Kath Walker's "We Are Going"
Kath Walker aka "Oodgeroo Noonuccal"
Introduction and Text of "We Are Going"
Poetry and political activism seldom make good partners, for example, witness the spurious effusions of Adrienne Rich [1] ("Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers"), Amiri Baraka [2]("Somebody Blew Up America"), and Elizabeth Alexander [3] ("Praise Song for the Day"). Unless a serious focus on personal experience guides the pieces, they sink into historical (hysterical) fantasy to rest in the dustbin.
"Oodgeroo Noonuccal"
Born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska [4] in 1920 to Edward and Lucy Ruska on North Stradbroke Island, which lies east of Brisbane, Australia, Miss Ruska married David Walker in 1942, but the marriage ended in 1954.
In 1970, she received the Mary Gilmore Medal and became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). Eighteen years later, she returned the award and changed her name from Kath Walker to "Oodgeroo Noonuccal."
After publication of her first collection of poems, critics were quick to detect that her pieces were little more than propaganda [5]. Walker, employing her newly found identity as the Aboriginal Oodgeroo Noonuccal "embraced the idea of her poetry as propaganda" and doubled down to describe her works as "sloganistic, civil-writerish, plain and simple" [6].
We Are Going
They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.
We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill
Quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.
We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.'
Commentary on "We Are Going"
This political hit piece misrepresents historical facts and perverts those facts, in order to support the propagandist's blighted vision and activism.
First Movement: Who Are "They"?
They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
Without context, the speaker of this spurious piece titled "We Are Going" begins her drama by bringing into "the little town," which remains nameless, "a semi-naked band" of a tribe that had been "silence[d]" and "subdued." They are the only remaining members of their tribe, so the reader presumes that a pogrom has afflicted the people to which this little band belongs.
Second Movement: The Bora Ring
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
The reason the little band has come into this little town is that "their old bora ground" is located nearby. A bora ring is a special piece of ground used for the initiation ceremony of males in Australian aboriginal tribal culture. Women were forbidden from entering the area or even discussing any aspect connected to the bora ceremony.
The animosity toward "the strangers" is revealed when the speaker derisively refers to them as scurrying about "like ants." These "strangers" are accused of filling the bora ring with garbage, for they have placed a sign, "Rubbish May Be Tipped Here."
Third Movement: Racial Animus
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
Racial animus continues to accrue as the speaker bitterly laments, "[w]e are the strangers here now," when in the past "the strangers" had been the ones who are now littering the bora ring and imposing their culture on that of the "little band."
The speaker declares defiantly, "We belong here, we are of the old ways." She then chants, "we are," attaching the phrase to some of the terms associated with belonging to "the old ways": "we are corroboree," bora ground, old ceremonies, the laws of the elders, wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.
At this point, it becomes clear that the speaker is engaging in victimology and lamenting the loss of a culture that she has not experienced but now holds in high regard in order to disparage and indict a culture that she deems to be the "other."
Fourth Movement: Lack of Uniqueness
The list continues, as the speaker continues to chant "we are" before each thing, for example, "We are the lightening [sic] bolt over Gaphembah Hill / Quick and terrible, / And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow."
Thunder and lightning, which is misspelled as "lightening" in the published copy of the piece, are hardly unique to any culture, as all areas of the earth experience those phenomena. Actually, none of the feigned cultural icons in the movement is unique to any certain tribe.
Fifth Movement: False Claims
The claims put forth in the final movement are unabashedly false. If, in fact, all the items mentioned here were gone, the "stranger" culture would not find the place anymore suitable to live in than the "little band" native tribe would.
But the climactic highlight, the line that is engaged to create the most sympathy is the final one, "and we are going." The cultural icons of the "little band" have all been removed which is a tragedy, but even more tragic is that the people themselves are being eliminated.
Ahistorical Propaganda
As early as 1895, the Natural History Society, composed of members of the "strangers" race indicted in the piece, was trying to preserve the bora ring [7] in the Nudgee area. That protection [8] has remained in place since that period of history:
The Bora Ring was re-fenced by the Department of Aboriginal and Islanders Advancement in 1976. An interpretive sign, which is still standing in the long grass, was also erected. In the late 1990's a number of Aboriginal groups made land claims under the Native Title Act, as the traditional owners of this land.
It's expected that over the next few years the current owner, the Brisbane City Council, will be negotiating with the traditional owners for better protection and enhancement of the Bora ring site.
Kath Walker’s omission of the efforts of the Natural History Society leaves her attempted poetic effort little more than an ahistorical propagandistic hit piece, as her early critics first discovered. That the literary world has to suffer such nonsense remains an anomaly that has proliferated with the postmodern mindset that places victimology over virtue and truth.
Sources
[1] Editors. "A Rich Harvest of Muddle." The New Criterion. September 1997.
[2] Staff. "Amiri Baraka’s Five Most Anti-Semitic Comments." Washington Free Beacon. January 10, 2014 .
[3] Carol Rumens. "Elizabeth Alexander's Praise Poem Was Way too Prosy." The Guardian. January 21, 2009.
[4] Australian Poetry Library. "Oodgeroo Noonuccal Mini Bio." IMDb. Accessed September 6, 2024.
[5] Editors. "Oodgeroo Noonuccal Biography." HowOld. Accessed September 6, 2024.
[6] Editors. "My People: A Kath Walker Collection: Kath Walker; Oodgeroo Noonuccal, 1920-1993." Elizabeth's Bookshop. Accessed September 6, 2024.
[7] Editorial "National History Society." The Brisbane Courier.. October 8, 1895. Via Trove: Search Newspapers and Gazettes.
[8] Kim Flesser. "Nudgee Bora Ring." Northgate Ward Community News. Accessed September 6, 2024.
Portrait of Kath Walker
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2024 Linda Sue Grimes
