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Indigenous Australia and it’s poetry 3

Biography 4

Analysis of ‘The First Born’ 6

Analysis of ‘Land’ 8

‘Fire’ and rationale. 10

Bibliography 12

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Jack Davis saw his poetry as an invaluable form of political activism, and so his poems are vastly influenced by the cir-

cumstances and experiences of the Aboriginal community.

Since the time of European settlement, there has been a clash of culture between

Aborigines and Europeans. On their arrival in Australia in 1770, the settlers de-

clared that Australia was Terra Nullius, or in other words, empty of inhabitants.

Indigenous Australians have a spiritual connection with their homeland, one so

different to that of the Europeans that its essence cannot be captured by the Eng-

lish language. Therefore the claim terra nullius resulted in resistance and rebellion,

and consequently the massacre of thousands of Aboriginal Australians. This idea of

land and dispossession has become deeply entwined with Indigenous poetry.

Throughout the 19th century, various missions were set up to prevent the oppression of Indigenous Australians, includ-

ing the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines, which began in 1860. However, atrocities continued into the 1900s,

such as the Stolen Generation, in which up to 100,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families

and heritage. On Australia Day, 1938, the Australian Aborigines League organised a Day of Mourning for Aboriginal

people.

“This is the day we lost our land, lost our spirit culture, lost our language – and so many of our

lives! Today we have no land. No rights.”

— William Cooper (founder of the Australian Aborigines League).

Until the late 1960’s, Aboriginal welfare was managed by the Department of

Flora, Fauna and Natives, a label that classed them as being inferior to hu-

mans. The referendum in 1967 was a major breakthrough, and ninety per-

cent of Australians voted to give Aborigines the same level of citizenship as

non-Aboriginal people, finally classing them as equals. Various protests,

such as the Native Land Title, continued throughout the rest of the 1900s,

each one bringing Indigenous Australians more rights and opportunities.

One form of protest used by Indigenous Australians is poetry. Verse has not only been the most popular form of Indig-

enous expression in English, but also has been adopted in different styles to express different concerns. Some poets

see their words as a mouthpiece for the Indigenous community, some use it to express the beauty of nature, and oth-

ers simply use it as an emotional release.

Having been educated by Europeans, Jack Davis’s early works adopt a typical English style. His poetry was rhyming and

evenly measured, with four stresses or less. This lack of experimentation is likely due to a lack of confidence, as he

was entering into a style that was monopolised by Europeans. His poetry was honest and sincere, and often written in

the wake of a socio-political event, such as his poem the ‘Laverton Incident’, which reflected upon the shooting of a

young Aborigine. Other of Davis’s works focus on nature and it’s relationship with Indigenous Australians, and is often

orientated around the dispossession of Indigenous Australians.

Aboriginal day of mourning

European Settlement

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Jack Davis (1917-2000) was a prominent Indigenous Australian

whose poetry was a voice that expressed the grievances felt by

the Indigenous community. This voice was used to protest politi-

cally, seeking the best life for Aborigines Australia-wide.

Davis’s poetry was partly shaped by his own life. Jack Davis was

born and raised by his parents in Western Australia. His father,

William, was a part of the stolen generation, and was taken from

his tribe to be raised by a white family. His mother was also tak-

en from her tribe in Broome.

Jack Davis had the typical white Australian upbringing and education, and had eight years of

schooling in a little mill town called Yarloop. He grew up in a crowded house with four broth-

ers and six sisters, but his vivid imagination set him apart from his siblings. He was fascinated

by words and sought to understand them, and at a young age he would go to bed with a dic-

tionary.

“I think I used to live in a really fantastic world of my own.”

– Jack Davis

Four months after Davis left school, his father was killed in an acci-

dent with a bull, leaving the Davis family with no breadwinner in

the midst of the Great Depression. This forced the Davis boys to

find jobs around the state, and Jack moved up to a farm in Gas-

coyne, in the North-West of Western Australia. Here, he worked

amongst full-blooded Aboriginal people, who weren’t paid any

wages and were given little food and clothing. The injustice of this

was striking for the eighteen year old, and here he first became in-

terested in writing as a means for expression.

Jack Davis at tribal ceremony

Jack Davis

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Davis later returned south, and became continually more frustrated with the Australian Gov-

ernment’s approach to Aboriginal Affairs. He started writing poetry with more dedication and

purpose, the protests in his verses hacking at the Australian Government and seeking for

something better.

