Aborig+Lyrics

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Paul Kelly, From little things, big things grow.
Gather round people let me tell you're a story An eight year long story of power and pride British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiarri Were opposite men on opposite sides

Vestey was fat with money and muscle Beef was his business, broad was his door Vincent was lean and spoke very little He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

Gurindji were working for nothing but rations Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter Gurindju decided they must make a stand

They picked up their swags and started off walking At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down Now it don't sound like much but it sure got tongues talking Back at the homestead and then in the town

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

Vestey man said I'll double your wages Seven quid a week you'll have in your hand Vincent said uhuh we're not talking about wages We're sitting right here till we get our land Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered You don't stand the chance of a cinder in snow Vince said if we fall others are rising

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri boarded an aeroplane Landed in Sydney, big city of lights And daily he went round softly speaking his story To all kinds of men from all walks of life

And Vincent sat down with big politicians This affair they told him is a matter of state Let us sort it out, your people are hungry Vincent said no thanks, we know how to wait

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

Then Vincent Lingiarri returned in an aeroplane Back to his country once more to sit down And he told his people let the stars keep on turning We have friends in the south, in the cities and towns

Eight years went by, eight long years of waiting Till one day a tall stranger appeared in the land And he came with lawyers and he came with great ceremony And through Vincent's fingers poured a handful of sand

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

That was the story of Vincent Lingairri But this is the story of something much more How power and privilege can not move a people Who know where they stand and stand in the law

From little things big things grow From little things big things grow From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

Midnight Oil, Beds Are Burning
Songwriters: Hirst, Robert;Garrett, Peter;Moginie, James

Out where the river broke The blood wood and the desert oak Holden wrecks and boiling diesels Steam in forty five degrees The time has come To say fair's fair To pay the rent To pay our share The time has come A fact's a fact It belongs to them Let's give it back How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning The time has comeTo say fair's fair To pay the rent, now To pay our share Four wheels scare the cockatoos From Kintore East to Yuendemu The western desert lives and breathes In forty five degrees The time has come To say fair's fair To pay the rent To pay our share The time has come A fact's a fact It belongs to them Let's give it back How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning The time has come To say fair's fair To pay the rent, now To pay our share The time has come A fact's a fact It belongs to them We're gonna give it back How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning

Archie Roach, Took The Children Away
This story's right, this story's true I would not tell lies to you Like the promises they did not keep And how they fenced us in like sheep. Said to us come take our hand Sent us off to mission land. Taught us to read, to write and pray Then they took the children away, Took the children away, The children away. Snatched from their mother's breast Said this is for the best Took them away.

The welfare and the policeman Said you've got to understand We'll give them what you can't give Teach them how to really live. Teach them how to live they said Humiliated them instead Taught them that and taught them this And others taught them prejudice. You took the children away The children away Breaking their mothers heart Tearing us all apart Took them away

One dark day on Framingham Come and didn't give a damn My mother cried go get their dad He came running, fighting mad Mother's tears were falling down Dad shaped up and stood his ground. He said 'You touch my kids and you fight me' And they took us from our family. Took us away They took us away Snatched from our mother's breast Said this was for the best Took us away.

Told us what to do and say Told us all the white man's ways Then they split us up again And gave us gifts to ease the pain Sent us off to foster homes As we grew up we felt alone Cause we were acting white Yet feeling black

One sweet day all the children came back The children come back The children come back Back where their hearts grow strong Back where they all belong The children came back Said the children come back The children come back Back where they understand Back to their mother's land The children come back

Back to their mother Back to their father Back to their sister Back to their brother Back to their people Back to their land All the children come back The children come back The children come back Yes I came back.

Yothu Yindi, Treaty
Well I heard it on the radioAnd I saw it on the televisionBack in 1988All those talking politiciansWords are easy, words are cheapMuch cheaper than our priceless landBut promises can disappearJust like writing in the sand Treaty Yeah Treaty NowTreaty Yeah Treaty Now Nhima Djatpangarri nhima walangwalang -Nhe Djatpayatpa nhima gaya nhe-Matjini.... Yakarray - nhe Djat'pa nhe walang - Gumurrtijararrk Gutjuk - This land was never given upThis land was never bought and soldThe planting of the Union JackNever changed our law at all Now two rivers run their courseSeparated for so longI'm dreaming of a brighter dayWhen the waters will be one Treaty Yeah Treaty Now Treaty Yeah Treaty NowTreaty Yeah Treaty Now Treaty Yeah Traty Now Nhima djatpa nhe walanggumurrtjararrk yawirriny Nhe gaya nhe matjiniGaya nhe matjini Gaya gaya nhe gaya nheMatjini walangwalang Nhema djatpa nhe walang - Nhe gumurrtjarrk nhe ya- Promises - Disappear - Priceless land - Destiny - Well I heard it on the Radio - And I saw it on the TelevisionJust like writing in the sand Treaty YeahTreaty Now ...

