Dating 50 millennia before the arrival of First Fleet, the Aboriginal people have flourished in unity with the red soil, flowing rivers, and the ethereal connection of the Dreamtime. Ostracised by a society of foreign invaders, the true first Australians were revoked of land titles, stripped of basic rights, robbed of a vivid culture culminated over thousands of generations. Arising during times of persecution, extradition, and discrimination, Aboriginal poets have expressed their people’s plea, during their darkest hours in Australian History. Such a poet was Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a distinguished Aboriginal Australian poet who utilised poetry as a torch, to enlighten society of the Aboriginal experience.
Nowadays, this wilted torch has recast new fires, modern era poets; shining a light above a marginalised people, unveiling their deep history, interconnection to the land, and their experiences before and after the invasion, and inevitable colonisation of Australia.
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The poem achieves this binary through the juxtaposition of themes, in an AB rhyme scheme. The first stanza enunciates the Aboriginal people’s belief that God created Earth as a canvas, a sanctuary made for all races to flourish. This theme then demonizes the British settlers by defining them as godless men, people who defiled the Aboriginal people’s liberty, by establishing barriers and bans; figuratively and literary. The figurative barriers developed encompass the era of extreme racism, which ceased only after the 1967 referendum. The literal barriers created would summarise the once credited doctrine of terra nullius, and the denial of basic rights in society, to the original custodians of
Today, I will be telling my view on Australian texts. I will be analysing the text “The Exotic Rissole” by Tanveer Ahmed.
H - Poetry and song have had a major impact in portraying how Australians are represented in a variety of ways, depending on their background, experience and the time period in which they lived. I –Australians view themselves as being a welcoming community and acknowledging their past. However, non-Australians stereotypically see Australians as rowdy and known for enjoying a “shrimp on the barbie”. This shows that Australians have been represented in many different ways.
Reynolds, H. (1990). With The White People: The crucial role of Aborigines in the exploration and development of Australia. Australia: Penguin Books
Wendy Rose’s poetry portfolio has a wide spectrum. Her personal identity poems and, more broadly, poems about native identity (some about tribes which, ironically, she has no direct connection to) are all works that reflect the journey many natives are on to discover who they are and their place in the world. Her quest to return to her Hopi ancestral roots in her personal poems, while sharing and understanding identity from native tribes far different from her own, are encapsulated in a selection of three poems: “Oh Father”, “Truganinny”, and “Throat Song: The Whirling Earth.” “Oh Father” is a reflection on meeting with her estranged father, a significant missing link to her Hopi ancestry. “Truganinny” and “Throat-Song” are native identity poems that discuss, respectively, the effects of stolen culture from a Tasmanian perspective and the importance of Inuit cultural identity.
In 1951 Arthur visited Central Australia; here he saw the predicament of the Aborigines for the first time. He was astounded by the place these people called ‘home’. This trip moved him greatly and his critically renowned Bride Series he was to construct in years to follow was inspired by his experience with the Aborigines. (Insert pic of Aborigines the 1950’s)
Poetry is beautifully written text that can provide a wide view on a topic and helps to illustrate the beliefs and values of society; poetry is often a representation of Australian identity. Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet of Last of his Tribe and The Past has portrayed examples of Australian identity and a strong emotional portrayal of the Indigenous displacement and mistreatment in each of these poems. Clearly, these poems provide an insight into their adversity.
