My People E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 93

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

my people

Oodgeroo’s writing has a unique place in Australian literature. When her poetry was first published in the 1960s, Kath Walker, as she was known then, provided a brave new voice for marginalised Aboriginal Australians. For the first time, an Aboriginal Australian was analysing and judging white Australians as well as her own people. She often made provocative and passionate pleas for justice:

We want hope, not racialism,
Brotherhood, not ostracism,
Black advance, not white ascendance:
Make us equals, not dependants.

This collection of poetry and prose is a reminder of Oodgeroo’s contribution to Indigenous culture and the journey toward reconciliation. All Australians should be proud of this poet who dedicated her life to her people and her land.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

All One Race

Let Us Not Be Bitter

An Appeal

The Curlew Cried

Sounds Assail Me

Tree Grave

Dawn Wail for the Dead

Dark Unmarried Mothers

Not My Style

Last of His Tribe

The Child Wife

The Young Girl Wanda

Whynot Street

White Australia

Acacia Ridge

The Unhappy Race

Corroboree

Stone Age

Assimilation – No!

Integration – Yes!

The Teachers

Ballad of Totems

White Man, Dark Man

The Protectors

Intolerance

Bwalla the Hunter

No More Boomerang

Bora

Nona

The Food Gatherers

Aboriginal Charter of Rights

Gifts

Spinners

A Song of Hope

The Woor Woman

The Dawn Is at Hand

Municipal Gum

My Love

Colour Bar

Tribal Justice

Artist Son

Son of Mine

Dead Life

?

Jarri's Love Song

Community Rain Song

Namatjira

The Dispossessed

Interlude

The Bunyip

Understand, Old One

Gooboora, the Silent Pool

We Are Going

Cookalingee

United We Win

Song

God's One Mistake

Verses

Civilisation

Biami

Freedom

Return to Nature

Hope

Racism

I Am Proud

Then and Now

Daisy Bindi

The Past

Time Is Running Out

Balance

China … Woman

Reed Flute Cave

Oh Trugganner!

Kiltara-Biljara* (Eagle Hawk)

Mongarlowe

Leave Straddie Unabridged

Custodians of the Land

Two Dreamtimes

Glossary

Biography

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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my people

Oodgeroo

Fifth edition published in 2021 byJohn Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064Office also in Melbourne

First edition 1970Second edition 1981Third edition 1990Fourth edition 2008

© Kath Walker 1964, 1966, 1970, 1981© Oodgeroo 1990© Estate of Oodgeroo 2008, 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-730-39108-1

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover art by Oodgeroo

Judith Wright, ‘Two Dreamtimes’ from Collected Poems, Judith Wright, HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Limited

Dedicated to my son Kabulof the tribe NoonuccalCustodian of the land Minjerribah(Vivian Charles Walker)

All One Race

Black tribe, yellow tribe, red, white or brown,

From where the sun jumps up to where it goes down,

Herrs and pukka-sahibs, demoiselles and squaws,

All one family, so why make wars?

They're not interested in brumby runs,

We don't hanker after Midnight suns;

I'm for all humankind, not colour gibes;

I'm international, and never mind tribes.

Black, white or brown race, yellow race or red,

From the torrid equator to the ice-fields spread,

Monsieurs and senors, lubras and fraus,

All one family, so why family rows?

We're not interested in their igloos,

They're not mad about kangaroos;

I'm international, never mind place;

I'm for humanity, all one race.

Let Us Not Be Bitter

Away with bitterness, my own dark people

Come stand with me, look forward, not back,

For a new time has come for us.

Now we must change, my people. For so long

Time for us stood still; now we know

Life is change, life is progress,

Life is learning things, life is onward.

White men had to learn civilised ways,

Now it is our turn.

Away with bitterness and the bitter past;

Let us try to understand the white man's ways

And accept them as they accept us;

Let us judge white people by the best of their race.

The prejudiced ones are less than we,

We want them no more than they want us.

Let us not be bitter, that is an empty thing,

A maggot in the mind.

The past is gone like our childhood days of old,

The future comes like dawn after the dark,

Bringing fulfilment.

An Appeal

Statesmen, who make the nation's laws,

With power to force unfriendly doors,

Give leadership in this our cause

That leaders owe.

Writers, who have the nation's ear,

Your pen a sword opponents fear,

Speak of our evils loud and clear

That all may know.

