Analysis Of The Past By Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Oodgeroo Noonuccal was an Australian poet, activist, artist and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights. Her poems ‘We are going’ and ‘Let us not be bitter’ conveys the loss of the Indigenous culture and how much they suffered because of this. Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s perspective on Aboriginal rights is impassioned, concern and worry for the loss of her family and home. She expresses these emotions using imagery, poetic structures and poetic techniques, such as inclusive language and symbolism, to strongly represent what she is feeling and how much the Indigenous people have suffered through.

This narrative text is based off the film The Sapphires set in Australia in the 1960s. In The Sapphires we see a flashback of Kay’s childhood and how she is part of the Stolen Generation. I will use this storyline as the starting point for my diary entries. The film gave me background knowledge on Stolen Generation and their experiences they faced. However, I need to know extra information so I will do further research about the Stolen Generation, in order to give an accurate description of their experiences. This narrative is targeted towards everyone. It is designed to inform them about the Stolen Generation and how they changed when forcibly moved to an Aborigines White Institution. This piece of text will be written in a diary entry form. I will use informal and conversational language. I will also use descriptive language when describing objects and sceneries throughout the text.

Cultural conflict is something that we will experience, sooner or later in our everyday lives. Both LFA and GUAIA depict characters that find their cultural backgrounds hard to cope with, but they each draw attention to different reasons for these difficulties. In the novel, “Looking For Alibrandi”, written by Melina Machetta and the anthology, Growing Up Asian in Australia edited by Alice Pung, we perceive similar reasons why the characters find their heritage subjugating within the broader Australian context. The protagonist of ‘Looking for Alibrandi’, Josie discovers her true identity and breaks free from her mother and grandmothers cultural boundaries, guidelines and strict expectations. The collection of short stories in ‘Growing up Asian in Australia’ depict characters that are facing cultural conflict due to having an ethnicity that diverges from the majority. Both of these iconic texts

A holistic and contextual understanding of indigenous communities in Australia alters the nature of research and the perception of history. Clint Bracknell’s article critiques historical research on the arts of Noongar Aboriginal peoples, and argues how song is not only an integral part of their identity but that it is through the insight of this form of communication that researchers comprehend how Noongar have adopted Western traditions but still remained close to their heritage. As a descendant from Noongar, situated in south-west of Australia, he is closely attached to this research, so it is understandable why his purpose is to encourage investigation into the archival records of song from Noongar peoples as to revitalise an indigenous

By addressing the unspeakable horrors committed against Indigenous Australians and pointing out that Australians today “[benefit] from violence towards Indigenous Australians” (Weaver-Hightower 137), Grenville admits the Australian collective guilt in her novel. According to Weaver-Hightower, “reading the novel could act as an apology” since the expression of collective guilt serves “as a sort of cleansing ritual for readers who identify with characters and experience catharsis” (138). As a consequence, Grenville`s novel can serve as a means for admitting and managing postcolonial, collective guilt and offering an apology. However, as Weaver-Hightower recognizes, The Secret River “presents an ambivalent view of Non-Indigenous Australian collective guilt, admitting it in places and defending against it in others by showing the Non-Indigenous settler as a victim and distinguishing between 'bad' and 'good' colonizers” (143). As a result, the reader is left with an ambivalent feeling about apology and excuse and has to decide individually which side predominates for him.

A poet has a crucial role to extract information from their life experiences and produce the audience with valuable relevance regarding their purpose by doing so.   Since the 1960’s Aboriginal writers have become a more prominent aspect of society, Oodgeroo Noonuccal is known to be an exceptional representation of this statement. Noonuccal was a descendant of the Noonuccal people of Minjerribah. Her parents significantly influenced her career as a political activist as her mother, Lucy McCulloch, was a victim of the stolen generation and her father, Ted Ruska, was a foreman of Indigenous Australian labourers employed by the Queensland Government. Throughout her youth, she was always enthused by her parents and directed to protest her rights.

