English Homework Task

How is Aboriginal identity represented in “We Are Going” by Oodgeroo

Noonuccal?
Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poem “The Past” represents that even though Aboriginal
people are humans and are living beings, many Aboriginal Australians witness and
encounter a sense of exclusion and inequality in the world. The simile, “Where now
the many white men hurry about like ants”, elaborates how the European settlers
eagerly and deliberately wanted to knock down the homes of the Aboriginal
Australians so that they could watch the torment and agony which was being felt by
the Aboriginal’s and so they would feel satisfied and content with their actions. The
oxymoron, “We are as strangers now, but the white tribe are the strangers”, further
emphasises the grief and sorrow of the Aboriginals, considering the fact that a
couple of strangers had trespassed into their territory, annihilated everything, and
then left. The quote, “We are nature and the past, all the old ways / Gone now and
scattered”, illuminates the nature in their identity which has been broken and worn
away due to the destruction and obliteration of their land.