The whisper in the wind

Lindy Nolan

Early last December, there was Sorry Business at the Tent Embassy in Canberra. A Nunukul Elder from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), one of four Embassy founders, died here.

Talking, singing in language, stamping feet and clapsticks and didgeridoo remembered him and bid farewell amid huge plumes of smoke.

Now elders continue to carefully encourage young people to step up. This was clear during the Frontier Wars Camp in the lead up to Anzac Day.

Children on school holidays at the Embassy during learned without lecturing, painted up along with the adults on Anzac morning. 

Barkandji elder Uncle Marbk Wilson spoke each morning for unity and reconciliation, which can only come from justice, with invasion finally defeated. 

Young Wiradjuri man Trent Taylor felt impelled to speak on Sunday morning, and again on following days. The elders saw he was ready to lead the smoking ceremony despite Trent’s reticence. His poetry tells of the need to remember and of coming change: 

“The whisper in the wind,
that subtle change in the air,
those tell tale signs of the days to come.

For some it may seem too hard to breathe,
An that there is nothing left to believe,
An that all is lost an at what a cost,
Displaced an nearly erased,
Then asked to take a back seat in our own place,
Whilst you destroy our sacred places,
Then turn them into wastelands,
Yet can't even remember our names and faces,
Someone needs to save these sacred places
An record the names of all the lost names and faces...”

‘I see the big spirit in him. I want to encourage him to be a future leader,’ said Uncle Marbk.

In Australian fields

Walmajarri woman Gabby Baxter’s grandmother, a renowned artist, was one of the group who walked from the desert in the1960s, never before having seen whitefellas. Gabby’s father told Gabby it was important that she speak and helped her come forward. 

“I was proud to represent the Walmajarri nation at the Tent Embassy remembering that Walmajarri people have also been impacted by the frontier wars,” she said.

Uncle Marbk’s son, Dean Peachey, danced his father’s wedgetail eagle story in the War Memorial forecourt on Anzac Eve.

Elders welcomed anyone who listened and was prepared to stand with them.

Hazel Davies is one who has listened, learned and dreamed. A commemorative florist and TAFE teacher, five years ago she saw the same brilliant colours of the Flanders Poppy in the Desert Pea. 

Hundreds of Desert Peas were made during the week-long workshops where Hazel Davies created the wreath carried into the War Memorial, after the Anzac Ceremony.

Desert Peas grow, she was told by Uncle Marbk, where blood has been spilled. 

Mount Ainsley stands behind the War Memorial. On Anzac Eve, paper lanterns of peace were carried from its summit in a silent walk. In the War Memorial forecourt Hazel Davies read her poem, The Poppies and the Peas. It ends:

“Uncover, uncover with the red
The bloody truth of our dead
In Australian Fields.”

There are new scar trees in Canberra

Lindy Nolan

There are new scar trees in Canberra. They face outward from the Tent Embassy towards parliament house. The shields cut from the trees were soaked to carry sacred fire from the Embassy to the Frontier Wars March on Anzac Day.

When you sit at the Embassy at night, you see parliament house for what it is, a shadow. Blazed with light, empty of all meaning now except deception. 

The statue of King George, on its giant sandstone blocks (meant to awe us all with its strength and staying power) is insubstantial too, devoid of life. Behind it all stand the corporate inheritors of invasion, the ruling class. 

The Frontier Wars March and the Embassy stand for a different power, the people uniting for take this country back.

Barkandji elder, Uncle Marbk Wilson says, ‘I walk with truth. Under our lore, we can’t lie. This illegal government hasn’t spoken truth for 230 years and 88 days since they’ve been here.’

‘I carry allodial title, the oldest living lore,’ Uncle Markb says. Allodial lands are the absolute property of their owner and not subject to any rent service, or acknowledgment to a superior.

Fire burning

On Ngunawal land, this is a women’s sacred site. Embassy Firekeeper Gumbaynggirr man Roxley Foley says bad things happened here, that the feeling comes through the ground. And it’s clear living here is no easy thing through winter, when visitors are few, and homeless people arrive in need of a warm fire and drink.

The Embassy has been here since 1972, its sacred fire burning for the last twenty years. Today small campfires bring people together from all over Australia. Fires are tended each day, wood chopped and delivered by both elders and youth. 

Middle generations like Wiradjuri artist Ricky, who now lives at the Embassy, and whose family visits from Cowra, don’t sit after breakfast until the daily tasks are done.

At night the camp is alive with small lights.

Remember

Despite shamefully delayed recognition of the Black Diggers, both men and women, the Frontier Wars’ marchers stand behind a wire fence during Anzac memorials, like fringe dwellers kept out of country towns. 

Their message, National War Memorial boss, Brendan Nelson says, without hint of shame, belongs in the Australian Museum, not the War Memorial.

Yet according to NITV’s Nakari Thorpe, “Professor Reynolds says new research suggests around 65,000 people were killed in Queensland alone during the Frontier Wars, making the total more than any war Australia has ever fought in overseas.” 

The reply to Brendan Nelson comes in clenched fists. This is a demand, not a polite request: ‘Remember our heroes, remember our dead, the first patriots.’