Day of Mourning

On the Sunday before Australia Day, Uniting Church congregations across the country hold worship services to reflect upon and lament the effect of, the invasion and colonisation of this nation upon her First Peoples.

The observance of a “Day of Mourning” was endorsed by the 15th Assembly at the request of members of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC).

Rather than seeking a change to the date of Australia Day as some propose, the UAICC asked the Church, in the spirit of the Covenant between us, to declare the Sunday before Australia Day as a Day of Mourning.

Assembly members enthusiastically agreed.

On Sunday 19 January 2020 an increasing number of congregations and agencies marked the Day of Mourning.

This year’s resource borrows from a local connection that Tewantin Uniting Church on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast made at its 2019 Day of Mourning Service.

Their Service featured the “Murdering Creek painting” which is the property of the Beulah Community in the Queensland town of Buderim.

You are welcome to adapt our resources for your local expressions, and would value your stories and photos to share and encourage others.

Our decision to declare a Day of Mourning annually from 2019 is a way in which we stand together in Covenantal relationship to honour, remember and acknowledge the truth of our history.

For it is only through our lament and truth telling that we can together, First and Second Peoples, look with hope to the future.

Stuart McMillan
Assembly Consultant Covenanting
E:StuartM@nat.uca.org.au