Jackie Giles (1935-2010)_Purrungu rock hole showing underground travel coils of the ancestral snake or jila_2008
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
God’s One Mistake
.
“It repenteth me that I have made man.” (Genesis 6:7)
.
I who am ignorant and know so little,
So little of life and less of God,
This I do know
That happiness is intended and could be,
That all wild simple things have life fulfilled
Save man.
Without books or schools, lore or philosophy
In my own heart I know
That hate is wrong,
Injustice evil.
Pain there must be and tears,
Sorrow and death, but not
Intolerance, unkindness, cruelty,
Unless men choose
The mean and base, which Nature never made,
But we alone.
And sometimes I will think that God looks down
With loving smile, saying,
‘Poor child, poor child, maybe I was wrong
In planning for you reason and free will
To fashion your own life in your own way.
For all the rest
I settled and appointed as for children
Their simple days, but you
I gave the Godlike gift to choose,
Who were not wise – for see how you have chosen,
Poor child, alone among them all now,
Unhappy on the earth.’
. . .
Jonathan Hill
Light Years Away
.
My lifetime flickers
In the fading light,
I no longer have
The will to fight.
The battle continues
Till my dying day,
Forever forced to live
The white man’s way.
The songlines and stories
The laws of the land,
Deemed mythical nonsense
By those in command.
Now lost to eternity
Perished and passed,
Making way for modernity
A comical farce.
A culture bound
By desire not need,
Ruled by the wealthy
Infected with greed.
The unifying power
Of the setting sun
Is proof humanity
Is collectively one.
But such realisation
Is light years away,
There’s no profit to be made
Living the peaceful way.
. . .
Rover Thomas (1926-1998)_Rock Country on Texas Downs_1988_bush gum and ochre
Rover Thomas_Sydney Harbour_1991
Rover Thomas_Lightning_1995
. . .
Kevin Gilbert
Kill the legend
.
Kill the legend
Butcher it
With your acute cynicisms
Your paternal superfluities
With your unwise wisdom
Kill the legend
Obliterate it
With your atheism
Your fraternal hypocrisies
With your primal urge of miscegenation
Kill the legend
Devalue it
With your sophistry
Your baseless rhetoric
Your lusting material concepts
Your groundless condescension
Kill it
Vitiate the seed
Crush the root-plant
All this
And more you must needs do
In order
To form a husk of a man
To the level and in your own image
Whiteman.
.
Kevin Gilbert (1933-1993) wrote “Kill the Legend” in 1971, while serving 14 years in jail for murder.
. . .
Gerry Bostock
Black Children
.
Prepare Black Children
For the Land Rights fight,
Our cause is true,
Our aim’s in sight,
Unite my people,
Unite!
Come on, Black Children
Rise on your feet!
Get out of the gutter
And onto the street;
United together,
Hand in hand,
Heads raised, high we stand,
Then, march as one,
Surging forward and onward,
For justice
For freedom
And for Our Land.
.
(1980)
. . .
Kevin Gilbert
Tree
.
I am the tree
the lean hard hungry land
the crow and eagle
sun and moon and sea
I am the sacred clay
which forms the base
the grasses vines and man
I am all things created
I am you and
you are nothing
but through me the tree
you are
and nothing comes to me
except through that one living gateway
to be free
and you are nothing yet
for all creation
earth and God and man
is nothing
until they fuse
and become a total sum of something
together fuse to consciousness of all
and every sacred part aware
alive
in true affinity.
. . .
Mangroves
Zelda Quakawoot
.
Buzzing
Stinging
Mossies roam
Silent
Biters
Sandfly’s home
Greens
Browns
Reds and blue
Smokey
Fire
Keep them from you
Salty
Dampness
Muddy banks
Crab
Empires
Our tummies thank…
Fire smells
Salty
Air
Goodnight
Sweet mangroves
For secrets
Shared.
. . .
Tutama Tjapangati
Aladayi
.
big one mutukayi
kulaputja katiku
bring em up here
big one
Tjukula, show em a you
my country
Mickini, mighty be we take em
Mayayana, my daught
Nolan, my brother
Kayiyu Kayiyu, Nampitjimp
Ohh, too much!
grab em big one you
ebbrything a tucker
kapi too/puttem a-drum
you right that’s ‘im
my country, piyu
kala!
.
Aladayi is a poem about a local schoolbus. It employs a mix of Pintupi/Luritja and English.
[mutukayi – motorcar; kulaputja – schoolbus; kayiyu – will bring;
Tjukula – a place in the eastern Gibson Desert; Nampitjimp –
shortened version of Nampitjinpa, a skin-name; kapi – water;
piyu – all’s well; kala – anyway, what next?]
. . .
J. E. Doyle
Wisdom
.
I sat and spoke to the Elders today
It is not so wrong in what they say
The times have changed as they well know,
But isn’t it time we had a fair go?
So let us all band together and clear the air
The Kooris* know that things are not fair
Their knowledge is known for thousands of years
Through hunting, healing, also tears
They have also survived hatred and fear
So let us all live together before it’s too late
And make this land a wonderful place.
. . .
*Kooris – the name that Indigenous Australians from what are now the states of New South Wales and Victoria traditionally have called themselves.
. . .
Gail Kay
My Sitting Down Place
.
I go down to the creek
Where the water gurgles
Joyfully
As it hurries along
Over the shining sand and pebbles
To its destiny
With the sea.
Dappled sunlight
Flits and moves
Across the water, over the creek bank,
And the birds sing happily
To the accompaniment
Of insects and crickets.
I sit in silence as I soak it all into my soul.
Peace flows
From the water
To my heart.
Whatever life brings me
I now can face
Because of this,
My sitting down place!
. . .
N. B. “Narrbong” means “string bag”.
We are grateful to Jens Korff of Creative Spirits for provision of the above poems, except for God’s One Mistake (via Australian Poetry Library); Kill the legend, Black Children, and Aladayi (Adam Shoemaker of Australian National University, Canberra); and Kevin Gilbert’s daughter, Kerry Reed-Gilbert, provided Tree.
. . . . .
Bill Tjapattjarri (1920-2008)_Rockholes near The Olgas
Pepai Jangala Carroll, born 1950_Walungurru number 294.13
Colleen Wallace Nungari_Body painting design
Walangkura Napanangka_Women’s Dreaming
Emily Kam Kngwarry_Anmatyerr_Kam_yam pencil bark seed
Indigenous Australian peoples (“Aboriginal” peoples) were making rock paintings and rock engravings many thousands of years ago. Later, Dot painting – whether on boulders, in caves, or on sand – involved four main paint colours: yellow (sun), brown (soil), red (desert sand), and white (clouds and sky). Legends and dreams have all been depicted. Aerial-view paintings of the desert, including bird’s- eye “maps” of animal tracks, or “rock holes” (where water may be found in the dryest places) remain standard subject matter, even today.
. . . . .
