Oh, when I was in high school, for the only two years of high school that I did in Casino; an old teacher, old Tiger McGee used to get us to write compositions, you see. I had a lively imagination even then and so I'd get carried away with what I had and he'd say, "Ruby, two or three pages would have done for a composition, don't do a whole book," because I'd have 12 or 13 pages goin, getting carried away, on the go . . . (laughs). I did say I'd write a book, but I had a family of kids to rear first, and they come first, naturally. Now that they've all gone their own way in life, all grown, it's time for me to pick up pen, and I haven't stopped since. I first picked up a pen on the 23rd of May, 1984, to start Don't Take Your Love to Town.

Was it hard for you, because a lot of Don't Take Your Love to Town is about your family and the struggles . . .

Well, it took me four and a half years plus one near nervous breakdown from writing up all the hurt and the death. I was writing about the death of my kids, and I was recovering from major surgery on my stomach. They pulled the guts out of me literally, you might say, but I was real stressed out, that's how I come to be here at Allawah Hostel. At the time I used to live in Henderson Road, Alexandria, and it got so far as to go and see someone to talk to, a psychologist, but I was telling him what was wrong with me. I knew what was wrong with me. He said, "Look, it's only just stress that you're suffering. It will get better, in time it will, you really know what's wrong with you." I was sitting down and crying and telling him while I was crying that I was suffering, mourning for my kids all over because of writing this book, and he said, "Well, it will get better, it's only just stress. When I got to this hostel here, I had nothing not like you see today. This is my seventh year here and ah, jeez you can accumulate some stuff, aye?

Yes! (Laughs) Like my bag . . .

(Laughs) Yeah, yeah, anyhow I'd go out to the table at mealtimes and I'd eat real quick before anybody come, because at the time I was suffering blood sugar levels. I don't know it was blood sugar levels, I thought it was just the stress that was making me silly. I've never been affected by stress in my life, but by god it can knock you for a loop, you know. And I'd eat my meal real quick and I'd fly back in here to my room and I was too frightened to sit amongst them, so I'd eat before anyone else came to the table and running in, and they must have thought I was whatsaname, you know, goin mad, but it wasn't that, it was just that I thought that every time they looked at me, they could see how much I was hurting. So back in the room I'd run to hide my hurt. All I had was a little tranny and I used to lay listening to 2CH music, real soothing music, but later on I got better with it and now they can't shut me up, you know, don't have to hide in my room anymore, out goin and runnin.

So, Real Deadly was stories that you had done for Don't Take Your Love to Town and had in your collection, or did you write them separately, or . . .

I was writing the stories up when I was doing the research for My Bundjalung People which is coming out, and because that took a long time I said well I'd like to get them out. Tom Thompson had heard me read . . . he gave me time and he said . . . show us what you got and when I showed him the stories, he said, "You got enough there for a little book." I said, "You understand what I meant?" I said, " These are all real people. This is from our side of the fence. These are our stories." I said, "Because I haven't discovered fiction yet." Although the history of the whole of white australia is one of the biggest fictions, aye?

True.

So that's how that came about. Real Deadly's in its second print now.

And how's Don't Take Your Love to Town going?

Sixth print. Higher School Certificate in three themes starting last year, the Year of the Indigenous People, theme of the family. This year in Cultural Identity, and I got a letter just the other day from Penguin saying that it's in Aboriginal Experience next year. So that's three themes, and wow, that's not bad. But they have never promoted it overseas, and Sally Morgan's making a killing with her book and my book came out just the year after her.

How do you feel about being compared with Sally Morgan?

Oh, we're two different people, Sal and I. Put it this way. Sal's an academic, she's been to university, got a degree, she's an artist to boot. And me I only went to second form, class 2F actually and that's a long way from A, B and C. Her book is of three generations of Koori experience and it's a biography, and she wrote about her mother and her uncle and her grandmother, and how she discovered her Aboriginal heritage. I've always known who I am. I was born on an Aboriginal mission, and mine's of five generations of Koori experience. My grandfather the cricketer, Uncle Ernie Ord the tribal doctor, my mother's and father's stories, my stories, and my kids' stories. So there's five generations of Koori experience, and that's the difference between us.

Some Aboriginal women who are writing don't have much time for Sally Morgan because they say that she won't come and talk with them, or meet . . .

Well, I think some people are a bit unfair judging her like that because her book was the first to open this country up to . . . Hey, this is what they were doin, takin the kids and everything, so they had to identify themselves as something else than what they really were. She identified as an Indian because they were frightened of identifying as Aboriginal because they might be taken. This country doesn't know nothing about our people and that's why that girl had to do that. And yet she had the intelligence to want to find out, which she did. No, you can't take that away from Sal. So she got the whole lot, and missionary people played a big role in the near destruction of our cultures too, forcing their religious beliefs on Aboriginal people. Our spirituality is our religion. Always knew there was the good spirit that looked after every living thing, and that we lived in unity with the land. The earth's our mother. Aboriginal people before we were human beings, we were animals, fish, birds, insects and in white concepts of that, all human form evolved from the bloody sea, didn't it? So this is our beliefs and this is valid, our beliefs are as valid as any form of religion, Catholicism, Buddhism, Protestants, anything. That's our religious beliefs, you know. And this country has never acknowledged anything about our Aboriginality, we're a well-hidden history; and I say Big Shame, australia, Big Shame.

