Two inspirational women
Two inspirational women died this week, both dedicating their lives to social and political activism, and practical support for those living with disadvantage. The world rightfully mourned the loss of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but right here in our midst in Australia we have had two amazing advocates for justice, both passing on Australia Day, 26 January 2022. They did receive some recognition for their work, but now their legacy should live on in our own actions. Vale Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and Sister Janet Mead.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, OAM, Indigenous actor and advocate, a ‘national treasure’ passed away, aged 85 (1937-Jan 26,2022). Her family wanted Indigenous media to know Ms Kunoth-Monks died peacefully in Alice Springs Hospital yesterday surrounded by family. She had suffered several strokes and was evacuated from Utopia to Alice Springs late on Tuesday.
In an extraordinary life of service to her people, the Arrente/Amatjere woman was a veteran of more than 60 years in the Aboriginal struggle. In 1953, as a teenager, she became the first Aboriginal female to star in a leading film role when director Charles Chauvel cast her in Jedda alongside the late Robert Tudawalli. Jedda was the first ever Australian feature film to be shot in colour, and was a success in the country but not overseas. The Chauvels credited Kunoth-Monks as Ngarla Kunoth in the film, as they wanted her to have a distinctively Indigenous name. They chose her mother’s skin title, which Kunoth-Monks found distressing. She later described the experience of filming Jedda as “traumatising”. The film premiered at Darwin’s Star Theatre in 1955; as it was a segregated cinema at the time, Kunoth-Monks was given special dispensation to sit with the white audience.
In 1960, Kunoth-Monks became the first Indigenous Australian Anglican nun, working in Victoria. Her ten years as an Anglican nun in Melbourne and her time establishing the first Aboriginal hostel in Victoria influenced her lifelong commitment to social work of many kinds. She left the order after 10 years to work more with her community. She got married and began working with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, setting up the first home for Indigenous Australian children in Victoria. She returned to Alice Springs in 1977 and continued in social work, including at the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. She was appointed as an adviser on Indigenous affairs to Paul Everingham, the chief minister of the Northern Territory.
She campaigned for better housing, medical care and education for all Indigenous Australians. As chancellor of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and through her support for remote schooling in language, she raised her voice to improve educational opportunities for Indigenous children everywhere. She served as president of the Barkly Shire in the Northern Territory.
After the Northern Territory intervention by the Federal Government in 2007, Ms Kunoth-Monks was fiercely opposed to the imposition of federal leases and the many discriminatory measures targeting only Aboriginal people in those 73 remote communities. With the Reverend Djiniyini Gondara, the Yolgnu leader from Elcho Island, she travelled to Geneva and testified before the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. During the emergency phase of the intervention, she travelled the country speaking out against the discriminatory measures. At the age of 76, Ms Kunoth-Monks tried to rally her people by campaigning in the Northern Territory for the fledgling First Nations Party. Even at the end of her life, she told friends and family that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had “no real voice” in Australia and “a treaty was the key to genuine land rights and a new beginning”.
In 1993 she was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia for her services to Indigenous Australia. In 2015 she was named Northern Territorian of the Year, was a finalist for Australian of the Year, and was awarded NAIDOC Person of the Year during the NAIDOC Week celebrations.
The film-maker John Pilger, who featured Kunoth-Monks in his 2013 documentary Utopia, paid tribute to her on Wednesday, writing on Twitter: “The best of Australians are Indigenous. Among the most inspiring was Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, the Arrente/Ammatjere warrior, who has died.”
Amnesty International Australia Indigenous rights advisor Rodney Dillon called her “a staunch warrior for our people – her depth of knowledge of her country as well as the political arena was remarkable and her legacy is profound. “I have known and worked with Rosalie for years and I would like to give my condolences to her family. We have lost a great champion of justice for First Nations people,” he said.
