Tell the stones to become bread? Nah, I will ask that Mountain. It is witness. It will know. #command #kīia
Tag Archive: questions
Frail little lights ask their hopeful questions. There’s so much we do not and cannot understand. There may never be an answer. To pray goes some way to acknowledge this. #pray #inoi #adventwords2019
Down there, in the dark unseen places, there you will find what nourishes you. There you will discover deep tendrils of strength to draw on when life’s storms come. Sit down here, can I get you a drink? A lot can’t be made sense of from a view of days and weeks but in the light of years and generations… how does that change your view of now? Let’s visit our deepest places together and nourish each other. What land are you on? Where are your people? What are you grounded in? No answers, ay? Let’s sit with the questions. #root #paikiaka #adventwords2019
The Athena SWAN Charter was established in 2005 “to encourage and recognise the commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research” In 2015 the scheme was extended to arts, humanities, social science, business and law (AHSSBL) subjects. Dr Alana Harris and Professor Abigail Woods participated in the bronze accreditation being rolled out at King’s College, London but also headed the project to analyse and assess across an audit of the framework which institutional contexts, working practices and interventions are most conducive to advancing gender equality… for more information read the report or play a round of Gender Equity Snakes and Ladders.
- When we looked at lecturing staff the gender ratio of men to women was 60:40 but when you look at professorial level that ratio shifts to 80:20. At the age you might be offered that seniority, women are often caring either for children and/or aging parents.
- Doing a staff survey in real time gave everyone a voice and ensured they felt heard. Respondents replied more honestly. When you are sitting in a room with your colleagues and x indicate they “don’t feel they are consulted or able to contribute to decision making”, you feel that in the room and its powerful.
- In an assessment of staff shared working space… 70% of women were sharing and only 7% of men.
- If you are to apply for the Athena SWAN Bronze Award that work needs to be resourced. Attainment of the first level takes 5 years. It’s a commitment to a process.
- A cultural shift is not just about women joining in more to existing structures. Change happens with longevity and legacy. In staff meetings we use a collaborative process of decision making. This has been habituated into virtue and staff would revolt now if someone tried to take it away.
Is there anything feminist about the framing of this model?
It looks different on the ground everywhere its been applied. Sometimes women are empowered to lead it and sometimes men encouraged to so it’s not seen as just “a women’s thing”. When you start looking at systems and structures for parity you very quickly see beyond gender and that informs the process. Eg in auditing assigned reading lists, how many readings are by women? You can’t help but also ask, how many by people of colour? Creating assessment tools for LGBTIQ inclusion and religious diversity will be next.
Anything you would suggest for consideration by the Australian Collaborators in Feminist Theologies at the University of Divinity?
You are named in the Strategic Plan “To be a centre of excellence in feminist theological scholarship and in mentoring academics so as to challenge and transform patriarchal structures and assumptions in the academy, church, and wider world.” You need to have impact beyond being UD strategic aim 3. What impact into other areas of work, institution and structure can be implemented?
Hold events during the day, not evenings. Our event are not held in a pub, moving away from the ‘old boy club’ feel. We host an academics book party once a year at 3pm in the afternoon and cross-read our texts eg. modern history lecturer trades their book with the medieval history teacher.
It seems senior male academics support younger counterparts but senior women don’t? External support scaffolding, if it’s not available within the institution, can be really useful. Ref. Facebook group: ‘Women in Academia Support Network’ or Australian Collaborators page.
What are the vision and mission statements of the UD? These set the culture of the institution and its frameworks – if these have inclusive language then then culture will be inclusive and staff attracted to that culture be drawn to work for that organisation. If your work sits outside the scope of these statements you may not be fighting only students to accept new ideas and thinking but other staff.
What do you do with the resistant remnant?
Isolate them. Move them to one side where they can do the least harm. If they’re not able to support or participate in change their means to prevent it needs to be minimised.
You’ll always get people who will say: “There aren’t women to cite. They aren’t there”, if you were taught to a reading list that was all male, the conference speakers you here are male, the professors you look up to are male… we need to be able to interrogate our own networks of influence.
Activist fatigue is real. You need allianceships. Rather than being one strident voice… ask someone else to raise it in a meeting and lend your voice to theirs. Need mix gender mentoring and people who will back you up in meetings… and at conferences introduce you to the right people.