There was an article that I read by Jane Jacobs that talked about how Aboriginal women's special affinity with the land has been ignored, and it's just assumed that Aboriginal men owned the spirituality, and everything to do with the land.

No. Aboriginal men and women lived in a society where men had their ceremonies that women couldn't go to, and women had their ceremonies that men couldn't go to, you see. But for there ever to have been any domestic violence and stuff like that against women in the family unit would have upset the whole process of survival, you know. So there was none of that, it was never tolerated. Although men, if they had a row, threw spears at one another, and if someone got a little nick and a bit of blood was drawn, it was quashed, you know. But the males had their initiation ceremonies, which women could not see or witness, on pain of death. And it was the same thing on breaking the marriage rules. See, our mob up home, they weren't polygamists, and yet some tribal groups were, a man could have a couple of wives, because they came from a patriarchal society at first. But as our Elders started to die out, the only way of survival was to hand on the knowledge to women, so this is how we've got clever women as well as clever men, you see.

So that was an effect of colonisation?

Yeah, yeah.

It changed the whole information-passing process?

The whole colonisation bit has nearly destroyed our people's heritage and culture. What I'm saying is you can look at the television and you won't see none of our black faces running around. You might see them now and again in the soaps and ads, but very few times. A few years down the line, they even took to blackening people's faces up, white people, to play the parts of Aborigines. And we've got this whole wonderful human resource, our Aboriginality, that this country has never ever used, to promote our stuff, to lift us up, but they've used it for their own advantage, for their own gain, and they've been taking from our culture ever since they colonised this land. And they don't know how to give anything back to level it up. And again I say, Big Shame australia, Big Shame.

Do you think that white australians' minds don't know how to give back, to have a give-take relationship with Aboriginal people?

You can't judge em all, but I think the racism is embedded in a lot of people. It's handed on from generation to generation, the stereotyping of our people. They've got us stereotyped as nothing but lazy layabout boongs, you know, and they see a Koori fella staggering down the street charged up and they say, "Oh, they're all like that," but they never stop, or pause to think, "Hey, what's made this person like this?" You can't do what has been done to a race of people without it having disastrous results. And we're the end results. We're still floundering for a footing, and to be equal to everybody in this country. Look, years ago in the Menzies era, they had what they called the White Australia Policy where nobody with a black skin could migrate to this country; it was never legislated for, in parliament, but it was a known rule. They could come to study, but they had to ping off and go back home where they come from after they finished, when their visas expired or whatever. And today, it's open slather. They classified them, in those days; the Asiatics, they were the yellow peril. They didn't want them coming here, they were the yellow hordes. And yet today you see they've adopted multiculturalism right over the top of our people. They have glossed over us like they've glossed over our history, and the whole world is watching this country because of its racist attitudes to Aboriginal people. We're the first people of this land, and those of us with a degree of caste, we were never, you see it still today, defined as real Aboriginals. The only ones that are real Aboriginals here are the traditional tribal ones out in the desert sitting on a rock with a spear in his hand. But we define ourselves as the descendants of those indigenous ones. We never asked for the degree of caste that they stuck into our grandmothers. My grandmother was a full-blood. She was raped by an Italian, the banana plantation owner up home, Billy Nudgell, that's how my mother came to be. You see.

So we're forever being blamed by this racist society for what colonialism has done to us, colonial and western ways, western laws, see? The people who colonised this country were not the cream of the British aristocracy, they were the dregs of an oppressed society. They brought that oppression here and oppressed our Aboriginal people with it. They were the builders of gaols and prisons, and in 200 years the mentality hasn't changed. The only change, though, is that the oppressors are on top and are the bosses, and we Aboriginal people are 15 to 20 years behind in all the basic human rights such as health, housing, education and employment. And fact is fact and I can only write and tell it as it is. They got transported here to australia because they got into trouble at home for stealing a loaf of bread or something. They were convicts, you see what I mean? Now they're building more gaols and our people are still dying deaths in custody.

We're not quite two percent of the population that stands at 17 million and still our people are dying at a rate faster than anybody, you know. And what does it say to you? It says, I know this for a fact, you just ask any Aboriginal person that's been incacerated. Aboriginal people are being brutalised in the whole racist daily system in this country. Look there were 239 recommendations made in the Royal Commission inquiry and not one of those recommendations has been implemented and fixed up to make things better, you know, for our people. It's really disgusting to think that, hey, the killing times are still here with us. And there's something about the system of law in this country, that's white man's law that we've had to conform to all the time. We were never allowed to be ourselves, we've had to always conform to white man's ways and laws when we had our own traditional ways. We had a democratic society before they came and stuck their noses into our culture and divided, and hoarded and literally tore us apart. And here we are after 205 years trying to come together as a people to lift ourselves out of, if you'll pardon the expression, the shit that they have created for us.

