Wild Fridays #27: Thought Provokers

Australian Indigenous Voices

These lives matter too!

White Australians, and our institutions, have never sufficiently respected that simple fact. Recently, on our current affairs TV program Q&A, the Indigenous actor, comedian and writer Nakkiah Lui was asked what her people want from we others. Her answer was clear, direct and unequivocal: 'Stop killing us!'

We have been killing the Indigenous Australians since Britain first invaded. There were many horrendous massacres, unbearable to contemplate, by both Government officials and private citizens. Now we have other ways.

There was at one time an official policy of genocide, though it wasn't officially called that. It was thought that if children of mixed race were removed from their families and adopted into the white community, they would become 'assimilated' – and that over time they would marry into the white community and their Aboriginality would be bred out of them (!) The removals of those children were carried out forcibly. Meanwhile it was expected that the rest of the Original population would gradually die out.

And why would they not die out? Many were denied access to the homelands they belonged to. Many, employed as workers, were denied their due wages. They were disadvantaged in the educational system, in the job market, in housing, in access to hospitals and medical care.... Such things may not have been written into Government policy but it is hard not to think that those in power hoped they would hasten the disappearance of the race.

Well, guess what? The Indigenous people are still here, proudly so, and they are speaking up.

It's time to listen! They could have taught their colonisers a great deal if anyone had had the intelligence to ask for their expertise in land management, for instance. Had those in power sought the great wasted resource of Aboriginal wisdom, we might have had better water supplies. We might have avoided last Summer's disastrous fires. We still aren't listening properly! But some of us have become aware of the necessity.

Today I'm sharing with you the words of two very articulate writers, on aspects of the Indigenous experience here.

The Stolen

We are storytellers here, as well as poets. And I have a story to share with you – the story of poet Ali Cobby Eckermann. She was one of the stolen generations of Aboriginal children separated from their families. In 2017 Eckermann won Yale University’s annual Windham-Campbell Prize for excellence in writing, awarded for her poetry. Her personal story was aired when she went to America to accept her prize. You can read the facts of that story here, interspersed with lines from her poetry about the experience. Even better, click on ‘Listen to the story’ at the top of the page. It’s a brief account, but powerfully moving.

You can go and do it now, and then come back here. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

When you have more time, there are wonderful poetry readings and talks on YouTube. You can find them all gathered together here at Red Room Poetry, which recorded them for students and teachers. Several of her poems are now on the curriculum for HSC (Higher School Certificate) students. These recordings are in connection with that. She’s eloquent, clear and engaging. Among the things she speaks of are the importance of story in understanding each other, the value of the natural world to poets, and her dream of an Australia where the Aboriginal and white races live in friendship and unity.

Her award-winning book Inside My Mother (recipient, also, of the New South Wales Premier's prize for poetry in 2013) was published by Giramondo Publishing. It’s also available from Booktopia, Google Play, Amazon and Kobo.

Her earlier work has won a number of other awards. She is the author of two verse novels, Ruby Moonlight and His Father's Eyes; a memoir, Too Afraid to Cry; and an earlier book of poetry, Love Dreaming (2012). Some of these seem to be unavailable. Others can be obtained from Booktopia or Amazon.

You can also read some of her poems on PoemHunter. Such as this masterpiece of understatement (from Love Dreaming):

Wild Flowers

Mallets pound fence posts
in tune with the rifles
to mask massacre sites
Cattle will graze
sheep hooves will scatter
children's bones
Wildflowers will not grow
where the bone powder
lies

When facts are so brutal in themselves, there is no need to sensationalise.

A great way to experience her poetry is on those Youtube videos I mentioned earlier.


In Custody

Do you remember Jasmine Logan, the young poet and rising star I met at local poetry readings? I featured her at Poets United last year – here, if you'd like to refresh your memory. I think she writes and reads with astonishing maturity. (She will be turning 14 later this year.)

This photo is from Poets Out Loud last October. Jasmine takes the stage, as host Sarah Temporal readies the mic.

The Poets Out Loud readings have been happening on Zoom this year. Jasmine and I have both attended, and have sometimes read, but for personal catch-ups we chat occasionally on Messenger. (A passion for poetry bridges any age gap.) I asked her if she would let me have one of her poems for this current topic, and she offered to write a new one. How exciting is that – a new poem, commissioned and created especially for us! While making wider points, this piece also has specific reference to the issue of Aboriginals in custody.