Paul Keating, The Redfern Address
Transcript Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here today at the launch of Australia's celebration of the 1993 International Year of the World's Indigenous People. It will be a year of great significance for Australia. It comes at a time when we have committed ourselves to succeeding in the test which so far we have always failed. Because, in truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we would like to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous pople of Australia - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy, that we are what we should be - truly the land of the fair go and the better chance. There is no more basic test of how seriously we mean these things. It is a test of our self-knowledge. Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history. How well we recognise the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, it cannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia. How well we know what Aboriginal Australians know about Australia. Redfern is a good place to contemplate these things. Just a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed, in too many ways it tells us that their failure to bring much more than devastation and demoralisation to Aboriginal Australia continues to be our failure. More I think than most Australians recognise, the plight of Aboriginal Australians affects us all. In Redfern it might be tempting to think that the reality Aboriginal Australians face is somehow contained here, and that the rest of us are insulated from it. But of course, while all the dilemmas may exist here, they are far from contained. We know the same dilemmas and more are faced all over Australia. This is perhaps the point of this Year of the World's Indigenous People: to bring the dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are part of us, and that we cannot give indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our own most deeply held values, much of our own identity - and our own humanity. Nowhere in the world, I would venture, is the message more stark than in Australia. We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not. There should be no mistake about this - our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world. However intractable the problems may seem, we cannot resign ourselves to failure - any more than we can hide behind the contemporary viersion of Social Darwinism which says that to reach back for the poor and dispossessed is to risk being dragged down. That seems to me not only morally indefensible, but bad history. We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkably harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians - the people to whom the most injustice has been done. And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us. If we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year. The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showed with devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice in the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. For all this, I do not believe that the Report should fill us with guilt. Down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the responses we need. Guilt is not a very constructive emotion. I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit. All of us. Perhaps when we recognise what we have in common we will see the things which must be done - the practical things. There is something of this in the creation of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. The council's mission is to forge a new partnership built on justice and equity and an appreciation of the heritage of Australia's indigenous people. In the abstract those terms are meaningles. We have to give meaning to 'justice' and 'equity' - and, as I have said several times this year, we will only give them meaning when we commit ourselves to achieving concrete results. If we improve the living conditions in one town, they will improve in another. And another. If we raise the standard of health by 20 per cent one year, it will be raised more the next. if we open one door others will follow. When we see improvement, when we see more dignity, more confidence, more happiness - we will know we are going to win. We need these practical building blocks of change. The Mabo judgment should be seen as one of these. By doing away with the bizarre conceit that this continent had no owners prior to the settlement of Europeans, Mabo establishes a fundamental truth and lays the basis for justice. It will be much easier to work from that basis than has ever been the case in the past. For this reason alone we should ignore the isolated outbreaks of hysteria and hostility of the past few months. Mabo is an historic decision - we can make it an historic turning point, the basis of a new relationship between indigenous and non-Aboriginal Australians. The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians. There is everything to gain. Even the unhappy past speaks for this. Where Aboriginal Australians have been included in the life of Australia they have made remarkable contributions. Economic contributions, particularly in the pastoral and agricultural industry. They are there in the frontier and exploration history of Australia. They are there in the ways. In sport ot an extraordinary degree. In literature and art and mustic. In all these things they have shaped our knowledge of this continent and of ourselves. They have shaped our identity. They are there in the Australian legend. We should never forget - they helped build this nation. And if we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we will forge a new partnership. As I said, it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imaigined ourselves dispossessed of land we have lived on for 50 000 years - and then imagined ouselves told that it had never been ours. Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in tehworld and we were told that it was worthless. Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without a fight. Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice. Imagine if our spiritual life was denied and ridiculed. Imagine if we had suffed the injustice and then were blamed for it. It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice then we can imagine its opposite. And we can have justice. I say that for two reasons: I say it because I believe that the great things about Australian social democracy reflect a fundamental belief in justice. And I say it because in so many other areas we have proved our capacity over the years to go on extending the realism of participating, oppotunity and care. Just as Australian living in the relatively narrow and insular Australia of the 1960s imagined a culturally diverse, worldly and open Australia, and in a generation turned the idea into reality, so we can turn the goals of reconciliation into reality. There are very good signs that the process has begun. The creation of the Reconciliation Council is evidence itself. The establishment of the ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission - is also evidence. The Council is the product of imagination and goodwill. ATSIC emerges from the vision of indigenous self-determination and self-management. The vision has already become the reality of almost 800 elected Aboriginal Regional Councillors and Commissioners determining priorities and developing their own programs. All over Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are taking charge of their own lives. And assistance with the problems which chronically beset them is at last being made available in ways developed by the communities themselves. If these things offer hope, so does the fact that this generation of Australians is better informed about Aboriginal culture and ahievement, and about the injustice that has been done, than any generation before. We are beginning to more generally appreciate the depth and the diversity of Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander cultures. From their music and art and dance we are beginning to recognise how much richer our national life and identity will be for the participation of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. We are beginning to learn what the indigenous people have known for many thousands of years - how to live with our physical environment. Ever so gradually we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to recognise the wisdom contained in their epic story. I think we are beginning to see how much we owe the indigenous Australians and how much we have lost by living so apart. I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view. It can't be too hard. Someone imagined this event today, and it is now a marvellous reality and a great reason for hope. There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through 50 000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. We cannot imagine that. We cannot imagine that we will fail. And with the spirit that is here today i am confident that we won't. I am confident that we will succeed in this decade. Thank you