Would you have any recognition of a common experience with, say, a race like the Irish, who were starved out of their own country, or would you say that it hasn't happened to them because they've still got their culture, and they've still got their language?

Yeah, but then again the Brits should do the honourable thing and get the fuck out of their country. But the more I research, it makes me so angry, you know, about all the stuff that's gone down with our people, and it's disgusting. I'm writing my son's book now, and I've nearly finished that too with the first big draft, and I've got it all worked out real good in my head, and on the page.

I read a segment of that in Australian Canadian Studies.

You saw that? I got that there and there's another part of it coming out in Meanjin too. But there's a whole lot of inequality, and non-acceptance of Aboriginal people having any input into the settling of this land. And let's face it, the first squatters would never have been able to settle this land without Aboriginal involvement: cooks, housekeepers, fencers, midwives, you name it, the lot. And they started off by breaking up our family clans, by taking the so called halfcaste kids from the missions because they didn't want them growing up tribal because our traditional ones were classified as heathens and vermin to be cleared off the face of the earth, and we were considered then to be a dying race anyhow. But hey, we're still here! And we've got a younger generation coming up and we've got old ones going back and getting the education and blah blah, you know. And we're gonna win out in the end, because in our Koori way what goes around comes around, and it's our turn. We've waited 205 years for a turn, you know what I mean.

I was interested that in My Bundjalung People you talk a bit about how the British stole ancestral remains.

Oh-ho! Not only England! Germany, America, Spain all them places, they got there, in the museums and that, bodies of our ancestors. They not only murdered our people, they grave-robbed us as well. And they grave-robbed us because there was this theory, the Darwin theory, that Aboriginal people were the missing link between man and ape, so that's why they did this to us. Who gave them the goddamn right to do this to us? We are human beings, you know, and when we bleed it bleeds red. It doesn't bleed black, you know.

Yes, you were talking also about academic and "big-shot writers" today that use the same sort of mentality.

Yes, they do.

Do you think it's possible for someone to do a project on Aboriginal culture or cultural production or anything like that without consulting with Aboriginal people?

No. They should not. They've got to consult with Aboriginal people to do that.

What about people that read your work? There's been a lot of critical essays about your writing, and they use a lot of theory of how to read autobiography, and they look for you trying to find your real self, your true self.

I don't need to find my true self, I am my true self and that's why I write it like that, so it will open other people's hearts and minds as to what I'm on about, and it's written in the first person. I'm that first person, but the other stories, like in Real Deadly, they're our stories and they're told from our side of the fence. Because for too long we have had a lot of people representing us, but they're not representing us correctly. Lismore Historical Society, they've had the whole lot of my family tree from the mission recorded and documented and most of it's all bloody wrong. I had to go through the whole lot. This is another form of misinterpreting our culture. So we have to start picking up pens and documenting our own stuff, because they've made such a fuck-up of our lives already, you know. Why give them a second chance? People say to me, "Why have you got all that stuff down in the library?" you know, the State Library. And I say, "Hey, I want to store all this knowledge about my mob here so that we don't get left out of the next lot of history!" You know what I mean? Because we've been locked completely out of this one.

Even now some of the powers that be can't deal with the attempts to correct history, such as when recently in Queensland, they wanted to change the word "settlement" in the school syllabus guide to invasion.

It was invasion, I can guarantee you that. And I keep all the clippings, as you know, with the research, all the newspapers and that. I get all the clippings about anything that's pertaining to our culture.

The Premier said that that was offensive to white people!

Oh well, how about it being offensive to us then too? Because we are invaded people, we're dispossessed people, and we're still struggling to get a foothold. And it was not settlement; they came and took and stole the land. There were no treaties. No hello, goodbye, kiss me arse or nothing! Just take, take, take.

And kill.

And kill, kill, kill. It's well documented, you can find all that stuff there. Before settlement there was something like about 500 different tribes of people, that would mean there were about 500 different languages, right? But all scattered all over the place, coastal and whatever, central and urban and all around. Today there are 200 tribes left on the whole continent, and there's only 20 languages! Three hundred Aboriginal nations were wiped out through the colonising of our land and, look, white australia has a black history. It not only has a black history, it has a very bloodied one. And it's well documented what they did to our people, but who gives a damn? You know, people's eyes have to open. And we've got Hawke promising a treaty in `88, what Mandaway Yunupingu sings about in "Treaty Now, Treaty Now," promises can be broken. This is what they've been doing all our lives to us, you know, disowning and dispossessing us. And then you've got the Reconciliation Council. And I've heard this fella say this, John Howard, "To give Aboriginal people land rights would cause a division." I've got news for Mr Howard. We have always lived with that division, every day of our lives. Of course, there has to be a coming together of the two cultures. We were willing to share this land with the settlers, and there's got to be a coming together of the two cultures, but on a fair and equal level. Not like we are today, at the bottom rung of the social ladder in this country. We are classified as the lowest of the low, and hey, we're the first people of the land. My kids say, just wind her up and let her go! (Laughs). I wish I was 20 years younger, I'm running around in a puff.

You're still doing all right.