Wikipedia says:

Indigenous Australians are both convicted of crimes and imprisoned at a disproportionately high rate in Australia, as well as being over-represented as victims of crime. The issue is a complex one, to which federal and state governments as well as Indigenous groups have responded with various analyses and numerous programs and measures. As of September 2019, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners represented 28% of the total adult prisoner population, while accounting for 3.3% of the general population.

Even more scandalous is the disproportionately high incidence of Aboriginal deaths in custody. A recent article in Vogue Australia gives details – and also notes the even higher rate of detention for Aboriginal women and children. We now know the shocking truth that some of these juvenile prisoners have been subjected to actual torture behind closed doors. And I don't mean only in the past! Our systems of authority are no more civilised now than they ever were. (It is not the original inhabitants of this country who merit the label 'savages'.)

Here's Jasmine's Black Lives Matter Poem. 

I asked her to read it for us on Soundcloud. Please click the link to hear how beautifully she does so.

And this is the text:

Life is precious Life is sometimes robbed Life is not fair Life is shared The justice system is not your life, however it
can take your life All the black lives that were taken, they did not
have a white flag to surrender to express that
their lives were soon to be over They were mistaken of doing wrong when they
were the ones being wronged From the colour of our skin this diversity is
turning into a murder scene Racism will never be the description of our lives
Of our respect Of our future Of us If all lives matter, why is it mainly the black
lives being attacked? Why is it a plea of justice to the justice system? No matter how loud we talk, no matter how
many there are of us, no matter how young
some of us are, no matter many people we
educate We still aren’t listened By people with power By people with popularity By people with stubborn minds We are heard but not listened to We are being tortured but not falling We are different but not any less the same


You'll be aware that some people have countered 'Black Lives Matter' with 'All Lives Matter'. I have been given to understand that this was a slogan originally created by vegans and animal rights activists. Lately it has been coopted to try and diminish the assertion that Black Lives Matter. I love Jasmine's beautifully logical, stating-the-obvious riposte.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The posts of these last three weeks have only scratched the surface of this issue, and obviously there are other countries too where it needs addressing. I'm not going to continue with this theme here at this time, but neither do I want to just pay lip service and move on. I think we are all needed in keeping the momentum alive. Let’s keep on – as I know you in this community already are – thinking deeply, reading widely, and writing both thoughtfully and passionately in the service of change.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.

Wild Fridays #26: Thought Provokers

Maori Lives Matter Too

A comment from Kim in last Friday’s post made me realise that, while I know about racial inequalities in Australia from living here, and in America from the news, I was totally ignorant about the situation in our sister ‘Down Under’ country (just ‘across the ditch’ as we sometimes say) New Zealand. I am guessing that many of you in other countries may be similarly ignorant, and similarly interested in becoming more aware.

I sought some enlightenment from Marja, who participates here (her blog is A dutch corner in New Zealand); and also from a friend’s daughter who was brought up in New Zealand and now lives, works and raises her own children there. They guided me to the poems on racial issues which I’m sharing with you today – the words of Maori authors, who are obviously the best people from whom to learn their point of view.

I was blown away by this one, by Whiti Ihimaera (author of Whale Rider, which was made into a beautiful movie). What an amazing blend of sardonic humour and controlled ferocity!

Dinner with the Cannibal

Of course I should have realized, at dinner
That he would be a man of special tastes
His mordant wit and intellect proclaimed him bon vivant
I suppose I was bedazzled by it all
The chandelier, the red roses like stigmata
Too flattered by the invitation
To notice that the table was laid only for hors d'oeuvres

Read more…

Like Australia (and indeed the whole of America) New Zealand is a colonised country. When I asked my friend’s daughter what (if anything) the indigenous Maori people complain of from Pakeha (white) New Zealanders, she said:

"Māori" as a collective noun [coined by the Maori themselves] was invented to differentiate the indigenous people living in Aotearoa from the Europeans who arrived on their shores. They were and are a tribal people, with much difference between. I'm not sure it's possible therefore to say what Māori want or complain of. I certainly wouldn't feel entitled to do so.

But we can all speak about what Māori reasonably expected to happen following the promises made, misunderstood, and broken, in Te Tiriti o Waitangi - the Treaty of Waitangi. Which were multiple, in fact.

You can read more about the Treaty here.

It seems to me (albeit mine is still a fairly uneducated opinion) that the Cannibal poem addresses just such issues.

