Published in Overland Issue 238 Autumn 2020 · Racism / Aboriginal Australia Aboriginal people were here first Dujuan Hoosan The rainbow serpent comes through here on the dry land, and made the creeks, the rivers and waterholes. That’s why on white mans maps rivers look like snake tracks. The serpent made the water run really really really deep and fit himself in it. That became the waterholes around Alice Springs. The rainbow serpent use to come from long way over that way, use to come really fast this way and made a gap in the rocks with its body. It made, The Gap. It’s real. People think it’s just imagined, but black people, Aboriginals, they know it. Every time Aboriginal people know something, they feel it, then they see it, and it’s real. White people think it’s a joke – it’s not. Before everything wasn’t here. Before nothing was on Australia. It was only the Aboriginal people. Before the cars wasn’t made, before the house wasn’t made. Before the whole everything around the world wasn’t made – it was just Aboriginals on Australia. Then there was this man, Cook who wanted to take over Australia when there were only Aboriginal people looking after the land. He camed on the ship and he was the first man on Australia – the first white man. He wanted to buy the land. He wanted to buy Australia. But the Aboriginal people were there first. The Aboriginal people told them to go and find another land, because this was their land. The Aboriginal people were trying to get them off the land. But Cook didn’t listen to them. Cook was angry he couldn’t buy it. So he took it. He came along and claimed the land. And he had to get rid of the Aboriginal people. But there’s still more of us out on Australia. Still surviving. Some of the Aboriginal people changed into their kind. Aboriginal people, we have still survived here. The history I am told at home is in language and is about Aboriginal people, but the ones back at school that the teacher was telling us. That was for white people not for Aboriginal people. Lots of people been talking about racism. I didn’t know what that meant but I do now. It means when a man is so smart and thinks he is, he thinks he is so smart that he can be a man that cruels other people. Someone who thinks he can be whoever he wants and can rip off black people. That’s racist. First we have to go to school, listen to the white people and learn how to do their things. Then once we learn what they do all the time, then we can smash down all the buildings and turn the land back into the rocks. That’s might be gonna happen for the future. In My Blood It Runs is available for viewing in selected cinemas in Australia, Canada and the United States, and will be screened on ABC TV on Sunday 5 July at 9.30pm. Visit https://inmyblooditruns.com for more information. Read the rest of Overland 238 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Dujuan Hoosan Dujuan Hoosan, age 13, is a multilingual hunter and healer from Arrernte and Garrwa country in Central Australia, and was the youngest person to address the UN Human Rights Council on Indigenous issues last year. His life is explored in the award-winning documentary, In My Blood It Runs. More by Dujuan Hoosan › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 30 October 202330 October 2023 · Politics The lost Commonwealth Barry Corr Constitutional change is dead in the water. The Referendum has exposed the divides within our society, and the result demonstrates to the world Australia’s unconsciousness of its human rights failures. Sixty per cent of Australian voters have, consciously or unconsciously, determined that ‘bipartisanship’ lies somewhere between erasure and assimilation. 4 2 October 20233 October 2023 · Aboriginal Australia The use and abuse of History in the Voice referendum debate: an interview with Professor Gary Foley Gary Foley and Padraic Gibson I can see the failure of the referendum making a whole lot of Blackfellas sit up and think and realise again, what we realised back in ’67, that our best efforts to achieve our aims are always at our own behest, under our own control. A whole new generation of Black activists deciding hang on, to hell with the rest of them, let’s just focus on our own communities and start building up the strength of our own communities.
