Individual Supplementry Assessment: Poetry

We Are Going

    

            They came in to the little town

A semi-naked band subdued and silent

All that remained of their tribe.

They came here to the place of their old bora ground

Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.

Notice of the estate agent reads: ‘Rubbish May Be Tipped Here’.

Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.

‘We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.

We belong here; we are of the old ways.

We are the corroboree and the bora ground,

We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.

We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.

We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.

We are the lightning bolt over Gaphembah Hill

Quick and terrible,

And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.

We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.

We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.

We are nature and the past, all the old ways

Gone now and scattered.

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.’

 

Oodgeroo Noonuccal

 

Appreciating “We are Going” by Oodgerooo Noonuccal

Read Oodgeroo’s “We are going” (p. 32) and answer these questions on it:

 

1. Explain why they are “silent and subdued”.

The aboriginal people were shunned and quiet

2. How are white men represented? Why?

They are represented as ants because there are so many of them and they act like ants by building up their colony.

3. What is a bora ring and explain why it is so central to this poem.

Bora rings are circles of earth hardened by feet surrounding by elevated embankments.

4. Explain their reaction in line 8.

The aboriginal people were confused because they could not go by their traditional ways of life and were forced to follow the white man’s laws.

5. Lines 9-17 begin a ‘litany’. What is the effect produced

The aboriginal people in their belief believed they had the right to stay in this land.

6. Comment on the significance of metaphors used in the poem.

The aboriginal people are comparing themselves as they are emphasizing their importance to the land.

7. Comment on the structure and form of this poem.

Each line makes a statement that has a lot of meaning.

8. Why does Thunder have a capital letter?

Thunder has a capital letter because it tells us it is greater than man.

9. Comment on the mood and atmosphere created here.

It is a very sympathetic.

10. Combine comments on its theme, title and conclusion.

They are all intertwined.

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