Tuesday, August 25, 2009

I went back to the memorial park where we said Goodbye to Joe last year, almost i year exactly, not of my own accord mind you. I went to be there for my friend. I still cant imagine how both of us, childhood friends from the age of 6- have lost our only brother the same way in one year.
Being at the service reminded me of being around her family as a child. Her parents were good to me. Bobbo always told marika (light heartedly) to 'get the wadgy girl out my house'. Eventually he just called me wadgy. Wadgilla is the term used now to refer to White people generally although it started as a negative description of the early settlers. Really it was a colour blind relationship I had with their family, and still is despite our cultural reality being very different. To most it is us and them in Australia. The indigenous Australians and the European Austrlians. Our worlds overlap some but Despite all the 'multicultural' policy efforts and positive discrimination as they call it,Australia is still very divided in spirit and in outcomes such as health and education. I never realised I was being allowed into a world that i didnt belong and I never though twice about whereing a shirt promoting Nyoongah culture or the aboriginal flags as i often borrowed from Marika. I was privaledged in my opinion and as I stood in a crowd today where I must not have looked like I belonged, I heard cry of mother for a son, uncles for a nephew and memories shared between friends. Our pain is the same. God created us all the same dispite our uniqueness and differences, we are the same in spirit.

Tonight i am praying for my friend and her family. I am praying against depression, suicide and drug use in all young people in Austrlia and I am praying for the Aboriginal community in Australia, that they would be freed from the things that are leading them to have higher than average rates of drug use and suicide.

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