My friend’s daughter also told me:


Māori are disproportionately negatively represented in family violence, child poverty, infant mortality, suicide, health and education achievement statistics. Māori are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.

Such disproportion is a clear sign of inequality and disadvantage. Those things are expressed actively, but begin with attitude.

A poem by Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008) – described variously as ‘New Zealand’s most distinguished Maori poet writing English’ or 'New Zealand's pre-eminent Maori poet' – addresses attitude, laying it bare:


A Pakeha Friend tells a Maori Joke

I can’t explain why I can’t resist listening
to your fund of racist jokes. This one’s about the
Maoris, right? I ready myself for it; my eyes lit
up and creasing.

I mean, it’s got nothing whatever to do with
me, personally. Some other Maori is copping it, not
ME.
Your eyes begin to water. You are laughing long
before you come to the end of the joke. Well hell,
I can’t help myself either. There’s a nudging kind
of connivance when I join you in the laughing.

But I think – for me at such times, laughing
becomes the closest thing to crying; and it is begin-
ning to worry me just as if I’d caught clap or V.D.

Ever had clap, or V.D.? I say.
Nothin’ to it, old son, you say. You have to
cop it a few times before you can call yourself a man.
A few shots of penicillin, and you’re okay again.

I dunno. I want to walk away. Go tell your
racist jokes to someone else. You’re a heapa shit, man.
(Year of the Dog, 34).

 And finally, one about stereotypes, from a young slam poet, Sheldon Rua:  

 

Here is the text of his poem:

I am Māori
Wait, but I’m supposed to be a hori! Right?
Holes in my Warehouse shoes
Sleeves covered in the fact that I don’t have tissues

Or Can’t afford tissues.
I’m supposed to be illiterate right?
Uneducated gangster always looking for a fight
I aspire to be nothing more than a high school
dropout
Because I
Was never going to university
Or maybe I’m just too proud
To admit that I need help
To get to university
Or to graduation
Or to year 13
Or my next English class
And apparently my flaws in education is a
“home thing”
So when I don’t achieve it’s a “home thing”
When I play up in class it’s a “home thing”
When I go to school without food and starve
It’s a “home thing”

But a house is not a home
And unfortunately I occupy a house
It’s not even a home
But Dad’s there… drunk
And Mum’s stoned
The only thing in my cupboard is dust but you
still tell me to cook the man some eggs
“Don’t moan or I’ll give you something to
moan about”

Ehara au I te rangatahi Māori
Rite ki ratou nanakia ana

So yeah, I am a Māori
But I am unfamiliar to hollow homes
I am unfamiliar to dusty cupboards and empty
stomachs
Unfamiliar to the pain which stains the eyes of
my people like paint
Black, and blue
Which stains the minds of my people into thinking that
Living like this is something we choose

These stains may remain but

They don’t have to

My tama I’m talking to you
These stains may remain but they never, ever,
have to
My wahine I am talking to you
And I hope this gets through

You can resent me now
Say that I don’t know what the hell I am talking
about
Because of where I live and what I do
And maybe I haven’t experienced life like you
And maybe your shoes are a bit too big for me

But in reality
I’m a Māori
The same as you
And yeah I realise this reality is of some not all
But regardless of your reality
People will still throw in the same box as the
Māori next door

Regardless of your reality
You can go from broken bones to broken boxes
You can go from broken homes to broken
stereotypes

I have proof
I still see the snotty nosed Māori girl in my
mother’s eyes
She lives just down the road
Only this time she looks grown
She learnt to handle her own
Whilst steering the handlebars of my life she helped build
Solid like stone
I put my mother on a pedestal
For showing me how to pedal through pitiful
points of view of my people
And as I cycle my way through cycles of cynicism
I’ve noticed
That stereotypes, they don’t change

But people do

Tangata Whenua I pray that is you

Amene

Translations: 

"Hori" is slang, a derogatory term for a person of Māori descent.

Ehara au I te rangatahi Māori     I'm not a Māori teenager
Rite ki ratou nanakia ana     They are just as cruel

tama     that's right

wahine      women

Tangata Whenua      People of the Land

Amene     Amen

I'm very grateful to both Marja and my friend's daughter for all the help.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors. The poem by Hone Tuwhare is available online from a legitimate source for free download, and the poem by Sheldon Rua has been widely disseminated on facebook, so I felt free to use them in their entirety.

