Injustice which to whites you would never dare,

You whites with all the power and privilege

Who committed the crime of Acacia Ridge.

The Unhappy Race

The Myall speaks

White fellow, you are the unhappy race.

You alone have left nature and made civilised laws.

You have enslaved yourselves as you enslaved the horse and other wild things.

Why, white man?

Your police lock up your tribe in houses with bars,

We see poor women scrubbing floors of richer women.

Why, white man, why?

You laugh at ‘poor blackfellow’, you say we must be like you.

You say we must leave the old freedom and leisure,

We must be civilised and work for you.

Why, white fellow?

Leave us alone, we don't want your collars and ties,

We don't need your routines and compulsions.

We want the old freedom and joy that all things have but you,

Poor white man of the unhappy race.

Corroboree

Hot day dies, cook time comes.

Now between the sunset and the sleep-time

Time of playabout.

The hunters paint black bodies by firelight with designs of meaning

To dance corroboree.

Now didgeridoo compels with haunting drone eager feet to stamp,

Click-sticks click in rhythm to swaying bodies

Dancing corroboree.

Like spirit things in from the great surrounding dark

Ghost-gums dimly seen stand at the edge of light

Watching corroboree.

Eerie the scene in leaping firelight,

Eerie the sounds in that wild setting,

As naked dancers weave stories of the tribe

Into corroboree.

Stone Age

White man, only time is between us.

Once in the time long gone you lived in caves,

You used stone axe, you clothed yourself in skins,

You too feared the dark, fled the unknown.

Go back, remember your own Alcheringa

When lightning still was magic and you hid

From terrible thunder rolling in the sky.

White superior race, only time is between us –

As some are grown up and others yet children.

We are the last of the Stone Age tribes,

Waiting for time to help us

As time helped you.

Assimilation – No!

Pour your pitcher of wine into the wide river

And where is your wine? There is only the river.

Must the genius of an old race die

That the race might live?

We who would be one with you, one people,

We must surrender now much that we love,

The old freedoms for new musts,

Your world for ours,

But a core is left that we must keep always.

Change and compel, slash us into shape,

But not our roots deep in the soil of old.

We are different hearts and minds

In a different body. Do not ask of us

To be deserters, to disown our mother,

To change the unchangeable.

The gum cannot be trained into an oak.

Something is gone, something surrendered, still

We will go forward and learn.

Not swamped and lost, watered away, but keeping

Our own identity, our price of race.

Pour your pitcher of wine into the wide river