‘Safe place’ the focus of Kintore teaching course
In July 2023, a Finke River Mission teaching course was held at the community of Kintore/Walungurru, 500 kilometres west of Alice Springs. It was on ‘safe place’ issues and taught by Dave Biar from the Lutheran Church’s Professional Standards Department.
Apart from the atypical topic, the course was unusual in being the first course attended by both Mei-Li Traeger and rookie ‘cookie’ John Linke (from Hamilton in Victoria). Mei-Li sat and shared with some of the ladies. John was cheerful and hardworking, both in preparing food and fitting into a situation outside his usual comfort zone. Also different was that the teaching place was a few kilometres away from the feeding (and sleeping) place. The campsite was in a beautiful location, among various healthy desert plants – it had rained recently, and many of them were flowering.
The teaching was valued by the listeners. It looked at vulnerable people in the community and how the Bible says we should care for them. Dave carefully unpacked the material and allowed plenty of time for discussion. However, despite our attempts at predicting any potential cultural problems with the teaching material – Dave, in particular, had tried to be very careful about this – two issues initially raised questions from the men.
One was on how privacy operates in two different cultures – Indigenous and ‘whitefella’. The other issue was about respecting the government, especially in a world where some levels of government can fail to communicate or make serious errors of judgement. After some discussion, we were able to basically work through these matters. (Still, the precise wording of the teaching on privacy may need further revision for future courses.)
Later, the Wednesday afternoon meeting was led by Pastor Simon Dixon. What he said was balanced, wide-ranging and helpful. Afterwards, we very much appreciated Malcolm Willcocks’ clear gospel preaching during the service with holy communion.
Numbers were down slightly due to the course being preceded by the Alice Springs show weekend and, sadly, an unusual number of sorry camps (no less than five) around the community. Early mornings were cold, but by the time the day warmed up, there were around 25 attendees – both men and women – each day.
Paul Treager is the FRM Support Worker for the Pintupi–Luritja language area.