Wild Fridays #25: Thought Provokers

You Are Who I Love 

You, selling roses out of a silver grocery 
   cart

You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees

You with cats in your voice in the
morning, feeding cats

You protecting the river   You are who I 
   love
delivering babies, nursing the sick

You with henna on your feet and a 
gold star in your nose

You taking your medicine, reading the 
magazines

You looking into the faces of young 
people as they pass, smiling and 
saying, Alright! which, they know it, 
means I see you, Family. I love you. 
Keep on. 

You dancing in the kitchen, on the 
sidewalk, in the subway waiting for 
the train because Stevie Wonder, 
Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe

You stirring the pot of beans, you, 
washing your father’s feet

You are who I love, you
reciting Darwish, then June

Feeding your heart, teaching your 
parents how to do The Dougie, 
counting to 10, reading your patients’ 
charts

You are who I love, changing 
policies, standing in line for water, 
stocking the food pantries, making a 
meal

You are who I love, writing letters, 
calling the senators, you who, with 
the seconds of your body (with 
your time here), arrive on buses, on 
trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the 
January streets against the cool and 
brutal offices, saying: YOUR 
CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK 
FOR ME

You are who I love, you struggling to 
see

You struggling to love or find a 
question

You better than me, you kinder and 
so blistering with anger, you are who 
I love, standing in the wind, 
salvaging the umbrellas, graduating 
from school, wearing holes in your 
shoes

You are who I love
weeping or touching the faces of the 
    weeping

You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the 
alphabet, for sound, singing toward 
us in the dream

You carrying your brother home
You noticing the butterflies

Sharing your water, sharing your 
potatoes and greens

You who did and did not survive
You who cleaned the kitchens
You who built the railroad tracks and 
   roads
You who replanted the trees, 
   listening to the work of squirrels 
   and birds, you are who I love
You whose blood was taken, whose 
   hands and lives were taken, with 
   or without your saying
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I 
   love.

You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with 
   the earth
You writing poems alongside 
   children

You cactus, water, sparrow, crow      
   You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage, making the 
   cobbler,

getting the blood drawn, sharing the 
difficult news, you always planting 
the marigolds, learning to walk 
wherever you are, learning to read 
wherever you are, you baking the 
bread, you come to me in dreams, 
you kissing the faces of your dead 
wherever you are, speaking to your 
children in your mother’s languages, 
tootsing the birds

You are who I love, behind the 
library desk, leaving who might kill 
you, crying with the love songs, 
polishing your shoes, lighting the 
candles, getting through the first day 
despite the whisperers sniping fail 
fail fail

You are who I love, you who beat and 
did not beat the odds, you who 
knows that any good thing you have 
is the result of someone else’s 
sacrifice, work, you who fights for 
reparations

You are who I love, you who stands 
at the courthouse with the sign that 
reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

You are who I love, singing Leonard 
Cohen to the snow, you with glitter 
on your face, wearing a kilt and 
violet lipstick

You are who I love, sighing in your 
sleep

You, playing drums in the 
procession, you feeding the chickens 
and humming as you hem the skirt, 
you sharpening the pencil, you 
writing the poem about the
loneliness of the astronaut

You wanting to listen, you trying to 
be so still

You are who I love, mothering the 
dogs, standing with horses

You in brightness and in darkness, 
throwing your head back as you 
laugh, kissing your hand

You carrying the berbere from the 
mill, and the jug of oil pressed from 
the olives of the trees you belong to

You studying stars, you are who I 
   love
braiding your child’s hair

You are who I love, crossing the 
desert and trying to cross the desert

You are who I love, working the 
shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,

bathing your children as you listen to 
the lecture, heating the kitchen with 
the oven, up early, up late

You are who I love, learning English, 
learning Spanish, drawing flowers on 
your hand with a ballpoint pen, 
taking the bus home

You are who I love, speaking plainly 
about your pain, sucking your teeth 
at the airport terminal television 
every time the politicians say 
something that offends your sense of 
decency, of thought, which is often

You are who I love, throwing your 
hands up in agony or disbelief, 
shaking your head, arguing back, out 
loud or inside of yourself, holding 
close your incredulity which, yes, 
too, I love    I love

your working heart, how each of its 
gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my 
own agony, building a forest there

How “Fuck you” becomes a love 
song

You are who I love, carrying the 
signs, packing the lunches, with the 
rain on your face

You at the edges and shores, in the 
rooms of quiet, in the rooms of 
shouting, in the airport terminal, at 
the bus depot saying “No!” and each 
of us looking out from the gorgeous 
unlikelihood of our lives at all, 
finding ourselves here, witnesses to 
each other’s tenderness, which, this 
moment, is fury, is rage, which, this 
moment, is another way of 
saying: You are who I love   You are 
who I love  You and you and you are 
who

 – Aracelis Girmay

I pass for white, and have no personal experience of race prejudice. My mother, who grew up in India, did experience it, and declared herself glad to have 'little fair children' (snowy blonde in fact) though it wasn't until much later I understood why. Myself, I always yearned for long black hair, flashing brown eyes, and a skin that didn't burn severely in the summer sun. 

