IRWLE VOL. 6 No.
II July 2010 1
Native Voices from Terra Nullius: A Heading of Kath Walker’s
“We are Going"
- B.C. Anish Krishnan Nayar
Kath Walker (1920-1993), later known as Oodgeroo Nosnuccal
opened a new, hitherto undefined area in Australian literature aboriginal
poetry. Her collection of poems “We are Going” (1964) was the first book
to be published by an Aboriginal woman. She was not only a poet, but a
political activist too. She fought hard for the aboriginal rights. She was a
forerunner in that field too. This paper is an attempt to analyse Walker’s
eponymous poem “We are Going”. The paper throws light on the
subaltern elements in the poem.
A brief account of colonization of Australia is essential to
appreciate this poem. The ill fate of the aborigines started when Captain
James Cook ‘discovered’ Australia in late eighteenth century. He found
that the aborigines of Australia were leading a simple, peaceful life and
he records in his diaries that they were not aggressive like the other
tribes. During these days British Parliament was in search for a place to
deport and dump their convicts as the “. . . newly minted United States
of America has refused to continued accepting shipments of British
prisoners” (Britain, 73). In 1787, the British Parliament decided to turn
Australia into a penal colony. It ruled Australia as terra nullius, i.e. land
belonging to no one’s, brushing away the legal and sentimental claims of
the aborigines. It took more than two hundred years to nullify this
draconian law.
Kath Walker’s poem “We are Going” reflects the pains of the sons of
the soil who are unjustly thrown out of their native land. The poem is
written as a collective voice of a few members of a surviving tribe. The
poem is a painful farewell to their native land.
“We are Going” opens with a dedication to “Grannie Coolwell”. The
first two lines of the poems say: “They came into little town / a semi-
naked band subdued and silent”. The first two lines bring two painful
facts to light. They are: 1) the aboriginals are displaced from their native
land and 2) They were ‘subdued’ and silent. They word ‘subdued’
clearly indicator the colonial oppression over the natives. Silence of the
natives is a recurrent image in the poem.
Further their living condition is suggested by the word ‘semi-naked
band’. People who were once the sole inhabitants of the continent were
now more or less impoverished band of nomads. The natives had come to
have a last look of their ‘Bora ground’ Bora grounds are sacred places for
the aborigines. Most of the initiation rites take place in the Bora ground.
IRWLE VOL. 6 No. II July 2010 2
To their shock the natives found that the entire place was turned into a
residential area where “white people moved like ants”. Their anguish
reached the zenith when they found a sign reading. “Rubbish May Be
tipped her”. There sacred place had been turned into a garbage collecting
point.
The next few lines summarize the fate of not only aborigines, but
that of all the colonised people.
“They sit and are confused, they cannot say their thoughts
We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the
strangers
We belong here, we are old ways”
The native voice brings in a childlike flawless reasoning. The
natives are made to feel as if they are strangers as all their heritage sites
are ruthlessly destroyed by the colonisers. Confused by this, they ask
how come they became strangers when it was actually the white people
who are the strangers. This question echoes throughout the colonised
world as this is a universal phenomena.
In the following lines the aborigines are equated with the elements
of nature. The poem says: “We are nature and past, all the old ways /
gone now and scattered”. These lines bring out the pathetic condition of
the aboriginal people. People who are closely connected with the history
and nature of the Australian continent are now ‘scattered’. They word
‘scattered’ suggest the fact that they are displaced and lift without any
settlement area. Further it is written:
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
The poem thus ends with a sad note of resignation. The Whites
have not only destroyed the livelihood of natives but they have also
caused irreparable damage to the nature. They have upset the
environmental balance. Due to this reason the poem records the fact that
the scrubs are gone and symbols of Australia such as emu and kangaroo
are also almost extinct now. The natives used to have a peaceful
coexistence with the nature. Their life was rather a symbiosis with the
nature. After the loss of that symbiotic environment they are unable to
survive. In addition to this they are oppressed by the colonizers. So with
pangs of pain they say, “And we are going”. The poem thus powerfully
IRWLE VOL. 6 No. II July 2010 3
records the emotional anguish of the aboriginal people and evokes
empathy in the heart of the reader.
The poem “We are Going” can be better understood if it is read in
the light of Gayathri Chakravorthy Spivak’s seminal essay, “Can the
Subaltern Speak?”. The essay was written by Spivak in retaliation to the
claims of subaltern studies group headed by Ranajith Guha. It is
important to equate Spivake’s essay with Walker’s poem because “We are
Going” is not only about the displacement and extermination of the
natives but also about the politics in recording subaltern voices. The
word subaltern was originally used in military to denote a low ranking,
subordinate officer. In post-colonial theory the word ‘subaltern’ is used to
refer to member of any group who face oppression due to caste or gender
or race. Spivak clearly points out that a subaltern cannot speak and even
if a subaltern speaks it cannot be or will not be heard by others. Spivak
points out this with an illustration from the tragic life of one
Bhuvaeswari Bhaduri. Spikvak says: “She ‘spoke’, but women did not, do
not, ‘hear’ her” (28). Hence the subaltern is forced to be silent. This
subaltern silence is portrayed in “We are Going”. They words such as
“subdued and silent” and lines such as “They sit and are confused, they
cannot say their thoughts” reinforce this idea. In fact the central idea of
the poem is to highlight the silence of the aborigines. This silence is often
taken for granted. Sneja Gunew points out that this ‘silence’ of the
aborigines is often exploited. The aborigines are refused of their share
not only in lands but also in literature. The whites successfully do this in
the name of ‘multiculturalism’ which has become a tool of colonialism.
However the silence of aborigines will turn into a strong resistance as
silence is often louder than millions of words which are articulated with
authority.
Quote goes here like this
1
IRWLE VOL. 6 No. II July 2010 4
“cannot and should not be privileged” (163), while Gary Catalano draws attention to
Hart’s constant reminders “that we live in an obdurately material and physical world”
(25).
Critics who are also published poets seem especially attracted to Hart’s work. To date,
the majority of the criticism published on Hart has been written by other poets,
including Gary Catalano, John Kinsella, Paul Kane, David McCooey and Paul Mitchell.
Notes
1
The awareness of our responsibility for others results in anguish.
As Sartre argues, “the existentialists say at once that man is anguish.
What that means is this: the man who involves himself and who realizes
that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who
is
Works Cited
Walker, Kath. “We are Going”. <http://www.cit.griffith.edu.au//. 30 May
2010.
Gunew, Sneja. “Denaturalizing Cultural Nationalisms: Multicultural
Readings of ‘Australia’”. Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi.K.Bhabha.
Routledge: New York, 2006. Print. (99-120).
Spivak, Gayathri Chakravorthy. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” The Post-
Colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen
Tiffin. Routledge: New York, 2009. Print. (28-37).
Brittan, Alice. “Australiasia”. The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial
Studies. Ed. John McLeod. Routledge: New York, 2008. Print. (72-83).
B.C. Anish Krishnan Nayar
Ph.D. Scholar,
Centre for Research in English,
Scott Christian College,
Nagercoil,
Tamil Nadu, India