(Sourced from online articles including The Guardian and one by Jeff McMullen on Nine News website)
Sr Janet Mead, well known to many in Adelaide, also passed away on the same day this week aged 84. She became internationally famous for her rock rendition of The Lord’s Prayer, which shot into the charts in 1974, was distributed to 31 countries, and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. She was the first Australian artist to have a gold record in the US and was even nominated for a Grammy but lost out to Elvis Presley. She pioneered the concept of the rock mass in South Australia, which were held regularly in St Francis Xavier Cathedral in Adelaide. (ABC News)
But it is her lifelong dedication to helping the homeless and disadvantaged for which she will be remembered most. In her own gentle gracious way, she provided loving support and encouragement, and a determined advocacy for the welfare of others.
Pas Forgione, who is well known in the anti-poverty network, said on a Facebook post: Vale Sister Janet. What a tireless, unshakeable, unbreakable fighter for dignity, freedom, and justice. She was love in action. I have fond memories of lunches and rambling conversations with her and Sister Joyce at the Adelaide Day Centre for Homeless Persons, many years ago. No matter how demoralised I was, I always left feeling revived. Feeling like the arc of history, while heartbreakingly long, will always bend towards justice. I am so grateful that she was a deep supporter of the Anti-Poverty Network, long before many others. It was because of her generosity, and her faith in us, that we were funded. It was because of her that I was lucky enough to be paid to coordinate the group for several years, which was truly life-changing. I will never forget it, and I will never forget her.
She spoke out against war, against welfare cuts and she raised money to support the sacked Patrick Stevedores workers in a waterfront dispute in 1998. “It’s a decision that each of us has to make to strive for truth in what’s happening in our world and to strive for compassion so that our country might return to the way we were when we said this is a country for a fair go,” she said.
Sister Janet was named the South Australian of the year in 2004 for decades of caring for the homeless.
Both Rosalie and Sr Janet were ‘othered’ (Rosalie as an Indigenous woman, and Sr Janet as a Catholic Nun) and certainly their voices were not given as much ‘airplay’ as some other voices have in the public arena. Their work was deeply grounded in faith, loving kindness, and costly compassion. Their contribution to the fabric of Australian life and care for the welfare of disadvantaged people should be celebrated – and amplified with our own voices calling for justice and the ‘common good’ for all people.
Vale Rosalie and Janet, good and faithful servants.
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A sermon this week in church might look at the lives and work of these two dedicated women, in the context of the Gospel reading (Luke 4:21-30). Michael K. Marsh’s sermon on borders and boundaries offers some interesting insights, which could be linked with the work Rosalie did in advocacy for First Nations people, and Sr Janet for her advocacy for homeless and disadvantaged people.
Here’s a section of Michael’s sermon:
Today’s gospel (Luke 4:21-30) needs to be heard and can really only be understood in the context of last week’s gospel (Luke 4:14-21). So let’s take a look at where we are. Jesus has been baptized, has overcome the temptations in the wilderness, and has returned to the synagogue of his childhood in Nazareth. He reads from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Then he declares to the people of Nazareth, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Those words from Isaiah and Jesus’ comment on them form what has sometimes been called Jesus’ inaugural address, what I described last week as the politics of Jesus. He has established his priorities and described the character and direction of his ministry. With those words Jesus has outlined his political platform – good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, declaring God’s favor; right now, here, today.
Last Sunday’s sermon was about the politics of Jesus (Luke 4:14-21). This week it’s about the politics of Nazareth and the politics of borders in light of Jesus’ politics. Politics is about much more than just elections and governmental process – it’s about the ways we order our relationships and relate to one another. I am talking about the ways in which we live together and how we get along.
More and more it seems we do our politics by creating boundaries, building walls, establishing borders. We separate and divide ourselves against each other so that border control now defines our relationships with each other. Border control is at the heart of the conflict between Jesus and the people of Nazareth in today’s gospel, and it seems to be at the heart of our own political conflicts in today’s world at every level. Let me give you a few examples. Wherever you find racism, prejudice, or discrimination you will find walls. Our economic system has created a stark separation between the rich and the poor. We remain divided over which boundaries contain the correct interpretation of scripture. And when it comes to our personal relationships, each of us can name the walls and barriers that have stood at the centre of our conflicts.
Whether our borders are geographical, physical, ideological, religious, or emotional, they first exist and arise from within us. We project the borders of our hearts onto the world and each other.
