By Salt 106.5 Network Friday 19 Jan 2024NewsReading Time: 3 minutes
Australians are looking to commemorate Australia Day differently, standing in solidarity with our First Nations community.
Sunday January 21st is Aboriginal Sunday – a day where church communities are invited to walk alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Bianca Manning is a Gomeroi woman and an emerging young Aboriginal Christian Leader from Newcastle. She is also the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Coordinator for Common Grace, a movement of individuals churches and communities pursuing Jesus and justice together for the flourishing of all people and all creation.
Bianca joined Hope Drive to discuss Aboriginal Sunday and what we can do to further solidarity across our nation.
What is Aboriginal Sunday?
“Aboriginal Sunday was originally a call to all Australian churches by aboriginal Christian leader William Cooper,” Bianca says and explains that as a pastor and leader in the fight for Aboriginal justice, he was part of the very first mourning protest which took place in Sydney on January 26, 1938.
“When the rest of Australia was marking and celebrating 150 years since the first fleet arrived, William Cooper and other aboriginal leaders, many of them Christian with him, stood in protest and called that day a National Day of Mourning.”
Following this event, William Cooper invited all Australian churches to set aside the Sunday before January 26 each year, marking it as Aboriginal Sunday – a time for people to listen and stand alongside, valuing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, perspective and justice.
In honour of William Cooper’s Aboriginal Sunday, Common Grace provides a toolkit each year, enabling churches to individually mark the day with their congregations. The free toolkit includes videos, prayer resources, bible readings, sermon resources, a creative activity and kids’ resources which can be incorporated into services.
What can we do?
I wanted to hear from Bianca about ways we can start processing our feelings around Australia Day and the history of Australia.
“It’s a huge thing for a lot of Australians,” she said. “Every year, more and more people are coming to me and saying – “What do I do? Usually this has been a day of celebration, of counting my blessings and of coming together with my family.”
“I think peoples’ eyes are being opened to how Aboriginal people feel about this day. Since I was a kid, my mum would take us to Sydney and we’d go to the Yabun, the Survival Day Festival and the Invasion Day Rally.
For us it was always a day to reckon with this moment in our shared history that marks for us this disruption to a way of life for our ancestors and the beginning of for us, a lot of those griefs that we still carry around colonisation.
Image provided by Common Grace for Aboriginal Sunday. From Left to Right: Safina Stewart, Bianca Manning, Gershon Nimbalker and Uncle Pastor Ray Minniecon.
“I’m personally encouraged by people coming to me saying, “I want to understand more, I want to learn and try and see things from your point of view.” I know it can be an uncomfortable discussion and an uncomfortable topic but I encourage people, especially Christians, let’s dive into that discomfort with our Great Comforter, our Great God who can lead us into greater love for one another.”
Bianca is also encouraging people to pray during the leadup to January 26. “It is every year a pretty difficult time for Aboriginal peoples’ and with lots of conversations publicly happening, it can be a little bit ugly.”
For more information and to get involved with Aboriginal Sunday visit commongrace.org.au.
Listen to the full conversation in the listener above.
All images supplied.