hearing your tribe, listening to your heart (3 November 2016)

Carol Jerrems, Kath Walker, 'Moongalba' Stradbroke Island, 1974

In my dreams I hear my tribe
Laughing as they hunt and swim,
But dreams are shattered by rushing car,
By grinding tram and hissing train,
And I see no more my tribe of old
As I walk alone in the teeming town.
...
Better when I had only a dillybag.
Better when I had nothing but happinesss.

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from Then and Now

 unattributed work produced at the South Stradbroke Island Indigenous Artist Camp

Let no-one say the past is dead.
The past is all about us and within.
...
This little now, this accidental present
Is not the all of me, whose long making
Is so much of the past.

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from The Past

Make us songs in colour and line:
Painting is speech, painter and poet are one.
Paint what you feel more than the thing you see ...

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from Artist Son

Elisa Jane Carmichael, descendant of the Quandamooka people of Moreton Bay

Seek not to evade
Love's companion Sorrow,
...
It's for our completeness.
If the fates ordain
Love to bring life sweetness, 
Welcome too its pain.

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from Song

North Gorge Walk on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island)


Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls.
...
What have they done to us?

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from Municipal Gum