“If we can make a concentrated attack upon the Government apathy, we can

uplift the aboriginal people to the standard of their white counterparts.” —

Jack Davis

Jack Davis released his first volume of poetry, The First-Born and Other Poems, in 1970. It in-

cludes protest poetry such as ‘The Drifters’, ‘Yadabooka’, ‘Whither?’, and ‘Integration’. Later in

life he released three more poetry books, and also wrote numerous plays and short-stories, all

with the same haunting voice and influential messages.

Davis’s work has been highly recognised; he has been awarded the BEM for services to Aborigi-

nes, the BHP Pursuit of Excellence Award for Literature and the Arts, and the Patricia Weick-

hardt Award for an Aboriginal writer. He has also pursued activism in other areas, and be-

tween the years of 1967 and 1971 he was the director of the Aboriginal Centre in Perth, and

soon after he became the first chairman of the Aboriginal Lands Trust in WA. His legacy has

been enduring, and his works continue to fight for change in Australia sincee his death in 2000.

“The First-Born and Other Poems”

Davis’s first book of poetry.

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Where are my first-born, said the brown land, sighing;

They came out of my womb long, long ago.

They were formed of my dust-why, why are they crying

And the light of their being barely aglow?

I strain my ears for the sound of their laughter.

Where are the laws and the legends I gave?

Tell me what happened, you whom I bore after.

Now only their spirits dwell in the caves.

You are silent, you cringe from replying.

A question is there, like a blow on the face.

The answer is there when I look at the dying,

At the death and neglect of my dark proud race.

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This poem protests against Aboriginal dispossession. Following Captain Cook’s claim that Australia was

Terra Nullius, Indigenous Australians were forcibly removed from their land. Many Indigenous people were

massacred and others were driven away. This dispossession broke the deep and age-old spiritual connec-

tion that Aborigines shared with the land. In ‘The Firstborn’, Davis uses poetry as a means to protest

against this dispossession.

The first two lines establish an extended metaphor that continues

throughout the poem, in which the land is compared to the mother

of the Indigenous Australians. Therefore, this poem compares Indig-

enous Australians being dispossessed from the land to a child being

taken from its mother. The poem is written from the perspective of

the land, who refers to Indigenous Australians as her ‘first-born’, thus

suggesting the close connection that Indigenous Australians have the with the land. Personification is used

when describing the land as sighing, which establishes the sorrow and helplessness of the land. This mood

continues throughout the poem.

The third line describes Indigenous Australians as having come from the land’s dust. This suggests that In-

digenous Australians and the land are made of the same flesh and bone, and therefore that they are one.

This is followed by a rhetorical question that is asked to the reader, who is intended to be a white Australi-

an. The repetition of the word ‘why’ at the start of the question shows the desperation of the land, and

makes the question sound like a plea to the reader. The effect of this is that it expresses the land’s feeling

of loss and helplessness, thus reflecting the feelings felt by Indigenous Australians regarding dispossession.

The second stanza focuses on the Indigenous loss of culture due to disposses-

sion. The first line personifies the land by saying that it strains its ears, and this

is again used to suggest that the land can have human characteristics and emo-

tions similar to a mother. In this case, the emotions are concern and sadness,

due to the fact that the laughter, happiness and joy have been sucked from

Indigenous Australian culture. The final line of this verse suggests that the dis-

possession of Indigenous Australians has removed Aborigines from their spirits. The word ‘spirit’ has

many connotations, and is associated with culture, individuality and life-source. Therefore, the loss of spir-

it symbolises a loss of all of these things. This idea of lost culture is also demonstrated through the alter-

nate rhyme scheme and clear rhythm of the poem. This is a European style of poetry, and therefore adds

to the idea that Indigenous culture is dying due to dispossession.

Throughout the poem, rhetorical questions are used to evoke a response within the reader. As the reader

knows that Europeans are to blame for Indigenous dispossession, these rhetorical questions are used to

make the reader feel guilty for harming these people and removing them from their ‘mother’. The final

stanza directly addresses this guilt, and by using the word ‘you’, it causes the reader to acknowledge their

hand in this death and neglect. This technique is very powerful in conjunction with the extended meta-

phor, as it causes the reader to feel like they have taken a child from their mother.

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Oh white man!

how can I make you understand

this love of land?

It has the touch of a child's fingertips

to a mother's lips.

Soft, as a butterfly’s wing.

Her loveliness is summer red,

pink fading gold,

as mother sun sinks to fold

herself in a cloak of night

embossed with the light

of stars from a black nation's dreamtime.

