Oodgeroo Noonuccal is an Aboriginal Australian writer and political activist whose work centers the experience of indigenous people in Australia. "We Are Going," a poem originally published in her 1964 collection of the same name, examines the long-lasting impact of British colonialism on Aboriginal communities. The speaker identifies with the old ways and with nature, but the Aboriginal cultural connection to the land has been severed by colonization.
The poem describes the few members that remain of an Aboriginal tribe as they visit their old sacred lands. Known as "bora," these grounds are desecrated. White men hurry around like ants where before, sacred ceremonies took place. A sign reads "Rubbish May Be Tipped Here." The perspective of the poem shifts to the first-person plural as the speaker gives voice to the Aboriginal community. Though this community has been made to become strangers in the lands their ancestors inhabited, it is really the white tribe who are strangers. The speaker locates Aboriginal belonging in their cultural old ways that honor traditional ceremonies, elders and ancestors, and the land. But everything is "gone now and scattered" as a result of cultural genocide and environmental degradation (Line 20). At the end of the poem, the speaker warns that the community, too, will disappear alongside the flora, fauna, and everything that makes the land sacred.
We Are Going was the first published collection of poetry by an Aboriginal woman and author in Australia. Despite Noonuccal's success with this book and the one that followed, her work was dismissed as protest poetry. Some went as far as saying Noonuccal's work was not authentically Aboriginal or that it was propaganda. However, We Are Going struck a chord with the public and contributed to changing national sentiments by raising awareness about the lives of Aboriginal Australians. The urgency of Noonuccal's message continues to apply to this day.