Ohh. But I'm only a Ruby-come-lately as far as the writing goes, I've only been writing for ten years. And there's Jack Davis writing for about 55 years, Mudrooroo going on for what?

How old am I? Twenty-eight.

Yeah, well Muddhi's been writing for more than that.

He wrote his first book when I was born.

Yeah! 1965. Ah, Kath, nearly 40 (years) she's been writing. Faith Bandler, all this lot, they've done all their writing up before.

So do you think that the life that you've led has all of a sudden transformed itself into this writing, all your storytelling, maybe you've started to put it down on paper, and that's why you're so successful as a writer because you're such a good storyteller?

A true storyteller! No, the truth. As I said, I'm not interested in fiction. Don't need to be, because I'm too busy writing the truth about my people, in the hope that this country will open its eyes and say, "Hey, here's this whole wonderful human resource that we've only used for our own gain, and never accepted into our society." Last year was the first year any Koori's been invited into the Ministry of the Arts to judge the writing, and I was that Koori, and I felt like a rose amongst thorns. And I said to them, "Hey, this sounds a bit tokenistic to me. Why is it this Year of the World's Indigenous People that you people are inviting me, an Aborigine, into your social enclave? Why haven't my people been allowed in before? And they said, "Oh no, no, no, it's not being tokenistic. We want to right that great wrong." Let's see if there's any follow-up next year. And I was the first to help judge the Young Writer of the Year prize, but they never acknowledged me as being the first. But this other mob told me that I was the first when I went in there.

Do you think there's a difference between, say, what a lot of Aboriginal people call do-gooder whites, academics, historians or whatever, and maybe people that might be able to participate in some way on an equal level with Aboriginal people?

Look, there should be. I would say that they're not all bad. There are those that honestly, genuinely want to know and want to try and right that great wrong. But then there's a lot of greedy ones out there too, that know it all. You know, as I said I've got no academic qualifications. The only qualifications I've got is in the school of hard knocks and there's no better teacher.

You've got the equivalent of a PhD with all your knowledge in Koori culture.

Bloody oath I have! In my own culture . . .

It was good that you said that in the Australian.

Oh you know, it's true. But there are some deadly people that work with Aboriginal people and do good. And then you've got some buggers that are just the opposite.

Do you think that your books have something about the way they're structured or the way they're written, because I've heard people that have read them say that they find that there's so much in them, so much detail, so many activities, that they find it really hard to follow, to get into?

Yeah, well this our extended family. We come from extended family. Everybody had a place, you know. No one was denied anything, and our culture was based on sharing and caring. We were the first communists, and the most loved people of our culture were the elders, they had the choicest cuts of meat that the hunter brought in, as well as the children, the jarjums. So, we've had to conform to other standards, and you could say, oh boy, we had good teachers. So even in our culture today we've got our mob that goes and gets the expertise and get the academic qualifications and that, and the government holes them up in these jobs where they're not getting back to their communities and using that expertise to lift them up, you know. Then again we've got, how can I put it, our own people that are in power, controlling our people just like the governments of the past have always done. And this is what I'm saying now about ATSIC. There's a whole ruckus over the control they're after, and they're sort of gobbling up everything. They want to buy into the Aboriginal Arts Unit, and they get five million. Aboriginal Arts only gets three, for all the arts whatsanames, you know. But I mean to say, that's no fair go there. There's another word that I had for that, it's not only the control, some of our people call them uptown niggers.

Or Buppies.

Hey?

Buppies.

Aahh, ha! But you know, they get the expertise and they've got flash cars and their doing this deadly job up there, and they get that way that they think their goona don't stink.

What I've been wanting to ask you about for a long time is your humour.

My humour? Well, Janine, Aboriginal humour is our survival mechanism, but I leave that book for the last. I'm writing a book on Koori humour, I'm working on that, and it's called "Only Gammon," collecting funny stories and jokes from all over the country.

Could you tell me about what you were doing in New Zealand?

I was invited there by the Maori people for the Festival of Pacific Arts, for two weeks, and I was there for a week.

Was that Wellington?

Yeah, it was in New Zealand, I was there as a presenter, reader, author. I had three big readings in the town civic centre and sold heaps of my books. They were even ordering My Bundjalung People because I promoted it there, see. I read Nob's story out to them, I take all my stuff. And I had worksops at the marae, the Maori marae where I stayed. That was the most wonderful experience, just made a person feel so warm. And to get acknowledgement from people like that, whose culture is so similar to ours. But I told them, they've got a treaty, and they said, yeah, but it's not been honoured. And I said yeah, well we haven't got nothing like that (laughs), you're lucky to even have that. But they couldn't get over how much hardship our people have had to put up with, you know.

Did you meet any Maori women writers while you were there?

Yeah! Pat Grace, she chaired the sessions that I was on, just me and her. Then there was another young lady that chaired the one on the indigenous writers. And we saw the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance group, as well as the Maori lot. Ohh, it was fantastic! And we couldn't get tickets to Mandaway Yunupingu's whatsaname, Yothu Yindi, but I caught him on the plane coming home and I got his autograph. I said, "My kids said that because I had a 15 minute meeting with you at the opera house a good while ago, they should've kicked my bum because I forgot to get your autograph." I said, "Will you give it to me now?" and he said, "Of course Aunty!" And he wrote it up, what did he write? He wrote, "Yothu Yindi, Sounds of Australia, Music Sounds of Australia." And he wrote his name, then he put "Love and peace." I treasure that.