Whenever we build walls or establish borders, two things usually happen. First, we put ourselves on the right side, the good side, the inclusive side of the wall, and some other person or group on the outside. Second, it’s not long before securing and defending our borders become more important than the other person or group. We no longer see their pain, hear their cries, or much care about their well-being. At best they become issues to be resolved or problems to be fixed.
There simply is no room for that in the politics of Jesus. To the contrary boundary crossing is a hallmark of Jesus’ politics. Later in Luke’s account of the gospel Jesus will touch and cleanse lepers. He will eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners. He will heal on the Sabbath. Each one of those is violation of the accepted boundaries of the day.
Jesus lives and relates without regard to the established walls that separate, the rules that categorize and label people, and the borders that define party loyalty. The pain and hurt of poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression know no boundaries. That means the divine favour of good news, release, sight, and freedom can have no boundaries. If the politics of Jesus, divine favor, has no boundaries shouldn’t that also be true for our politics and human favour? How can we as followers of Jesus presume to limit or exclude another from human favour, much less divine favor?
That’s a hard and painful lesson for most of us to learn. It was for the people of Nazareth. Jesus’ politics not only challenges but contradicts their politics, so much so that eventually they will become “filled with rage” and try to “hurl him off the cliff.”
The people of Nazareth start off liking Jesus’ message. Who wouldn’t? Good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and divine favour all sound good and right. It did to the people of Nazareth. They are unanimous in their opinion of Jesus. “All spoke well of him.” They perceived his words as gracious, full of grace, and all “were amazed.” Everyone loved what they heard. Then they recognized and claimed Jesus as their guy. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they say. They see Jesus as the hometown kid. He’s one of them. And the implication is clear. They expect some political, if not divine, favouritism. After all, that’s how border based politics works. But that’s not how Jesus’ politics works.
Jesus puts people loyalty above party loyalty and even hometown loyalty. That’s how divine favour works. People come first. To make his point Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth that of all the starving Jews in Israel during the famine, Elijah, the prophet of God, was sent to none of them except a poor non-Jew widow, an outsider, a nobody; and of all the lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the only one to be cleansed was Naaman the Syrian, another outsider. In fact, as a non-Jew and a leper he is a double outsider.
They heard Jesus loud and clear and this time they do not like what they heard. The people remain unanimous in their opinion of Jesus. “All in the synagogue were filled with rage” and they wanted to kill him. After all, that’s how border based politics works.
We probably don’t feel the impact of what Jesus is saying as intensely as did the people of Nazareth but I wonder if it might have sounded something like this. “Of all the jobless Christians during the economic collapse, the prophet of God was sent to none of them except a Muslim refugee from Syria.”
If that stings and makes us angry – good – maybe we are beginning to understand what Jesus said in Nazareth. Maybe we’ve heard his contradiction of our politics. If it doesn’t make us angry, if it doesn’t challenge or contradict our politics, maybe we haven’t heard what Jesus said. Maybe we haven’t grasped the real meaning, extent, and implications of Jesus’ politics and the divine favor.
This is about the expansiveness and inclusiveness of divine favour. This is about the power of Jesus’ politics to overcome border based politics. It means that nothing can separate us from the love and divine favor of God in Christ Jesus. Regardless of the barriers we’ve faced or the boundaries that have enclosed us the divine favor still breaks through. It also means we ought not be setting barriers between the divine favor and anyone else. For most of us, I suspect, it means we might need to check our own politics.
To the degree we live a border based politics, to the degree we try to deny another human favour or the divine favour of God, Jesus will pass through our midst and go on his way. That’s what happened to the people of Nazareth. Jesus did not go on his way because he was rejected. He was rejected because he would not go their way.
Let’s not be Nazareth. Let’s not demand Jesus go our way. Let’s cross some borders and go with Jesus on his way.
What border do you need to cross to go with Jesus on his way? That’s not just a question for you? It’s a question I must answer. It’s a question our church must answer. It’s a question our country (and world) must answer.
It’s past time, way past time, that we left Nazareth.