Poetry of Social Resistance in Modern Australian Aboriginal Poetry: A Study in Selected Poems of Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Abstract

Modern Aboriginal Australian Poetry reveals an epoch-making change in attitude towards the Aboriginal issues as presented through the lens of Aboriginal people. Aboriginality has always been presented through the White Australians or European invaders as nomadic and savage people that would give the legality for the White man to exploit their lands and people. Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993), a writer and political activist who is most commonly known as the first Aboriginal poet to write poetry. She is also an active campaigner for Aboriginal civil rights. Noonuccal tried effortlessly to reveal pride in her Aboriginality to the wide range of audience, and to convey issues that killed her people like inequality and Aboriginal rights through her poems. Noonuccal strived to draw the intention of the world to the negative influence of European invasion and their technologies upon Aboriginal people and culture. Blended into her poetry is a reverence for the Aboriginal history, discrimination towards the Aboriginal people, calling for fighting back against the European settlers, demanding for maintaining the Aboriginal traditions and rituals and preserving the land and the environment.