Do you think that it's good that Mandaway's getting such a world reputation now?

He's the greatest promotion for our culture this country's ever had. He was off again, they were coming back here to Sydney and from here they're flying off to somewhere else.

Is music an important way of spreading the message?

Well, we're all saying the same thing. Whether we're musicians, artists painting, singers, dancers, and also writers, poetry, poems, we're all talking and trying to tell this country about how dispossession of our own country has left us; in the hope that, one day, the penny will drop.

There's so many gifts in Aboriginal culture and spirituality.

But it's not only about the culture, it's not only for us. It's for our people to share with people, because it's where we come from, to make things better.

Sharing's a part of your heritage.

Yeah, that's right.

Earlier this year you went to Adelaide, to the Adelaide Writers Festival?

Yeah, I read with Nancy Cato, and it was titled "The Modern Matriarch," and we had the big west tent, it was jam-packed. They were standing up the back and she, this lady, I couldn't have imagined being on the panel with her because this woman's written 20 books, and she was one of the first ones who kicked off this writers' session over in Adelaide because that's where she comes from, but she lives at Noosa Heads now. And the dear old girl came up to my room and wanted me to go and have a drink with her (laughs). But I was already in bed layin' up. She honoured our people . . . she wrote that series, you know, All The Rivers Run. Beautiful. And she honoured our people by saying, "I don't feel good about being called a modern matriarch," she said, "I only ever had two children, and I've got three grandchildren. And here's Ruby got a whole tribe, she's got nine kids and she's got 21 grandchildren last count!" She said, "So she's the one that should be the matriarch." And she read stuff about my people, about my Bundjalung people, not from my story but from stuff that was written by other people, poetry about my mob up there. So it was real wonderful.

That's good.

Yeah, I've got the tape and everything there. I got interviewed by 5UB radio, they came up and interviewed me. And I took my granddaughter . . . Last time I was there was when Muddhi was launching Real Deadly for me in 1992, and I launched his Wildcat Falling. I took my granddaughter to Tendanya because the last time I was there it was shut and I never got to see anything. I went in and they knew me as soon as I came through the door, and they said, "Come on, we've got to take you and show you the four exhibitions here." And when I walked in I got the shock of my life, the traditional ones had been there, as well as others with the sand paintings and that. As soon as I walked in the door of the gallery I could feel all this presence around me, all the spirits. And the fella, the oldfella there looked at me and said, "You can feel it too, can't you?" And I said yes, and I just glowed. I went and sat down, and the next thing I knew they were bringing children through, listening to the videos and looking at the exhibition, high school kids, and they were bailing me up to talk to these kids! We had a nice lunch there, before we went back to the Festival, but it was lovely to have input and I really enjoyed that. But as usual, it was rush, rush, rush.

It was interesting in Nobby's Story that you were talking and in My Bundjalung People too about passing on all your knowledge to your children, and that you'd taken Nobby to the school to do your talk. The kids responded really well to him, and you realised he'd be the right person to pass your knowledge on to.

Not only that, Pauline's the same, she can do that. She's an Education Officer, and she gets all her stuff from me to talk to classes, all the resource stuff. So, it's good, you know, it's got to be handed on, and why I wanted to do this particularly for Nob, to tell the story of me taking him back and showing him his dreaming, was because his father's a white man; I married a white man, and I'm the only black connection to his culture. And just for him to be able to paint this [the paintings of tribal elders hanging on the wall], the elders from his dreams, while he's in prison, what does it say to you? The elders are talking through our kids. The Aboriginal spirit in this country will never die because we're the first people of this land. Just look at his face!

You can feel it.

It's true, look at the eyes, look.

Yes, they're alive.

Yeah, he's got a commission now to paint a mural on a Catholic school wall, something like $2000, thinks he's just it, he's starting to make the scene. Oh, I love talking with him! He says, "Mum, I'm in love again," and I say, "You say that every time you meet another girl." So I start singing to him, " Falling in love again, what am I to do, can't help it." And my young fella, Jeffrey, he's got about six or seven trades and now he's working on the railway, he's a signalman. He was trying to pull these tyres of an old car over there that was his, anyhow, I'm sitting on a big old wooden log over there and I'm singing to him, "I've been workin' on the railroad all the live long day," and he's running round looking for something to chuck at me! I give as good as I get with em, you know.

What about the title of Don't Take Your Love to Town, that's from Kenny Rogers?

Kenny Rogers song, aye, an old boyfriend used to sing that to me. That fella who I wrote about in there, Georgie, who was heaven's gift to the women of the world. Or he thought he was.

What, another one?

But here, can you see what's going on there, Janine, look. What's going on in the cover of Don't Take Your Love to Town? They're Mimi spirits.

Yes.

What's going on there? Give in?

Yep.