Land is used to describe the major historical conflict when settling into Australia; however, the Indigenous Australians were not acknowledged for their belonging on the land before. This part of history is represented through the concept of the pioneers being old trees, “surviving contact with Australian Aboriginal peoples” (McGennisken, 2010, p. 40). This statement acts as a negative connotation for the Aboriginals while continuing to demonstrate the perseverance and stoicism of the pioneers. This reference to the past is a prime example of the use of a grand narrative because it is excluding certain parts of history with the intentions to make a particular culture, in this case the pioneers, have a better reputation and positive thoughts about their cultures
She reminds that regardless of how hard the try “like dust” she will rise against their oppression and discrimination. In contrast Noonuccal through her imagery, introduces the last who “remained of their tribe. ” The group appeared alliteratively “semi-naked”, “subdued” and “silent” because they had been displaced and disrespected by their fellow white Australians. Rather than challenge them like Angelou, Noonuccal’s narrator reminds them that the Indigenous people are the original custodians of the land because they “belong(ed)” there and were “the old ways”; ways that white settlement has deemed unworthy of preserving. Angelou’s narrator continues to rhetorically question whether white man wishes to “see (her) broken” or with “bow(ed) head and lower(ed) her eyes?”
This poem expresses Mackellar’s deep passion and love for “her” country without touching on racial issues, rights or custodianship of the land. Australian born and resisting the identification of her British heritage, Mackellar patriotically declares Australia her own by rejecting the beauty of the British landscape through contrasting it with the romantic ideal of her "sunburnt" country. Mackellar presents to the readers the values and attitudes of a newly federated white Australia with her romanticisation of the Australian landscape.
A Comparison of Civilization by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Beds Are Burning by Peter Garrett In the Australian culture, there have been many debates about the rightful ownership of Australian land and about whether the Aborigines have the right to retain the land taken from them. Further more, indigenous writers have expressed anger and protest towards the loss of their culture to white civilization. Peter Garrett and Oodgeroo Noonuccal are two artists who seek to raise the issues of the native land title and the oppression of Australian Aborigines. "Civilization" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal is a poem, which comments on the effects of white civilization on Aboriginal people and "Beds are Burning" by Peter Garrett comments on the issue of native land title. Throughout the two texts, various poetic techniques such as imagery, irony, tone and point of view, as well as poetic form are used to express deeply held views about the values and issues raised.
Paterson’s application of imagery in Pioneers relies mostly on his descriptions of the Australian landscape. He refers to the “trackless bush in heat and storm and drought”, the “tangled scrub” and “forests grim”. Herein, Paterson paints a picture of the suffocating, almost intolerable circumstances of an Australian pioneer’s routine. So, by really sticking these conditions to us as readers, he thereby underpins and glorifies the tireless diligence of Australia’s colonisers – cementing and justifying his refusal to change. This is extended in his description of the pioneers as figurative “sons of field and flock.”
“He might see the splinter of a canoe, fragile as a dead leaf against the dazzle of the sun on the water” this quote recalls the idea of the evasiveness and the facilitation of nature. Aborigines were everywhere but they imperceptible they could be recognized and distinguished with difficulty. It was almost impossible to approach them. The comparison with the dead leaf remarks their mimesis with nature. As they not only benefit from it but also imitate it. It seemed as if the only authority they respected was
Through the poem ‘No More Boomerang’, Noonuccal reflects the capitalist lifestyle of modern Australia and it’s obvious conflicting interests with Indigenous Australians. Alliteration is used to provide emphasis towards the vast differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous culture and how cultural destruction caused by forced capitalistic lifestyle changes of the Indigenous Australians has affected their wellbeing.
In the 1960s, the Aborigines were on their way to extinction. At that crucial moment in the history of Aboriginal people their literature which until then had been oral and graphic appeared principally in written form. As Aboriginal writers adopted strategies to recover their past and document their history and traditions a new era in which their object was to look into their cultural depth, define an identity which the Aboriginal groups could share and educate the Australian community at large.
According to Lucille Clifton “Poetry is a matter of life not just a matter of language” (Clifton). Many Australians experienced hardships during the settlement of white Europeans. They were thought to be inferior and were forced to adopted white ways. All Indigenous Australians suffered loss of culture during this time. Oodgeroo Noonuccal is an Indigenous poet who expressed this through her poems before her death in 1993. The poem “We Are Going” expresses life as an Indigenous Australian as they slowly began to lose their culture.