Yolgnu Ways – from Irish Ways and Irish Laws by Moving Hearts

I wrote this in Darwin twenty years ago and recently updated it for a Remembrance event for the Indigenous warriors and their families and tribes who were killed in the wars in this country. The event is held in the Maleny RSL each year.

Since the dawn of time there was
Yolgnu Ways and Yolgnu laws
families of Yolgnu blood
Waking to the morning,
waking to the morning

Then the white man came around
turned them up and turned them down
Telling lies of empty land
While waging wars unending,
brave Warriors defending

In violence the white man came
Genocide in all but name
stole the children from the bush
torn from land and living,
torn from land and living

Across the land invaders came
clearing forest, planting grain
No dreaming place lies undisturbed
Even changed the rivers flowing,
changed the rivers flowing

200 years of stolen land
May the power of the artist’s hand
keep the Yolgnu spirit high
above the pain descending,
above the pain descending.

This dispossession carries on
We ask that it may not be long
Before our constitution’s graced
with the voice of our First Nations,
the voice of our First Nations