A mother, giving birth, squattting, and there's the baby, one helping her in front delivering, and this one's supporting her back, these two are dancing for joy. And I did that in nearly every chapter in this book, I mean, give birth; didn't I?

Yes.

And I will say, this is not only my book, my story, it's the story of every Aboriginal woman in this country today that's got kids to raise. I'm only one. Now, what's going on there? Ol' Rube, Real Deadly, that means "real good," and yet the Yabsley House mob was real deadly the other way to my mob. They were the dispossessors of my people, of their land and dreaming. That's why I've used that photograph.

That's really effective. You can say a great deal with few words. Does it disappoint you that a lot of people can't get it?

Yes.

Do you feel as if you're bashing your head against the wall sometimes?

No, no I don't, because I'm pushed by the spirits of my people to do what I do.

In Don't Take Your Love to Town, it says that "Language is a glass door that we bang into all the time," and it wasn't a barrier, it was just invisible to white people.

Well it means that we're invisible to white people. We're just like walking through a glass door, there's nothing there.

What really strikes me when I'm reading your work is that your use of language can be seen as a resistance strategy.

Yeah, it is a resistance strategy, of trying to educate people about what it's like from our side of the fence, and when you see swear words in my books, then you know I'm getting angry. And I tell it like it is. I've got to tell it like it is, you know.

Compared with yours there are a lot of women's stories that seem very cleaned up. There's that old stereotype of an Aboriginal woman being either morally upright or sexually deviant, or something like that, either-or, like Mary Rose Liverani saying that you had no . . .

Yeah, yeah, that I can't write. Well a lot of my stuff wasn't accepted as literature because we come from an oral tradition, where our stories were handed down . . . but we've always had to be the ones to conform to white ways, to white standards and learn the Queen's English, so that we can write so that people can comprehend what we're on about. But we've always had to be the ones to conform to other people's standards, as I said we were never allowed to be ourselves. Well, what, pray tell, what is literature? A form of the written word, aye, so that people can understand what we're talking about and that's what we've done. Yet, you've got toffee-nosed ones that think they're better than everyone else and that their goona don't stink. But their heart gives them away. That's it, in a nutshell. I mean, who are they to judge Aboriginal people? It would be a different thing if they went and lived among Aboriginal people and knew what Aboriginal people were on about, rather than sit back there and write all this stuff, and get their own perceptions of who we are and what we're on about, which perpetuates the stereotypes of our people. What does it say on the end of that review? If a white had written this it would have been thrown on the scrap pile, or some bloody thing. No white could write that sort of story, because no white has ever lived the life of an Aboriginal person like me.

Exactly. That's true of Archie Weller's stories as well. He writes about urban Nyoongahs and a lot of white people can't understand. The picture of the city and the country is totally different.

There you are, and our voice is as valid as anyobody else's and when we write we say comin and goin and gonna, hey bra, or tidda, something like that, and that's the way we talk. It's our voice, so when my editor was working on my first book I said to her "Don't you gubba-ise my text!"

Did she know what you meant?

Yeah, she knew what I meant. She knew what I meant. But I explained it to her. I said, "I don't want the text gubba-ised," you know, "Leave it." But anyhow, it's just the writing. If I'd have known that I could do what I have been doing over the last ten years, writin, puttin pen to paper, I wouldn't have had to work so bloody hard. But I had the life to live, I can assure you that everything that's written in there is true, because I've got the scars to prove it.

Could you tell me if there have been any major influences on your work?

Mostly I just write about what affects our people. It's not that I'm not interested in other people's writing, it's just that I'm too busy doing this. I've got my own wonderful human resource that I can write about just in my family alone, and extended family, you know.

And that can keep you busy.

That sure can keep you busy, yeah. I've been trying to get a collection together of all the Koori stuff. I've got that many anthologies I've lost count, I just give up. Because they keep comin at me wanting stuff to publish, so I keep writing em up, but I wrote a piece for Kevin Gilbert when he died because I was behind him in 1988 when he was going to be in the Human Rights Awards for Inside Black Australia, you know, the poems. I was on right next to him. I was getting it for Don't Take Your Love to Town. That's the Human Rights Award there, look. The beautiful bauble piece, glass. I've still got it. So I wrote the story. I wrote the true story about how he got up in front of the Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephen, and said: "I wouldn't feel good about taking that. It was bits of glass beads like that, pieces of glass and baubles that were given to my people to dispossess us of our land. While ever there's Aboriginal communities without fresh drinking water and they're dying of curable diseases, no thank you, I don't want it." And just sat down, and I didn't know which way to look, you know. I was right next to him. I had said to my kids, all my kids were there and I had threatened them beforehand, I said, "Don't come in thongs and whatnot," all those big-shots will be there and you've gotta put up a front, you know. I said, "I could go out in favour of him," and they said, "Oh mum, don't you dare; we got dressed up to come here." Because I could have got up and said the same thing, "No, stick it." Because it's only a token gesture.

That's what Oodgeroo did . . .

We don't have any human rights.

That's what Oodgeroo did with her MBE in 1988, handed it back.

