Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker)

My education was decidedly Euro-centric and I didn't read any poems by indigenous Australians until I was much older. Kath Walker changed her name in 1988 'as a way of stripping the label given her by invading forces.'Oodgeroo means 'paperbark' and Noonuccal is her tribal name.

INTEGRATION - YES

Gratefully we learn from you,
The advanced race,
You with long centuries of lore behind you.
We who were Australians long before
You who came yesterday,
Eagerly we must learn to change,
Learn new needs we never wanted,
New compulsions never needed,
The price of survival.
Much that we loved is gone and had to go,
But not the deep indigenous things.
The past is still so much a part of us,
Still about us, still within us.
We are happiest
Among our own people. We would like to see
Our own customs kept, our old
Dances and songs, crafts and corroborees.
Why change our sacred myths
for your sacred myths?
No, not assimilation but integration,
Not submergence but our uplifting,
So black and white may go forward together
In harmony and brotherhood.

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