Conversations (AKA Unfinished Business)

Conversations through the phone
raises issues that still impact
on indigenous Australians. There
is also a message of hope!

Imagination, creativity, art, dance,
music, and inventive conversations.
Positive expressions of Indigenous
survival.

Mr Prime Minister, The Mayor,
young folk, warriors without
treaties, the wider community . . .

The message as always,
even though we smile.
Land Rights, sovereignty, no more
crap, ignorance and unabated racism.

poem by Lisa Bellear
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Message Failed

INDIGENOUS: Our lands are here to welcome
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: As long, as long ago we offer welcome
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: An offering from within deep within
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: Who are your people?
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: Our custom, begins like this
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do no come in peace
INDIGENOUS: From the tops of the gum trees, too
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: Beneath the earth our mother
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
INDIGENOUS: If you share with our traditions
PARLIAMENTARIAN: We do not come in peace
We do not come in peace
Die just be gone

poem by Lisa Bellear
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Beautiful Yuroke Red River Gum

For Northlands Secondary College Mobile Rebel School

Sometimes the red river gums rustled
in the beginning of colonization when
Wurundjeri
Bunnerong
Wathauring
and other Kulin nations
sang and danced
and
laughed
aloud

Not too long and there are
fewer red river gums, the
Yarra Yarra tribe’s blood becomes
the river’s rich red clay

[...] Read more

poem by Lisa Bellear
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Ruby Was Never Seen Again 25/9/03

Weep for this wounded desperate soul that never
seems to heal, alone, vocalising to any passer by.
Uncomfortable for some, they turn away, but that won’t stop
her swaying, or mend her destructive pain

Pray for this tired old and embittered lady
who fought courageously against the colonisers
classified as ‘tribal’ whose love across the
racial lines meant government sanctioned
interference: the Bullyman, welfare, local
school teacher – informant, would not relent
till Ruby was removed

Three long years of hiding from the
tentacles of institutionalised racism,
till a moments lapse and then she’s gone
Ruby’s gone, like she never existed,
nor was ever loved. Rocking to and fro,
she still dreams of little Ruby
and of that fateful day and wonders

[...] Read more

poem by Lisa Bellear
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Women's Liberation

Talk to me about the feminist movement,
the gubba middle class
hetero sexual revolution
way back in the seventies
when men wore tweed jackets with
leather elbows, and the women, well
I don’t remember or maybe I just don’t care
or can’t relate.
Now what were those white women on about?
What type of neurosis was fashionable back then?
So maybe I was only a school kid; and kids, like women,
have got on thing that joins that schemata,
like we’re not worth listening to,
and who wants to liberate women and children
what will happen in an egalitarian society
if the women and the kids start becoming complacent
in that they believe they should have rights
and economic independence,
and what would these middle class kids and white women do
with liberation, with freedom, with choices of

[...] Read more

poem by Lisa Bellear
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