Yeah, that's right. But I took that thinking that, hey, they were opening the door to let us in out of the cold, accepting us. But I soon found that they can slam the door just as quick in your face.

Did you think that Kevin Gilbert had his way of doing it, and you had your way?

Well I agree exactly with him. Because they're only token gestures. We still don't have any human rights, but then again, the kids say: "But mum, they're acknowledging you for your writing," and that's the only reason why I took it.

That's what I mean about you having your way through your writing.

Yeah, but I believe in what he said too, and I could have gone out in favour of him. And I wrote this beautiful story about that. And they sent two couriers for it, that one and one about Mabo, I wrote a paper about Mabo. And it's not Mah-bo, it's May-bo, because there's no "ah" in it, you know what I mean? And they even sent two couriers out here to pick them up, the big newspapers in town, and yet they never published them, because they've got their so-called experts that know everything and don't want to hear from us black people. That's how they keep us oppressed, you see. But there's gotta come a time when they've gotta let us write a reply to their stories and things in the papers, you know.

That Kevin Gilbert story sounds good.

Well it's been published by Stet, a newspaper from South Australia. It was also published by the Koori Mail from up home, that'd be a great one. But I haven't got any copies here left, because when I finish with them, I store them, to be used for educating people and stuff like that.

Do you think that there's a reason why Aboriginal women tend to use more of a life writing form, and the men tend to use fiction? People like Muddhi write fiction, but women have so much more of their own lives that they tell.

That's right. Yeah, I think that's so. I think so.

Do you have any thoughts about why that might be the case?

Well, from what I can understand of fiction it's just made up stories, and I don't need to make up stories.

Do you wonder why the men can do that, tend to be able to do that more than women. Do you think it's because they've been published longer than women?

Oh well, Mudrooroo's an old master, he's been writing for donkey's years longer than me. Maybe later on, I'll write it, I don't know, I haven't a clue, but I'm a dramatist. I like the drama of writing, because there is plenty of drama in what I write. But it's also true, you see, it's also true, and that's what I'm on about.

Ian Syson wrote a piece in Hecate about reading Don't Take Your Love to Town as a working class text, and I wonder how you feel about people reading your work as part of working class politics? If there's any affinity between poor whites and blacks?

There is an affinity between poor whites. I know lots of poor white women that have lived like that, out in the bush and struggling with kids and stuff like that, but I mean, their stories have been told, their histories have been told by their mob, and there's nothing like that's been written about black women, from a black woman's perspective, you know.

Black women are the silent strugglers?

Yeah. We've always had black women that have; as I said, that's not only my story, I'm only one. It's the story of every Aboriginal woman that's got kids, jarjums to raise.

How would you hope that non-Aboriginal people would read your work, anyway?

Well, I'd hope that they'd read it and say, "Hey, I didn't know that people could achieve stuff like this, and this is what they really do, and it's what our people have done in the past, but our people have been written up about and this mob hasn't, it's great!" I want them to see that we're able to do this, to show people what we're really like.

Do you think postcolonialism exists?

Postcolonialism . . . well, define that for me.

I'd say it's where the country's no longer colonised but the people aren't free.

Where attitudes . . . well, that's right, that's it in a nutshell, because it still exists today. We are still living under that postcolonialism today, as you say, because we're still affected by the stuff that the colonists brought to this country, today, all that shit.

I ask you that because in Sally Morgan's My Place Arthur Corunna says that "the problem is colonialism isn't over yet."

It's still here. It's still here.

There's a school of thought, intellectual debate, that uses the concept of postcolonialism, and then people that object to the term because "post" implies that it's past, and in no way is that applicable to Aboriginal people.

Well, you could say this to them, that Ol' Rube says that if you think that, paint your face black. This is what I say to people that say that there's no racism in this country, paint yourself black for a day and see how well you fare, just change the colour of your skin for a day and see how well you fare.

Just one day.

Just one day, and you can quote me on that.

I was talking to you before about knowledge and education, and spirituality, because I was reading My Bundjalung People and I noticed you don't separate knowledge, education and spirituality out, it's all together.

Well our spirituality is our religion, our beliefs. Our Dreaming is an all-encompassing thing. Before creation time, when the spirit forces moved over the land, creating the rivers, streams, mountains and valleys, and all that's in it, the animals, and setting down the laws and the rules for Aboriginal peoples, the world's oldest living form of humans, to survive by. This is our Dreaming.

I see how that would be pretty hard to separate from knowledge; you can't separate that from knowledge and education.

I don't think so. It all falls into the same category. The longer you live the more knowledge you get, and the more wisdom. There's an old saying, aye, gee I wish I knew as much as I did then, how does that one go?
I wish I knew as much then as . . .

Now as I did then, or something.

Back then as I do now.

Back then as I do now. That's it. So, hence, it takes a time for us to come from there to here. And in the transition from there to there, you gain all this knowledge.

So what do you think about the future for black and white australias?

