Fr Manh Le SVD has been a missionary with the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and now Australia’s Indigenous peoples, on Palm Island, and his ongoing search into Indigenous spirituality recently led him to participate an ecumenical conference exploring the role of the churches in Indigenous history since European settlement.

He said the Tribal Voice for Justice: An Indigenous Theological Revolution conference in Melbourne was an opportunity to delve deeper into his understanding of indigenous spirituality, and the need for ongoing personal and communal conversion in indigenous matters.

The conference, hosted by the University of Divinity, was promoted as “the first-ever national ecumenical platform where Indigenous theologians from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific raised up their voices and challenged churches across denominations to call their followers to action in addressing the injustice, inequality, and systemic failings of churches history to protect, nourish, and benefit from Indigenous peoples and their knowledges”.

The conference was led by the University of Divinity’s Professor Anne Pattel-Gray, Head of School of Indigenous Studies. Speakers included: Professor Pattel-Gray, Professor Stan Grant, Rev Canon Dr Garry Deverell, Rev Aunty Janet Turpie-Johnstone, Mikenzie Ling, Sean Weetra, Neil Pattel, The Venerable Dr Lyndon Drake, Rev Dr Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, Rev Canon Assoc Professor Glenn Loughrey, John Lochowiak (NATSICC chair), Dr Josephine Bourne, Brooke Prentis, Elverina Johnson, Rev Hohaia Matthews, Nathan Tyson, Lilliani Tahaafe-Williams, Pastor Geoffrey Stokes, Naomi Wolfe, Rev Prof Dr Upolu Lumā Vaai and Rev Dr Denise Champion.

Fr Manh said he believed it was providential that he came across the work of Professor Pattel-Gray, who is a member of the Uniting Church, while he was searching online about Indigenous spirituality.

“We, as the Divine Word Missionaries are always reaching out in dialogue with other religions and cultures,” he said.

“I realise that we have only just made some first humble steps in the last 25 years into the Sacred Ground of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander, first nations peoples.”

The conference was held at Yarra Theological Union, right at the footstep of Dorish Maru College, the SVD formation house.

“There were about 160 participants, mostly from Baptist and Anglican churches. I only came across a very few Catholic,” Fr Manh said.

Darwin Bishop Charles Gauci was not able to attend but sent a message which was read out. In part, it said: “My experience tells me many of the Aboriginal people I’ve been meeting with are amongst the most traumatised people I’ve ever met, and maybe even on this planet.”

Fr Manh said the conference was an opportunity for the churches to examine their role in the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous peoples and work together with First Nations peoples for a better future.

“Our First Nations peoples have gone through the whole process of colonisation where horrible and violent acts were done against them. They were treated as less than human, they were poisoned, shot at, dispossessed, and this memory is still very alive until now,” he said.

“Our Catholic Church was to blame for the forcible relocation of indigenous families to missions. Of course, the churches are also recognised for many positive actions as part of a remedy to what occurred. Let us now walk together without domination and control.

“Dr Anne, so proudly and with so much optimism, said this conference was a historical event for the nation, bringing so many Indigenous church leaders together to pray, to discuss, and most of all the listen to the Indigenous theologians- The Voice came from within- the tribal voice for justice.”

Fr Manh said he was also impressed by journalist and professor, Stan Grant’s presentation titled ‘Yindyamarra: The Love of the Afflicted’, which offered ‘a thought-provoking exploration into the intersection of Indigenous spirituality and theology, providing unique insights into the Wiradjuri way of being and its transformative impact on our understanding of peace in Jesus Christ’..

“He brought me back to the theme of our SVD General Chapter which will happen later this year: ‘we must be faithful and creative witnesses to this wounded world’,” he said.

“And in the truth-telling voice, we cannot but listen and hear that there are so many deep scars and wounds that have been inflicted on our Indigenous peoples since European colonisation.

“I personally will take back to Palm Island the voice of justice that ‘cannot come from the law nor politics’. As St Paul said, Jesus the Divine Word became flesh and’ died for nothing if the rightness came from the law’. (Ga2:21). Justice only comes from love.”

Fr Manh said he believed the silence that was kept by many Indigenous leaders and community members following the NO Vote for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was a powerful response.

“Silence is the way. Sometime silence speaks louder than voices. When Jesus was asked, ‘Are you the Christ?’, Jesus, the Divine Word, kept silence (Mark14:51).

“At a graveside on Palm Island, not long after the Voice referendum was lost, I recall a voice from a man, name David, who, while the coffin was being lowered down, whispered into my ear ‘Father, we lost hey! But I knew, because the Voice is too much for man to solve, only God can help!’

“Stan Grant said that in terms of truth telling and treaty, if we need to speak for the tribal voice we need to speak with the voice of Love.”

Fr Manh said that in the 1980s in Vietnam he was brain-washed by the communist regime and as a boy he had heard from the Church about the doctrine of ‘personal conversion from mortal sin’.

Then, after joining the SVD in 1994, he responded to Pope St John Paul II’s call to be aware of the need for ‘Pastoral conversions’ and more recently, Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’ for us to have an ‘Ecological conversion’.

“Since I came to Palm Island in 2020, which was somewhere unfairly listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999 as being the place with the most violence in the world, I have encountered so many good people,” he said.

“Here in this place of about 1000 baptised Catholics of 2,136 people, I meet so many lovely children.

“Here, I realise I have just made my first steps entering into the giant cave of 60,000 years of Indigenous history and culture. Here, on this island, I hear the cry of many who 100 years ago had been brought to Palm Island and separated from their loved ones. Here, we always acknowledge the traditional Manbarra people and the historical Bwgcolman people (many tribes, one nation). Here, I walk with the wounded memory of the lost languages, the cultures, the strange new way of life imposed on them.

“Here, I realise that we are called to be converted to the Truth, the Voice of Justice. As a recent comer to this ancient land I hear the call to an ‘Indigenous conversion’, a conversion to Heal Country. As Garry Deverell, co-founder of the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Divinity put it meaningfully in his presentation, ‘Christ as Country: Changing the Frame for Christology in Gondwana’, the Christology we received (forcibly, in most instances) from the colonial missionaries in this land understood the incarnation of the Divine in exclusively human terms.

“Twenty years after I left the SVD Formation House- Dorish Maru College, and after being present at this conference held on the same land, I pledge and renew my vows to live justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with our First Nations people. And at the Rugged Cross I hear ‘Father forgive us, for we do not know what we have been doing to our Indigenous peoples since the colonisers took charge.” (Lk23:34).