It has been 18 years since the first National Sorry Day, which has served to help remember and commemorate the mistreatment of Australia’s Aboriginal people. Yet, even though the Prime Minister publicly apologised in 2008, the hurt amongst Australia’s indigenous people continues to this day.
This Reconciliation Week, we are sorry for the ways in which we have contributed to this tragedy, and thank the Aboriginal people for the grace they have shown in accepting our national apology. They have suffered terribly from the effects of the European Settlement, and they continue to bear the burden of the sins committed against them.
Our church at Oak Flats Anglican acknowledges the traditional owners of the land upon which we meet. We recognise that God our heavenly Father gave this place to the Waddi Waddi and Korewal Elouera Jerrungarugh (KEJ) people of the Dharawal Nation, and that they met here for generations until the arrival of British settlers.
As we continue to learn to live together on these ancestral lands, we acknowledge and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and future, and pray that God will unite us all in a knowledge of his Son, in whom all things were created.
“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)