Jack Davis
Just as the Native American Indians, the indigenous people were here first and were then pushed asside by the white settlement, the Aborigines were in Australia before the British decided to setp the colonies in Australia. He uses rhymer every two lines to emphasize what he is talking about.
The White settlement from England decided that the Natives were people from a lesser class, pushed them aside.
The last four lines of the poem is basically saying that the Asutralians feel proud of the Australia they had createdand feel that it is fair that they murder and massacre all the Aborigines in the name of the Church.
But asside of this, the real story of the conquer of Australia and murder and massacre were not reliable to the poem.
Aboriginal Australia
To the Others
You once smiled a friendly smile,
Said we were kin to one another,
Thus with guile for a short while
Became to me a brother.
Then you swamped my way of gladness,
Took my children from my side,
Snapped shut the law book, oh my sadness
At Yirrakalas’ plea denied.
So, I remember Lake George hills,
The thin stick bones of people.
Sudden death, and greed that kills,
That gave you church and steeple.
I cry again for Warrarra men,
Gone from kith and kind,
And I wondered when I would find a pen
To probe your freckled mind.
I mourned again for the Murray tribe,
Gone too without a trace.
I thought of the soldier’s diatribe,
The smile on the governor’s face.
You murdered me with rope, with gun
The massacre of my enclave,
You buried me deep on McLarty’s run
Flung into a common grave.
You propped me up with Christ, red tape,
Tobacco, grog and fears,
Then disease and lordly rape
Through the brutish years.
Now you primly say you’re justified,
And sing of a nation’s glory,
But I think of a people crucified -
The real Australian story.