As I said, there's got to be a coming together of the two because we're not going to go away, we've been here forever and ever. But as I said, on a fair and equal level. And Aboriginal people want land rights, because land is life. The earth is our mother, nurtures us all. When we've got land, we've got a bit of a power base that we can build, not only in our lives but our self-esteem, to lift our children up, and be on an equal par with everybody in this country. The land is our life, and because of our dispossession this is the thing that has been killing our people like flies. You can't do what has been done to a race of people like ours without it having disastrous results, and here we are, 205 years after the of colonising of our land, and we're still floundering, trying to get some recognition and some footing, and a bit of political clout. We have ATSIC, and the Commission into Black Deaths in Custody, and it started off being real good. And what can I say, all those Aboriginal Commissioners, even the big Commissioner of the lot there, still answerable to a white minister. And there's still government control, and that's not self-determination. There has always been an us and them syndrome between us. As soon as we can get people of our lot, Aboriginal people in parliament, maybe things will change. There is a slow turning, and I get people saying to me when I lecture: "Oh, things are getting better, aren't they, they are changing?" And I say: "Aboriginal people have conformed enough to white standards, and we're not going to conform no more. It's white attitudes to Aboriginal people that have to change."

Do you think that feminism is relevant to you as an Aboriginal woman?

Now how do you define feminism? Just because I believe in women's rights, yes.

A lot of feminists read Aboriginal women's work and . . .

Jump on the bandwagon, saying they do this and do that; and they don't. But I believe in women's rights, we should have more women in parliament, and all that women's rights stuff that's coming in now. Men have always been the boss cockies up front and women have always had to be under their thumbs. In the old way, the woman has to stay home and look after the house and the kids and cook the meals, while men could go out and work and be the breadwinner. But the whole system of that has changed. Now you've got women that want to do the work of men and get equal pay, and superannuation and stuff like that's supposed to be coming in. The men are reaping more rewards than the women because the women are ineligible for that, and if the marriage breaks down, where are the women? So, there's got to be a settling of that, because those women, they reared those children, they went through the pain and they looked after the house. They need to be seen to too, and so I do believe in women's rights, the right to equality on the same level with men, you know.

Just one last thing; I'm going to ask you is what your next project's going to be.

Well, I told you I'm finishing Nob's book, writing up all the sorry stuff. He's already read that manuscript and he said, "Mum, it's a lovely story all right," he said, "but I can tell all the way through that book that you love me." He said, "You'll have to put the blood and guts in and tell it like it really is." And I have. One of his mates he grew up with, Malcolm Smith, that's the one who's got the Tiddas thing about "Why did he die?" He's like a lot of our people that were illiterate, one that was stolen, by missionaries, and had religion rammed down his throat. When he got to jail, I don't know what he was in jail for, he used to do painting and art, he used to have a minister or priest going to see him, and telling him, preaching to him that if thine eye offend thee then pluck it out. Quotes from the bible. So they found Malcolm Smith with his eye plucked out all right. He was painting and he was so depressed that he stuck the end of the paintbrush in his eye and just hit it, straight through the brain. So that's in there too, and that's only one story. There's nothing written from our side of the fence about our people; jail, deaths in custody, police brutality, the lot. You've got other people writing about deaths in custody, but there's nothing written from the black side.

Especially from a mother, because people don't realise that, as Shirley Smith, Mumshirl, says, when a son is incarcerated it's not just the son, but the whole family.

When he got there, he used to write angry letters home, and I've got some of his letters in there too. He'd go crook if some of the family forgot to write or send him a card for his birthday, just hittin out at the system, and real angry. And I wrote back and said, "It's all right for you to be angry and take your spite out on us, because you're locked up and we're out here. But every time you were jailed, we went to jail with you. Every time you were bashed, we felt it too. Everything that happened to you happened to us all as a family. You never received all the knocks on your own, because we felt everything." And the other thing I said to him was that, "You're in a place where you've got three meals a day, you've got some sport, football to play, and you paint, do a bit of reading for recreation. Here's the real jungle where we're living out here. We're battlin to pay the rent, keep the landlord happy, dodgin debt collectors. Here's the jungle, out here." He's the only one that I've ever been able to take back to my country, to meet his extended family and all the people on the mission, all his relations. And the storyline is that I'm taking him and showing him all the sacred places, and telling him the legends. That's all in it, the legends of all the sacred places.

I'll bet he'll be painting a lot too.

Oh, he's going like a bat out of hell. He only gets the dole, and it costs him $70 a week for his little one room, and he's even had his landlord come and put iron bars on the window because he doesn't want anybody coming in there pinching his paintings. He's got a 12-foot easel right near the window where the light is, canvases all over the place. And he's had that photo, that painting that he done of me with my book and Maxy Silver hanging in the grounds of the Writer's Centre, and what's that hospital over there? Rozelle.

Cathy Craigie said that she saw one of his tables that he painted over there, it was in the Koori Arts Centre in town.

That table? That's my table, I only lent it to them. I had to settle for my old one there, look.

She's eyeing it off.

Yeah (laughs). Well tell her to keep her eyes off it.

So I'll look forward to seeing you in Brisbane for Warana.

Yeah, I'll be there for the launch of My Bundjalung People at Writers Week.

Janine Little Nyoongah
PhD Student at the University of Queensland