Bulkarga. Speak. Jelbu. Woman

This article was comissioned by Runway Journal Conversations and Peacock Gallery and edited by Winnie Dunn from Sweatshop. 

My Eyes. Nyu Miroli. It is the eyes of a woman. I saw myself and I knew I was woman. Black woman. When I saw. What I have seen with these eyes. These black eyes. What I have seen black woman. To not see…But Jelbu, I am strong. Like you I am strong. To feel is strong. Jelbu you are my sister, my mother, my aunty, my niece, my grandmother, my daughter. I feel your pain. I have felt pain too. It is connected. Umbilical cord to my mother, from our mother. We are walking bare feet and we are walking together. If you fall. I will pick you up and carry you on my back. Sun hitting you, hot. Still you have power. Blood falling down my thighs to my calves through my toes to the land that I carry you on. Feeding the country. Still I carry you. When blood falls from my legs and onto the earth it nourishes the earth. We can both sit and see. Where we have walked there is life, there is growth. I was created from the dust of this earth and so were you. I am black woman.

I tied him up in in this tree, up top in the in one of the branches. Before them mob in the black car came, one of them young fellas, murri one, ran up, he was working on this station see. He come running and I had little small tin yumba and he gave me the biggest fright. I was hiding in the corner holding baby. He banged on the yumba until I came out. I was scared. But he was banging and yelling out. Migaloo, qudda qudda, migaloo! And I ran out, baby in my hand and he pointed. He didn’t know me, we didn’t talk anything like that. We would have got in trouble if we did. I looked where he pointed and I could see smoke, dust from motor car. I turned to him and he had grabbed a bag, I can’t remember where from but it was heshan one maybe, he had it in his hand his eyes indicating for to put baby in there. I put your grandfather in that bag and he gave it to me and looked up at that this tree. I climbed it. Fast. Got up high, lucky it was big you know, lot of leaf. And I tied him there, your grandfather. He was so quiet, he knew something was going on. I left him up there and then i climbed down. I ran back into the yumba and I got all them baby clothes and that and I threw it on the fire. I sat looking out on the land, this tree behind me with your grandfather. That man, I never saw him after that, at the station, that murri one. I don’t know where he went. When that white fellas came in that motor car. I just sat there drinking tea.I didn’t look at them. I could hear them moving around things around searching but I sat there calm. They wasn’t going to take my child from me. I knew that.  They didn’t say anything to me, then they left. Your grandfather didn’t cry or make any sound.

Redfern station, I am walking next to thai shop. Golargie walks past me. Thin, straight back clothes just fitting. There’s a black sister to my left asking for money. I check my pockets and shake my hand sideway as I pass her, she nods. Gun and stick in jacket, I watch golargie as he walks in front of me. I keep walking right behind him. Other black sisters sit down on a side street chair that is bolted into the cement pathway, I hear parts of their conversation “he’s a man, not a boy” and the black sister with Aboriginal dots on her shoulder nods, tobacco smoke coming from her wide nostrils. I look at them and back at golargie, Aye you black fellas you know he killed our kids, our mob. This man with his blue uniform wrapping around his thin bony body. His mob did that. He stops in front. For a second I think he has heard my thoughts. I wait for him to turn, to see his face. I turn around and walk in the opposite direction. I don’t need to see his face. Their all the same.

I am sitting on the water edge, in another man’s land. Sitting watching the current go by.

I imagine a crocodile come out and drag me into the water.

But there are no crocodiles in this water not like the ones back home or in the places that I have lived and called home. I feel the feeling that war is coming, always coming. It never goes and I know the end.  And still I fight.

Nungjin made woonchooo to smoke us. It was buta kunga mulka. Down the river. I walked through the smoke. Again. Again and again. I haven’t been home in a long time. Woonchoo was small but smoke was enough for my family to go through. I turned to kunga mulka and I walked in as Sun hit my head and monga as it flowed in the breeze. The buna was slowly running, brown and clear in some places. Mussel shells hiding like rock. Nunjin passed me a bucket and my niece, my daughter and her mother dove in the kunga mulka. I put the bucket in the buna and I let it fill up and I lifted it up and threw it over my head.