Over the years, our Australian Indigenous people have been subjected to immense anguish, which was brought to them by the Western Culture. For many of them, reconnecting with their ancestors through their traditional spiritualties is allowing their sufferings to heal. Kate Jones examines the work of Miriam Rose, a well known artist and advocate for the Education of Indigenous Youth who believes it cannot stop there, we must educate our young, and she is constantly striving to empower
Indigenous youth through education, art, culture and opportunity.

After studying the unit “Stolen Voices”, I have come to believe that the language arts hold significant authority in controlling how readers respond to ideas and messages underlying within Indigenous texts as well as how they are presented. I also believe that as readers we should try to uncover the hidden values the author has left in their composition as well as make an attempt to understand and connect with them. “Stand up” directed by Rachel Perkins is an empowering episode from the Redfern Now series. This episode follows the journey of an Aboriginal youth who refuses to “stand up” for the Australian national anthem and is torn apart between his father’s principles and school traditions. Whereas, Oodgeroo’s touching autobiographical story

The Aborigines’ forefathers left cave paintings and markings that describe ‘the dreams’ that connect them to their ancestors and their ways of life, which they treasure as sacred places. These sacred places are marked by pieces of their culture that are and were important to them, such as the animals that hunt and fish for as well as what one would consider ‘history’ of their people. They mark the

POEM: The following poet is written by a renowned Aboriginal poet, Oogeroo Noonuccal, also known by her English name, Kath Walker. ‘No More Boomerang’ highlights the destructive changes forced upon the Aboriginal people by white society and the ways in which Aboriginal culture and traditions have evanesced.

Within the stories “Compatriots” by Emma Lee Warrior and “Traplines” by Eden Robinson, it is shown through further examination that both stories share similar concepts. Both stories demonstrate prominent examples of loss of Aboriginal culture, identity, and the use of stereotypes. Loss of Aboriginal Culture is shown throughout both stories, showing the lack of respect and love the characters in Compatriots and Traplines go through. In Compatriots, identity is a major factor the characters within the story deal with, as it touches about the question: What does it mean to be a true Aboriginal? In Traplines, the struggle to find one’s identity is shown throughout the main character Will, and his journey, as he finds it difficult to figure out where he belongs.

For my first passport assignment for anthropology, my friend and I visited the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Museum (SMOCA). They had just revamped the place to represent woman artists from Aboriginal Australia. The exhibit was called “Marking the Infinite”. There were nine female artists in the exhibition who gave a glimpse into the diverse contemporary art practice of Aboriginal Australia. Their names are Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angela Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. They use their art to empower their all-around respective communities and speak to universal contemporary themes. From all over different areas of Australia,

As more and more Australians become interested in texts created by Indigenous Australians, they are influenced by the authors’ voices and become more aware of the issues that Indigenous Australians face today. Two such texts are BabaKiueria, a mockumentary by Don Featherstone and My Best Friend’s White, a poem by Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The authors explore issues that they have faced in the past and in the present and endeavor to make their audiences join them in trying to address these issues.

The poem – ‘My Words’, Beruk (Ngmajet) 1835 – contrasts with Beruk Visits the Riverbed and Beruk Watches Melbourne from the sky, because this poem does not make any comparison or contrast, between Melbourne’s past and its present, yet it succeeds in addressing how “Tony Birch revives Melbourne’s past”. This is because, ‘My Words’, Beruk (Ngmajet) 1835 – attempts to remind its readers about the arrival of the British colonial on the Aboriginal people’s land and the discrimination – as the poem suggest, “white fellow [will] shoot us down like kangaroo” and that the British “spoke his tongue [and suggested] not [to] touch [The Aboriginal people’s] skin, bread [or] house” – these colonisation had towards the Aboriginal people.

Lloyd Jones’s novel, Mister Pip, is set in Bougainville in the 1990’s, in the period of time following the abandonment of the Panguna mine by the Australians and the subsequent civil war and blockade. This backdrop provides the perfect environment for Jones to use foreign literature to explore ideas relating to post-colonialism, both on an individual and community level. This exploration provides much food-for-thought for the postcolonial critic, including issues such as cultural hegemony, the struggle for identity when confronted with hybridity, and the role of the literary canon in European colonisation.