Uluru Statement’s understanding of spirituality is animistic.

No! The Bible tells us that true spirituality is a relationship with the One True God. Not with places. Not with natural objects. Not with human-made objects.

We have not come from ‘mother nature’. We have not come from the land.

And our spiritual destiny is not to be reunited with the land or with our ancestors. Our hope for eternity is to be in an eternal relationship with God, through the forgiving of our sins through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

A spirituality that binds Aboriginal people to “the land” is false. It is a deception. It is devilish. It is destructive. It prevents Aboriginal people from properly embracing the cross, finding forgiveness of sin, and embracing the eternal destiny for which God sent His Son into this world.

Of course, Aboriginal people are not alone in being ensnared in a false spirituality. There are countless numbers of people of every cultural group who are looking for spiritual answers in human-made objects, natural objects, special places, ‘mother nature’, and self-enlightenment.

A True Solution

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

No! Flourishing – for both children and adults – is not to be found in having “power over our destiny”. Flourishing is only to be found in submitting oneself to God (James 4:7); in seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33); in embracing the way, the truth, and the life and the only way to God the Father (John 14:6).

Constitutional reforms will not achieve this. The Voice to Parliament will not achieve this. A “process of agreement-making” – in other words, a treaty – will not achieve this. So-called “truth-telling” will not achieve this.

We should be putting the God-answers in place to solve our problems! That would be a real ‘statement from the heart’!

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Photo by Wikimedia Commons.