Dispossessed

1. Dispossessed Question 1 What is the subject of the poem?

2. In this poem, Oodgeroo uses a scathing tone to condemn the arrival of the settlers and the dispossession of Indigenous Australians from their land. It is far more emotive than We Are Goingwith open insults of hypocrisy and injustice rather than mere consumption of culture. Here, white man raped and murdered, shot, poisoned, stole and enslaved. Christians were heathens who degraded and oppressed rather than saved and helped.

3. What is the denotative meaning of the poem? • Indigenous Australians have been dispossessed - violently removed from their land

4. What is the connotative meaning of the poem? • that Indigenous Australians have lost everything and that because the suffering has been so great, hope is gone • a lack of faith in white man ever righting the wrongs of the past • the heart is dead – a metaphor for no life – it’s stopped beating, no motivation • the suffering has killed the hope that justice will some day be served and that the long years of hoping has required courage which has lost, taking the heart with it

5. The words, ‘and the heart dies in you’ are powerful: they allude to the death of humanity and decency - that white man has no heart (it has died) and that he is cold, cruel and callous, even ignorant of Indigenous Australians’ plight. Another interpretation perhaps is that Indigenous culture is the heart of Australia and it is dying. • What is the connotative meaning of the poem? • the evil of the invaders and all the damaging products and customs they brought • the anger incurred from a lack of respect from the dominant culture towards the minority culture • the rage felt at the injustice perpetrated against the innocent • the need for Indigenous Australians to be recognised as a worthy community • the hypocrisy demonstrated by white man against the Indigenous community – they promote peace but commit violence, they preach love and tolerance but display racism

6. How does Oodgeroo create such a powerful poem? • Use of figures of speech - Oodgeroo’s use of figures of speech is again very effective in her attack on colonisation • attacks universal symbols of morality, justice and mercy (bibles, Christian missionaries) • uses metaphors like “your tribes are broken vagrants now wherever whites abide” to contrast the vulnerability of one and the dominant evil of the other • repetition of “the heart dies in you” is a reference to the death of the human being, the soul, the self, the meaning of life – the death of the spirit • uses strong language to elevate one culture and denigrate the other as she moralises about injustice • uses rhyme to introduce rhythm and beat, again to stress powerful words like ‘oppressed’ and ‘dispossessed’, ‘gun’ and ‘won’

7. Question • For what purpose does Oodgeroo make use of the contrast between pre and post white settlement? • To express intense anger and resentment - maybe to even incite it in readers • To awaken people to past injustices and the continuance of it – she states that peace (or life) won’t come to her people until ‘hypocrisy is scorned and hate is counted shame’ and essentially, given her use of present tense, that it continues still • To plead her case for change

8. Question • Who is Oodgeroo angry at? • The intruders, the invaders, the Anglo-Celts – the settler version of Australians • Anyone involved in rejecting Indigenous culture • Anyone involved in pushing them off their land and for that matter, still pushing them into the background, out of sight

9. Question • Oodgeroo addresses this poem to ‘Australian man’. To whom is she speaking? • Indigenous Australians