If you are looking for increased balance in curriculum and representation… crowd source knowledge from within the network. Aim for 25% female.
Questions to ponder:
- Would the UD undertake an audit of its course set reading lists? Or undertake the Athena SWAN Bronze accreditation?
- What does ‘external support scaffolding’ look like? Can/should we provide it?
- What are the precedents? eg. getting a researcher when you come back from mat leave. Case study for part time work…If something’s offered at another like University/College/ department, you might be able to use that as leverage at yours.
- In what ways can the Australian Collaborators in Feminist Theologies stimulate and promote momentum in the areas of feminist and minority voices at the UD?
- What are the vision and mission statements of the UD?
Our Vision
Together we empower our learning community to address the issues of the contemporary world through critical engagement with Christian theological traditions.
Our Mission
We fulfil our vision through:
- excellence in learning, teaching, and research;
- growth of our resources and capacity; and
- engagement with the churches and community in Australia and internationally.
https://divinity.edu.au/university-of-divinity/about-us/our-vision-and-mission/
This ANZAC day as we remember those who lost their lives in WW1 and WW2 we also acknowledge all of those who lost their lives in the Frontier Wars.
We acknowledge people of the Kulin Nation stalked game, collected food and fished along the river junctions, estuaries, oceans, swamps and lagoons of this place since time immemorial. They met, raised families, shared songs and stories. We acknowledge this way of life was interrupted during white settlement and that this country was the scene of conflicts between the Kulin Nation people and the European colonisers.
You won’t see any war memorials depicting the Frontier Wars. When Aboriginal people mourn the loss of a family member they follow Aboriginal death ceremonies, or ‘sorry business’. It is believed that when a person dies, their spirit goes back to the Dreaming Ancestors in the land if the correct ceremonies rituals are conducted. The tradition not to depict dead people or voice their (first) names is very old – traditional law across Australia said that a dead person’s name could not be said because you would recall and disturb their spirit. After the invasion this law was adapted to images as well.
Aunty Margaret Parker from the Punjima people in north-west Western Australia describes what happens in an Aboriginal community when someone dies.
“…when we have someone passed away in our families and not even our own close families, the family belongs to us all, you know. The whole community gets together and shares that sorrow within the whole community…We have to cry, in sorrow, share our grief by crying and that’s how we break that [grief], by sharing together as a community.”
If you are interested in thinking further on this subject more you might visit NGV’s “Colony: Frontier Wars” exhibition on until 15 July 2018 or read Richard Flanagan’s recent Press Club speech online. As we remember the grief of those lives lost in wars today the following poem by indigenous artist Zelda Quakaroot, from Mackay, Queensland might be a way to share our grief as a community. This poem was inspired by AFL player Adam Goodes, on the subject of war it may not be that “our voices have been heard” yet but we can be grateful for the space to hold grief as a community today for the fallen in war – named and unnamed.
STAND STRONG
Our ancestors spirits
Are here…
Respect never retires
Stand up
We’ve marched
Our voices have been heard;
Stand here
Where we belong
Stand altogether
With our passionate hearts
For respect
We all stand strong.
Sources: Wikipedia and Creative Spirits
I know nothing about anything. I just need to get that out there. I make some presumptive connections above about why there might not be indigenous war memorials and sort of appropriate the “unnamed soldier” for my own poetic ends… The most I have heard about the Frontier Wars was on Monday at the Indigenous Hospitality House‘s Learning Circle. I’m a you-have-to-start-somewhere kind of person and the second step in acknowledging you know nothing about something is to say: Why don’t I know about this? How can I find out more? The above is a very hastily cobbled together poster I made very late last night… it didn’t arise out of any wisdom or stakeholder consultation (I’m sorry for that), it didn’t even get spell checked (crap!) it arose out of a deep sense of conviction that I should know more about what I know nothing about and wanting to give hands and feet to that commitment urgently. Richard Flanagan’s Press Club speech is so pertinent to our times I wish everyone in Australia would read it.
In the meantime… I did a little morning vigil of my own putting these up in Footscray’s Memorial Park and on the Avenue of Honour plinth because I want to see Frontier Wars become part of the conversation… I want to have the conversation… and I can’t get to Canberra for the Frontier Wars March.