In Australia, where her family migrated when she was 15, Mum also passed for wholly Caucasian. My beloved Nana probably didn't, but I don't know: she died when I was four. When a family of my beautiful, black-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned cousins came out here when I was seven, I thought to ask if perhaps we had any Indian blood (hoping) but Mum told me, 'Oh no, we have some Spanish.'

As an adult, I found out that many mixed-race Australian children with Indigenous heritage were told the same lie, meant to protect them from things which could befall them otherwise. I might have come in for a bit of name-calling at school if my Indian genes had been visible. My Indigenous friends were at risk of being stolen – i.e. separated forcibly from their families, their land and their culture, abused, and forced into servitude. Or, like black Americans, being hassled, arrested and assaulted by police because of the colour of their skin.

I've done some things in the cause of human rights, equality, diversity, anti-racism ... but the recent upsurge of protest around the world showed me I haven't done enough. How do I know I haven't done enough? Racism still exists; further, it is still entrenched in the power structures of my own country as well as others. WE haven't done enough – but it's for me to do what I can do. 

So what can I do at 80, and with five different reasons for being considered high risk for COVID-19? Not march in protests, obviously. I decided that what I can do is speak out, much more than I already have done. I decided never to lose or shirk an opportunity.

But should I do so from my platform at Poets and Storytellers United? Rather, shouldn't the team members, as a group, be blandly non-political here, regardless of our personal opinions? Heck no, I don't think we should be bland anything! Well, I certainly don't think we should ever get into party politics here (though of course we'll express ourselves freely as individuals); that would be inappropriate and divisive. But I do think Poets and Storytellers United may sometimes declare our stand on matters of principle.

Rosemary, Magaly, Sanaa, Rommy

Maybe you take it for granted that we stand for diversity and inclusiveness, and I hope you do. After all, when you come to think of it, it's fairly obvious that we must – it just so happens (quite unplanned when putting the team together) that we have visibly different racial backgrounds, as witness these profile pics. And it's surely apparent to everyone here  that this whole community of participating poets and storytellers is diverse in all manner of ways. Nevertheless, I think it's worth asserting our principles overtly too, once in a while. 

So I went looking for some anti-racist poetry to share with you now, when this topic is so much in the forefront of current affairs (even though many of us have been writing our own already) – something that speaks on behalf of those who know it personally by living it daily, and something to give the rest of us a deeper understanding. 

To my delight I found a whole lot at Academy of American Poets under the heading Black Lives Matter, prefaced by these words: 

As we grieve the loss of innocent lives and stand in solidarity with those calling for change, join us in reading and sharing poems addressing racial injustice, human rights, the right to protest, and imagining a more perfect union. Reflect, support, and act with these poems.

Some of the poems are gentle, some are enraged, some are bitter, some are defiant, some are satirical ... there's all kinds there, all excellent and moving. But when I came to this one, above, I couldn't go past it. It encompasses a history which I know a little of by reading about it, and which some of you know a great deal about because it is your history; and it emphasises our common humanity – that which is so often forgotten by the prejudiced. I don't want to apologise for it being a longish read, because I think every word counts. Every word opens my heart.

And then I found this next one too, and fell in love with it as well, and didn't want you to miss out on it. As you see from the title, it talks also of environmental issues. 

I Don't Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince’s
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

– Fatimah Asghar

It seems such a sweet, hopeful piece – then the last verse, particularly that final sentence, packs the quietest and most deadly punch. That nice, kind, comforting, deliberate lie, pulling the ground out from under.

You can find out more about these poets by clicking on their names. You can read more such poems by clicking on the link to 'Black Lives Matter', in the second half of this post.

(And yes – for those who noticed – there is double spacing between some verses of the first poem. It was a cow of a thing to transcribe, not at all straightforward, and a simple copy-and-paste didn't do it. I've adjusted the spacing laboriously three times; now I'm giving up.)

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.