ABSTRACT
Aboriginal spirituality has significant cultural and social capital when portrayed as a counter-narrative to the wastelands of modern capitalism. This chapter introduces an alternative approach to exploring Aboriginal spirituality, which the authors call ‘breaching the norm’. The authors describe it through two events that were aimed at unravelling many of the taken-for-granted and invisible language and social practices. They started with the idea of a ‘definitional ceremony’, a communitarian performance that progresses from the ‘breach of a norm, to crisis, and resolution, with displays of common, powerful, binding symbols’. The definitional ceremony serves to move an issue (in this case, reconciliation) from practices that encourage self-reflective interiorisation to practices that encourage collective and communal performances. An authentic spiritual practice is made possible through providing a space for real encounter and an opportunity for generating collective meaning. Such a spiritual and political process, a process that breaches the norm, makes genuine reconciliation possible.
