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The Dispossessed
Peace was yours, Australian man, with tribal laws you made,
Till white colonials stole your peace with rape and murder raid;
They shot and poisoned and enslaved until, a scattered few,
Only a remnant now remain, and the heart dies in you.
The white man claimed your hunting grounds, and you could not remain,
They made you work as menials for greedy private gain;
Your tribes are broken vagrants now wherever whites abide,
And justice of the white man means justice to you denied.
They brought you Bibles and disease, the liquor and the gun:
With Christian culture such as these the white command was won.
A dying race you linger on, degraded and oppressed,
Outcasts in your own native land, you are the dispossessed.
When churches mean a way of life, as Christians proudly claim,
And when hypocrisy is scorned and hate is counted shame,
Then only shall intolerance die and old injustice cease,
And white and dark as brothers find equality and peace.
But oh, so long the wait has been, so slow the justice due,
Courage decays for want of hope, and the heart dies in you.
Noonuccal entered a new phase of her career where she assumed the role of educator, cultural guardian and ambassador for her people. She established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Centre at Moongalba, near Amity Point on Stradbroke Island. The Centre became an important venue for visiting Aboriginal students from around the country. Walker also traveled widely in the 1970s, going on lecture tours around Australia and overseas, living through a hijacking on a return flight from Nigeria in 1974.
In 1988, as a protest against continuing Aboriginal disadvantage during the Bicentennial Celebration of White Australia she adopted the Noonuccal tribal name Oodgeroo (meaning “paperbark”).
It was in 1993 when Oodgeroo Noonuccal passed away aged 72, leaving a lasting legacy through beautiful poetry and establishing her reputation as one of the pioneers of Aboriginal rights through text.
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Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska
born on 3rd November 1920
North Stradbroke Island
Oodgeroo won several literary awards, including the Mary Gilmore Medal (1970), the Jessie Litchfield Award (1975), and the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Award.
In 1979, she was awarded the Sixth Annual Oscar at the Micheaux Awards Ceremony, hosted by the US Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in the same year received the International Acting Award for the film Shadow Sisters.
She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1970, returning it in 1987 to protest the Australian Bicentenary celebrations, and to make a political statement at the condition of her people.
Kathleen Ruska was born in 1920 to Ted and Lucy Ruska on Stradbroke Island. Her father belonged to the local Noonuccal people, the traditional inhabitants of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island). At age 13 she left the island for Brisbane to work as a domestic servant, despite being paid poorly due to Aboriginal mistreatment at the time.
In 1941 she enlisted in the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), earning promotion to corporal. A serious ear infection made her invalid and she was discharged in 1943.
In 1942, she married Bruce Raymond Walker, a member of the Gugingin (Logan) people and a childhood friend. They later had 1 child; Dennis in 1946. The couple split but she also had another son with a different man who she named Vivian.
By the late 1950s she had joined the Brisbane arm of the Realist Writer’s Group, and some of her earliest poems appeared in the group’s magazine, Realist Writer. In 1963, encouraged by friends she submitted a manuscript collection of poems to Brisbane publisher Jacaranda Press. The collection was later published in 1964 as We Are Going. It sold ten thousand copies and making her the best-selling Australian poet since C. J. Dennis. She was also the first ever Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse.
She then published The Dawn is at Hand in 1966 and later My People: A Kath Walker Collection in 1970.
The 1960s was a particularly interesting era for Noonuccal as it was this period she really emerged as a political activist. She became Queensland state secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI).
She was a key figure in the campaign for the reform of the Australian constitution to allow Aboriginal people full citizenship, lobbying Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1965, and his successor Harold Holt in 1966.
After her first published book, many people saw her work as propaganda as much of her work was activist related. She embraced this tag and made it her passion.
Oodgeroo embraced the idea of her poetry as propaganda, and described her own style as "sloganistic, civil-writerish, plain and simple". She wanted to convey pride in her Aboriginality to the broadest possible audience, and to popularise equality and Aboriginal rights through her writing.
Poetry
The Past (1970)
Municipal Gum (1960)
"A Song of Hope" (1960)
We are Going: Poems (1964)
The Dawn is at Hand: Poems (1966)
My People: A Kath Walker collection (1970)
No more boomerang (1985)
Kath Walker in China (1988)
The Colour Bar (1990)
Oodgeroo (1994)
Let Us Not Be Bitter (1990)
White Australia (1970)
All One Race (1970)
Freedom (unknown)
The Unhappy Race (1989)
Then and Now (1970)
For children
Stradbroke Dreamtime (1972)
Father Sky and Mother Earth (1981)
Little Fella (1986)
The Rainbow Serpent (1988)
Non fiction
Towards a Global Village in the Southern Hemisphere (1989)
The Spirit of Australia (1989)
Australian Legends And Landscapes (1990)
Australia's Unwritten History: More legends of our land (1992)
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Son of Mine- by Oodgeroo Noonuccal (The Dawn is at Hand)
My son, your troubled eyes search mine,
Puzzled and hurt by colour line.
Your black skin as soft as velvet shine;
What can I tell you, son of mine?
I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind,
I could tell you of crimes that shame mankind,
Of brutal wrong and deeds malign,
Of rape and murder, son of mine;
But I'll tell you instead of brave and fine
When lives of black and white entwine,
And men in brotherhood combine--
This would I tell you, son of mine.
Poetry
Politics
Aboriginal Rights
Acting
Writing
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Source: The Red Room Company
Time 3.02