Introduction

Poems seldom need an introduction. Generally they crystallise the imagery and emotion in a web of sensual nuances linking a common human universality. However, when there is a cultural, social, political differing, there arises a need to know the context in which the poems are birthed to give their rawness, their strength. Unlike European poets or white Australian poets, Aboriginal poets sing not of pastoral lays, not of cavorting clouds, fallow deer, new-mown hay, but of blood and tears and pain, of children dying in their tender years while doctors, nurses (white of course) look on, or turn the mothers away, back to a lifetime of victimisation and onslaught by a whole nation of racists.

            The Blackside and other poems can be described as verbal portraits of victims, of patriots, of liberationists shouting their injury, their anger, their determination into the winds of time, knowing, glowing in the knowledge that time is on their side. Each poem had as its starting point, its inspiration, the actual comment or the condition of a speaker; each poem had its beginning from a member of the Aboriginal people and these poems are a testimony to time, a people's fortitude and determination to endure and let the story of that endurance live on through their children.

            White Australia was colonised by the British. 'Discovered' in 1770 by Captain James Cook who, unable to foist trinkets upon Aboriginal People and claim the acceptance thereof as 'payment' or 'agreement', unable to solicit a welcome, declared  the land 'terra nullius' (wasteland, unoccupied). The 'kindly' Governor Phillip, in 1788, establishing the first convict colony, was requested by British authority to converse with and 'seek the affections of the natives'. The end result was Phillip's direction to Tench, his lieutenant, to 'instil in them a terror'. He ordered the lieutenant to take forty Aboriginal heads and hang them on spikes around the settlement area.

            Aboriginals were shot and poisoned. Our numbers were decimated by slaughter, strychnine and introduced diseases, until ultimately we were forced at gunpoint and in chains into areas now called 'Aboriginal reserves' and 'missions'. In fact, they are refugee camps, concentration camps where, two hundred years later, most of us live today.

            Australia is the only former British colony NOT to have entered into a land rights treaty with its Indigenous people. It is clear to see that white Australia's 'sovereignty' was established upon a lie of terra nullius, by racial murder and land theft. In 1988, while Australia 'celebrated' its two hundred years of occupation of these our lands, the United nations publicly, internationally, indicted Australia for violations of human rights against Blacks in this country. White Australia has now been condemned as a fellow violator, a fellow traveller with white South Africa.

            Yes, we have been denied our human rights for two hundred years. Two hundred years of resisting the hatred, the tyranny, the violation of our human rights, land theft, murder. Most of our people live well below the poverty level, denied even the most basic elements of life such as clean drinking water, adequate food, medicine, shelter. In short, denied the basic requirements for life that are commonly available for the whiteman's herd of cattle. As we go into the third century of violation of human rights, we seek a Sovereign Treaty recognising our prior possession of this land, our right to life, our right to recognition as a People, our right to be protected under international covenants governing a treaty and the human rights conventions.

            Maybe these poems will show you a truer picture of our position and maybe they will link our humanity with yours.

© Kevin Gilbert