How Stan Grant is re-enchanting his Wiradjuri soul
- kirranicolle
- Jul 6
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 7
NAIDOC Week is an important event in the Australian calendar, when we pause to acknowledge the achievements of First Nations Australians, as well as the history and traditions of the world’s oldest living culture. The theme for 2025 is "The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy”. The goal is not only to celebrate the achievements of the past but also to look ahead to the bright future being built on the strength of young Aboriginal leaders, who will carry on the vision of their communities and ancestral legacies.
Two years ago, award-winning Australian journalist and Wiradjuri man Stan Grant walked away from media, following sustained racial attacks. Recently, he caught up with Simon Smart from The Centre for Public Christianity for a chat on the CPX podcast, Life & Faith. Stan has also recently released Murriyang: Song of Time, a book which he has described as a “Wiradjuri Book of Prayer”. This NAIDOC Week, with permission from CPX, we are featuring part of this conversation as a story about one man’s quest for love, hope and connection to God and Country.
In the interview, Stan discussed the impact his long-term reporting on wars, disasters, terror attacks and tragedies had on him. He described how everything that went wrong in his life – including something as minor as running out of milk – began to feel like a disaster after years of facing constant devastation. He talked about how a catastrophe becomes normalised for those who are exposed to it on a daily basis, and it also begins to feel like the only aspect of life that still holds meaning.
“The world I was reporting on was not the real world,” Stan said. “The real world is buying milk. The real world is dropping your kids off to school. The real world is watching television with your wife or your husband. The real world is taking your dog for a walk.”
Stan described becoming suicidal as a result of his work and seeking medical care to “come back” to himself.
“It takes a terrible toll on you,” Stan said. “Two of my closest friends that I worked with are no longer with us. Another one of my friends that I worked with very closely had a similar breakdown and has not really recovered. As for me, I live with it every day. I factor things into my life to take care of myself. I try to avoid the things that are going to trigger those emotions again.
“I’m hypervigilant – I try to bring routine into my sleep and my exercise and all the things I have to do to regulate my moods, to attend to my mental health and to keep those demons at bay, because once you have seen them, you don't stop seeing them.”
Stan described how despite his lifelong faith, God felt distant. It was through connecting to his Wiradjuri roots through the words of his father and pondering the meaning of being on Country as he returned to Wiradjuri land that he began to feel God’s presence again.
“When I sit on Country, it isn’t the rocks and the trees that speak to me,” Stan told Simon. “It is God in the rocks and the trees. Too many people put a big burden on Country. They want Country to heal them. Country can’t take any more of their pain, but God can take it all. That’s the lesson of dad'’s life. We are saved by God in the country that God gave us.”
And for Stan, God “re-enchanted” his Wiradjuri soul in communion with others who also follow Jesus.
“There is room for us all from our cultural traditions, our backgrounds, but in that body of Christ, we also become one,” Stan said.
“And that is the fulfilment for me of being a First Nations person or Wiradjuri person. It is not that I go to church to be seen as a Wiradjuri person, to be celebrated as a Wiradjuri person, recognised as a Wiradjuri person. I go there to be fulfilled in the presence of others, to bring myself in union with them, to be closer to God. I am fulfilled in that. That’s what enchants my Wiradjuri soul.”
Stan spoke of the fear that exists in Christendom toward Aboriginal cultural ties, and the perception that First Nations people were looking to “fashion” Christianity in the image of their culture.
“God did not arrive on the First Fleet,” Stan says. “Because the people who came here with the Bible in their hand could not see God when God appeared in front of them in us on the land that God had given us … that is their failure, not ours.”
In this podcast, Stan goes on to talk about forgiveness, the diminishing of God in Western culture and the increasing politicisation of faith. Listen here.