Unions, who serve democracy,

Guardians of social liberty,

Warm to the justice of our plea,

And strike your blow.

Churches, who preach the Nazarene,

Be on our side and intervene,

Show us what Christian love can mean

Who need it so.

The Press, most powerful of all,

On you the underprivileged call:

Right us a wrong and break the thrall

That keeps us low.

All white well-wishers, in the end

On you our chiefest hopes depend;

Public opinion's our best friend

To beat the foe.

The Curlew Cried

Three nights they heard the curlew cry.

It is the warning known of old

That tells them one tonight shall die.

Brother and friend, he comes and goes

Out of the Shadow Land to them,

The loneliest voice that earth knows.

He guards the welfare of his own,

He comes to lead each soul away –

To what dim world, what strange unknown?

Who is it that tonight must go:

The old blind one? The cripple child?

Tomorrow all the camp will know.

The poor dead will be less afraid,

Their tribe brother will be with him

When the dread journey must be made.

‘Have courage, death is not the end,’

He seems to say. ‘Though you must weep,

Death is kindly and is your friend.’

Three nights the curlew cried. Once more

He comes to take the timorous dead –

To what grim change, what ghostly shore?

Note: The curlew was brother of the Aboriginal peoples. He came to warn them of a coming death by crying near a camp three nights in succession. They believed that the curlew came to lead the shade of the dead one away to the unknown world.

Sounds Assail Me

Something obscene

In man-made sounds affronts the sweet and clean,

But Nature's never.

Shout of the stormy winds, ever

Toneless and rude, tossing the trees,

The harsh scream of seabirds – these

Somehow belong

As much as the wren's airy song.

Man only, the books tell, knows evil and wrong;

Even as art now the yelp and yell

Like music of hell,

Music made evil, the squawk and squall

When the disc jockeys loose the blare and bawl.

Give me the sounds God made so –

I love them all

Whether loud or low,

From the small, thin

Note of the bee's violin

To the rough sea's uproar,

In wild tumult tumbling upon the shore.

Tree Grave

When our lost one left us

For the Shadow Land,

In bark we bound him,

A weeping band,

And we bore him, wailing

Our wild death croon

To his lonely tree-grave

By the Long Lagoon.

Our wandering fires

Are now far away,

But our thoughts are turning

By night and day

Where he lies for ever

Under the white moon,

By the lit waters

Of the still lagoon.

His hunts are over

And the songs he made;

Poor lonely fellow,

He will be afraid

When the night winds whisper

Their ghostly tune

In the haunted swamp-oaks

By the Long Lagoon.

Dawn Wail for the Dead

Dim light of daybreak now

Faintly over the sleeping camp.

Old lubra first to wake remembers:

First thing every dawn

Remember the dead, cry for them.

Softly at first her wail begins,

One by one as they wake and hear

Join in the cry, and the whole camp

Wails for the dead, the poor dead

Gone from here to the Dark Place:

They are remembered.

Then it is over, life now,

Fires lit, laughter now,

And a new day calling.

Dark Unmarried Mothers

All about the country,

From earliest teens,

Dark unmarried mothers,

Fair game for lechers –

Bosses and station hands,

And in town and city

Low-grade animals

Prowl for safe prey.

Nothing done about it,

No one to protect them –

But hush, you mustn't say so,

Bad taste or something

To challenge the accepted,

Disturbing the established.

Turn the blind eye,

Wash the hands like Pilate.

Consent? Even with consent

It is still seduction.

Is it a white girl?

Then court case and headline

Stern talk of maintenance.

Is it a dark girl?

Then safe immunity;

He takes what he wants

And walks off like a dog.

Was ever even one,

One of all the thousands

Ever made responsible?

For dark unmarried mothers

The law does not run.

No blame for the guilty

But blame uttered only

For anyone made angry

Who dares even mention it,

Challenging old usage,

Established, accepted

And therefore condoned.

Shrug away the problem,

The shame, the injustice;

Turn the blind eye,

Wash the hands like Pilate.

Not My Style

Not my style?

Man! the world will end

And you complain.

I want to do

The things I have not done.

Not just taste the nectar of Gods

But drown in it too.

Shed my grass-root skin.

Emerge!

As woman!

 poet!

writer!

 musician!