Squatter Henry Meyrick wrote in a letter home to his relatives in England in 1846:
The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 450 have been murdered altogether.[2] SourcePlease see also Lyndall Ryan‘s interactive (partially completed) massacre map for violence near you…
What are war memorials for by the way… Remembering? Honouring? Celebrating? Prayer? Prevention? Cure? Should they be educational so that understanding the horror of war we might be dissuaded from ever participating in them by being transparent about the cost of war and violence – personal and political? Should they advocate for alternate and non-violent approaches? Make connections to waves of migration and refugees?
Ironically, the only one at Footscray’s war memorials this morning was me. There are no flowers or wreaths, no events, no mourners although I saw a few folks in uniform heading for the local RSL. The memorial has had a revamp recently, the Australian Government is commiting a lot to doing them up in upcoming years on top of the $100 million spent on a new museum in France, apparently there are a total 5-6 Frontier War memorials in all of Australia, maybe we could get a new museum here on country?
I confess I don’t feel as much as I think I should, I have ringing in my head the chorus “Lest We Forget” but we cannot remember what we do not know, how selective are the stories we’re being taught? And I wonder… have I forgotten what I’m supposed to remember?
What are we forgetting?
What are we remembering?
I read some of the plaques at the memorial garden overlooking the Maribyrnong river and the racecourse. The catch-cry of the funding appeal for planting the Avenue of Honour back in the day was that the memorial would be “…dedicated to citizens who fell in ANY war in which Australia has been engaged.” Could this language create space for remembering lives lost in the Frontier Wars? One plaque quotes the widow of Private GF Blake of Footscray from an In Memoriam message in The Age ‘Each day I miss his footsteps/As I walk through life alone‘. Walking is evocative language in this country, what learned wisdom about following in our elders first footprints and following songlines have to teach us about grief? What symbolism might we share of trails that end unexpectedly, or songs that are lost before they can be passed on, can we learn from?
Don’t forget to remember. Let’s keep talking about what that means.
The gorgeous Dusk Liney of Inspirit Creative recently ran a customised (pretty damn special) contemplative birthday for me down at Pipemakers Park. As she as gifted, so are we all. Please be encouraged to use this for your own reflections on 2017.
Wurundjeri Garden
Mosaic
This mosaic depicts Aboriginal life before European settlers arrived. Find a place around the mosaic to reflect on your own life this year. Create your own Mosaic/picture – using illustrations, colours or words – that reflects how you experienced 2017.
Capture the good, the bad, the ugly. What surprised you? What enlivened you? What challenged you? What were the unexpected gifts?
Fireplace
Before you leave the Wurundjeri Garden, if there is any part of this year that you would like to leave behind, make your way to the fireplace.
Take a piece of paper, put that image, word or feeling down on paper, and burn it.
Early Settlers Garden
Footprints
As you walk to the next station, pause and place your feet on the child’s footprints. Take a moment to be still and be present to your inner child.
Whisper to her what your heart yearns for her to hear.
One sided Table
So much of the year is spent preparing food for others. In this moment, come and sit at the table. Think about the hospitality that you show to others and imagine the ways in which you can show that same beautiful hospitality to yourself.
What would it be like for the Divine to prepare a table for you? What would feed your soul? How can you show that hospitality to your soul this year?
Take a walk over to the apple tree and think of an apple dish that captures that imagining. Write it on a sticker and place it on your clothes.
Pipeworkers Garden
Dry Garden
Take in the fig tree, the succulents and the drought resistant plants. Each of these plants have survived dry, hot, tough conditions. It is actually in this landscape of lacking that they grow.
Sit here and acknowledge the dry places in your life. Think about the qualities that have grown in you within the dry parts of this year. Write them on a post it and stick it to the dry plant captures that quality.
Grapevine Colonnade
Then walk under the pipe colonnade shaded by the grapevines. Allow the coolness and shade to wash over those dry places. As you come to the end, sit with the sun mosaic.
Ask God / the Divine / the Sun to shine on you this year, to shine you with light and warmth. Name the desires of your heart and lay them at the Sun as offering.
Picnic Circle
When you’re ready, come and find a place on the blankets and we’ll gather in a circle to reflect together.
Each step I am blind
In faith, I follow
listening for the Song
listening for the Singer.
Maybe that’s the Mary thing to do.
Kneel, right here where I am,
lean against You and
ask all the questions
why God? how God?
when God?
Talitha Fraser
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