predation of the nation

[Koori G]

The Predation of the nation

Long time back
Before life came to land
Horizon to horizon
Red earth spanned
Creator spirit looked around
And into earth
Spirits bound
Ancestor spirits
Who made all things
Even made us human beings
Rainbow serpent
Winding thru the ground
Made mountains
Thru which rivers wound
The rocks and trees
The rain the breeze
The morning sun
Life breathed into all
All were one
Some creatures swam
Some, they flew
Or crawled, slid, walked or hopped
From all these things the people grew
And the Dreaming never stopped

Eons passed over the lands
Balance kept with ancient hands

From the sea the white ghosts came
To cast their piercing look
To claim the land in Britain’s name
When upon our land stood one, James Cook
This ‘noble savage’, native man
Tho’ greeted with a friendly hand
They called it ‘terra Nullius’ land
‘No people’ here before they came
No people….
Only ‘fauna’ grew
Social Darwinism was the game
That’s what they said..
Not what they knew
They’d said no people lived here before
None at all it seems
From one coast to the furthest shore
Just a land of ancient dreams
Why then, start a war
And for what was all the killing for


Kicking and screaming
They dragged this nation
Into modern, harsh reality
‘European civilisation’
And the gifts they offered to their hosts?
Kill them off, breed them out
Turn the rest all into ghosts

For the land
A sudden, sad realisation
A painful cancer
‘Euro-civilisation’
Poisoned earth
Poisoned rivers
Families, trees destroyed
All by these well meaning
Suffering givers
And the cruel means that they employed

Many eons had passed with balance kept
Now, after just a few short years
The nation suffered so, it wept
It wept for spirits lost forever
For faded dreams and echoes
We banded ever closer together
For a nation in its death throes
Them people,
Eora, been here 70,000 years
In all that time…
Hardly left a mark
Those people came..
The Ghosts been here for just 200 years
The marks, the scars are stark

70,000 years of Dreaming interrupted
For 200 years
Of pain
Of tears
And a magnificent culture corrupted
It seems to me
In all the countries
All around the world
Quite blatantly
Wherever the ‘colonisation’ flags unfurled
That suffering and genocide occurred
In the name of their Queen
Their God
Their word


Settlement intent
Our nations ‘colonisation’
It appears the ‘settlers’ really meant
Parasites upon our nation
Premeditation
Colonisation
Assimilation
Initiation
Integration
Organisation
Intimidation
Degradation
Perpetration
Predation of a pristine nation
Segregation
Separation
Humiliation
Depravation
Domination
Disintegration
Annihilation
Explanation
Obligation
Total miscalculation
What about some mediation
What about reconciliation
Simple equation
Multicultural nation
How does that work
For the koori nation
First they need reconciliation
A little compassion
A sorry word
For the first refugees
From our nation

As the multicultural nation
Gathers steam to leave the station
Along a twisted, winding track
Going forward, never back
No one knows the final destination of the ride
So, I wonder
Is there a station way outback
For the kooris that were lost along the track
Whose culture they took
And Dreaming interrupted
And whose genocide
They tried so hard to hide
No offer of reconciliation,
No treaty
No sorry words or compensation
Just took the lot
‘Terra Nullius’ see?
The former, (or new form)
‘White Australia’ policy

Now a ‘truly’ multicultural nation
We’re all Aussies aren’t we mate?
Unless they change their minds with trepidation
And shut the bloody gate!
We are the ‘ Lucky Country’
A land of mateship and democracy
But without meaning to sound scurrilous
There’s still that echo of ‘ Terra Nullius’’;

And what about those detention centres
Instead of trees
They use wire fences
And in the desert
Families are forced to linger
Just like that mob near Maralinga
Dying slowly from irradiation
In our ‘multicultural nation’
At least they don’t have fences
Like them detention centres
Just fences for the rabbit
And the dingo
Anyway, it’s ‘no worries mate’
You’re most welcome here
Especially if you know the local lingo
And can wait…

It’s a truly multicultural nation
It just causes such frustration
Thinking about the refugees
And indigenous population
And the predation of our nation
Of 70,000 years of Dreamtime interrupted
For 200 years
Of pain
Of tears
And a magnificent culture corrupted
My tears drip softly
over the canvas painting
my sorrow spills freely
onto the velvet floor.
The paints run together,
blurring the picture;
of what will be no more

Koori G

[Sol]

Intense!

[Jennifer Surdam]

That's really good, and I love the visual I get from it. I wanted to read MORE!
Hugs and BB,
jen :)