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This poem, similar to ‘The First-Born’, focusses on land. However, whilst the purpose of ‘The First-

Born’ was to protest against the dispossession of Indigenous Australians, this poem is more environ-

mentally orientated, and seeks to make non-Indigenous Australians better appreciate the land.

The first three lines are integral in establishing the perspective, tone and audience of the poem. The

poem begins with a plea to the ‘white man’, which suggests that the target audience for this poem is

Europeans and it from the perspective of an Indigenous Australian. The language has a sense of des-

pair and desperation, as demonstrated by the word ‘oh’, and the exclamation mark. This sets the

tone for the poem. The effect of this tone is that it shows the reader how culturally important the

land is to the Indigenous Australians.

The following two lines use personification to compare the land’s

touch to that of an infant. This comparison is used to demonstrate

that, like an infant, the land is pure and innocent, and needs to be

nurtured, loved and protected. The line ‘soft, as a butterfly’s wing’

uses a simile to liken the land to a fragile insect. This simile is used to

stress the fragility of land, and how Indigenous Australians appreciate

and understand this and know how to care for it.

Over the next four lines, the poet compares the land to the colours of a sunset, as the sun sinks into

the night. This vivid imagery is used as it creates a spectacular image in the reader’s mind of the

beauty and grandeur of nature. Enjambment is used to allow the viewer to take in one detail at a

time, until a stunning image is formed. The vibrant colours highlight the strength and power of the

natural land. The change from bright colours to the darkness of night symbolises the ever-changing,

unpredictability of nature. This intense imagery is used to demonstrate the

appreciation and understanding of the land that Indigenous Australians

have.

The final two lines of the poem use imagery to create the picture of stars

illuminating the night sky. Stars symbolise individuality, beauty, and age, all

things which are associated with Indigenous culture. By creating this image

and referencing the dreamtime, a sacred Aboriginal era, it shows how Indig-

enous Australians spiritually treasure these stars in their culture. This

therefore demonstrates how deeply intertwined nature and Indigenous cul-

ture are.

In summary, this poem is used to display the close connection between Indigenous Australians and

nature. Davis also pleas for Europeans to understand this connection and appreciate the land.

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In an explosion of fire, they come,

To the clamour of gun against spear,

A harsh, flashing blast of blood-red flame,

Lighting a wildfire fuelled by fear.

Flaring tendrils swallow the eucalypt trees,

Whose harrowing screams drown in the blaze,

The proud plants are pushed to their knees,

Strangled by the blanketing haze.

The lost spirits lament from deep within,

Their ashes linger with a haunting grace

Before encrusting the earth with a charred skin-

The cinders of a perishing race.

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The purpose of my poem is to protest against the treatment of Indigenous Australians dur-

ing the European settlement. To do this, I used an extended metaphor in which I com-

pared the settlement to a bushfire, and the Indigenous Australians to the trees being de-

voured by this fire. The reason that I chose to use this comparison is that it provides a

different perspective on the event, and I believe this perspective makes the event more

accessible for a modern Australian. This is as, whilst the current Australian wasn’t here

during the European settlement, they will have heard about, or even experienced, the re-

cent bushfire horrors in Australia. Another reason that I chose this comparison is that

whilst Aborigines were able to handle bushfires in a safe way, Europeans have caused

them to become very dangerous and unpredictable. This demonstrates the difference in

the way that the two cultures can handle nature.

In the second line, I use the words ‘gun’ and ‘spear’ to display the contrast between the

two cultures and their technological advancement. Not only does this language demon-

strate this difference, but it also references the violence between Europeans and Aborigi-

nes upon settlement. In the second stanza, I used a large amount of personification. For

example, saying that the haze ‘strangled’ the plants. The reason that I chose to use this is

that it gave the fire and the trees human attributes, and therefore allowed the reader to

feel an emotional response to the suppression of the plants.

In the final stanza, I discussed how this fire has wiped out a generation of trees, leaving on-

ly a few burning cinders and lost spirits. This symbolises the genocide of the Indigenous

race upon European settlement, where much of the Aborigine population was wiped out

and their culture lost much of its majesty. I believe that these were two of the largest is-

sues with the European settlement, and so they were the two that I most wanted to identi-

fy in my poem.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indigenous_Australians

http://www.answers.com/topic/jack-davis-australian-literature#ixzz1zowBrJ4G

http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/davis-jack-17788

https://sites.google.com/site/poetrypoliticsplace/3-making-maps/3-5-3-jack-davis

The Poetry of Politics: Australian Aboriginal Verse, by Adam Shoemaker

The First-Born and other Poems, by Jack Davis

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature

Ms Sas’s handouts