The Catholic Leader - July 2

28 / 28

28 Humans of the Church
The Catholic Leader, July 2, 2017
‘My prayer for Australia would be justice for all –
equality for everybody’
Called to justice
By Peter Bugden
DAVID Miller is an Aboriginal man
who wasn’t raised in his people’s
traditional ways and he wonders how
different his life may have been.
He’s a man well-known to many Brisbane
Catholics as the one who breaks the silence
playing the clap sticks at the start of Masses and
liturgies for major celebrations in St Stephen’s
Cathedral.
It’s a ritual he performs leading into the indig-
enous Acknowledgement of Country before Mass
begins.
David would normally be at the cathedral to-
day (July 2) for the National Aboriginal and Tor-
res Strait Islander Mass at the start of NAIDOC
Week but he is in Cairns for the 2017 NAIDOC
Awards Ceremony and Ball.
He was attending the ball last night (July 1)
with family and friends.
A proud descendant of the Gangulu peoples of
Central Queensland, David is passionate about
justice and equality for all.
He knows well how his ancestors were denied
those rights, and he continues to work for the
good of indigenous peoples today.
For 24 years, he has been a member of Murri
Ministry, a not-for-profit Catholic group support-
ing indigenous people around south-east Queens-
land under the umbrella of Centacare Brisbane.
David’s family, like so many other indigenous
families, has known the trauma of being torn
apart.
“All my ancestors come from (Central
Queensland), from a little town called Banana
(south-west of Rockhampton),” he said.
“My family was split up under the Aboriginal
Protection Act of 1897.
“The full-blood Aboriginal people were taken
to Taroom, then on to Woorabinda, then on to
Barambah, which is now named Cherbourg, near
Kingaroy and six kilometres from Murgon.
“There were forty different tribes put into
Cherbourg from all over Queensland.
“They weren’t allowed to speak their lan-
guage. That’s why, unfortunately, a lot of the
different languages are lost now.”
David said Aboriginal people there “were
thrown in jail” for speaking their own language.
“My grandmother and an aunty are full-
bloods, so obviously they were sent to Cher-
bourg,” he said. “My two uncles, my mother and
my aunty were fair-skinned. Their fathers were
station owners.
“My mother was sent out as a domestic – or
slave – at eight years old.
“From then she was working on stations all
her life, and I think she was twenty-two years
old when she got her exemption papers (exemp-
tion from the Act).
“If you were given that, you weren’t able to
speak to Aboriginal people.
“It was to make you white, and the Govern-
ment in those days, thought they were going to
‘whiten’ us out.”
David’s mother Emily Miller was a domestic
worker on stations around Rockhampton, and
she made sure he and his older brother had a
good education, but they weren’t raised in tradi-
tional Aboriginal ways.
He has pondered what that has meant for him.
“If you’re looking back to see where we were
going to be, it was a genocide virtually – that’s
what it was – how we were going to be ‘whit-
ened’ out,” he said. “But, apart from all that and
those atrocities that happened, I have benefitted,
I think, from that education.
“But, at the same time, the people from
Cherbourg or settlements, a lot of those young
people, too, because their parents or the elders
were very, very strong in education, you’ll find
just as many people come out of Cherbourg who
are absolutely brilliant, too.
“I think, with all that aside, I was very fortu-
nate that I wasn’t brought up under the Act like
my mother was, but, at the same time, she was a
very, very strong woman and education was the
name of her game (for us).
“It’s a hard question actually, to put myself …
I was lucky that I was brought up that way but
not in those circumstances.”
David’s followed his mother’s example by
encouraging his children Belinda and Damien in
education, and is pleased they’ve made the best
of their opportunities.
Belinda works for NITV and Screen Queens-
land in production and Damien’s a former foreign
ambassador working in Canberra for the Depart-
ment of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
David has also made sure they were proud of
their heritage and armed against racism.
“I’m fortunate – I don’t let people put me
down, and I brought my kids up the same way
– ‘Don’t let anybody think they’re better than
you’,” he said.
“And, also at the same time, ‘Don’t think
you’re better than anybody else’. It’s no good
saying one thing and doing another.”
Retired from work about eight years, David
gives much of his time walking the talk – not just
with Murri Ministry but with several other groups,
including Brisbane archdiocese’s Catholic Justice
and Peace Commission and the archdiocese’s
Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) committee.
The RAP, approved by Archbishop Mark
Coleridge, identifies priorities and key goals
in building awareness of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander culture, and strength-
ens relationships between Aboriginal
and non-indigenous people across the
archdiocese.
It includes recognising indigenous
cultural protocols – “welcome to coun-
try” ceremonies performed by elders,
acknowledging traditional owners
of local parishes and communities,
naming the traditional land custo-
dians in commemorative plaques,
and ensuring indigenous flags
are flown in parish grounds and
schools.
David’s also been active on
his parish council.
And why does he do it?
“I like helping people, but
I feel within myself that I
have a calling to do justice-
related acts,” he said.
He doesn’t think we’ll
ever get rid of racism
“but we can only try our
best to stamp it out”.
He’s only experienced
racism “a couple
of times” himself,
although he said “once
I wasn’t invited to a
certain place, because I was Aboriginal …”
“It upset me a little … (but) I thought, ‘Well,
I’m better than that, anyway, so why let it worry
you?’
“I always walk with my head high.
“At the same time it affects you, but not
everybody can do that and you don’t realise
some of the damaging things that are caused
by bullying and racism.”
David said whatever happened in debates
about Constitutional recognition of indig-
enous peoples or treaties or other similar
issues it was important the decisions were
made by indigenous people and they were
not “dictated to”.
“That’s been going on too long,” he
said. “I don’t like inequality. That’s why I
do what I do.
“My prayer for Australia would be jus-
tice for all – equality for everybody.”
David Miller: “I don’t like inequality.
That’s why I do what I do.”
Photo: Mark
Bowling