Dreamtime spirits

Born and enduring the spirits of old
Well grounded and physical
Solidly sold
Look into faces
And what can you see
Thousands of years
And how it could be

We live on the land
With its dust in our soul
We have learned a great deal
We each know our role
We hunt and we gather
We strive to be true
We respect all of nature
And gain respect too

Before the white brain
Crept over our land
We lived with the storms
We do understand
The ways of the spirits
The long years of pain
Of learning our craft
And of seeing again

To learn and to share
The land of our birth
With the animal friends
That know of our worth
Each tribe holds an animal sacred
Lament
A totemic spirit the ancestors went
To great strides to tell us
Their needs and their ways
Each has its place
And soulfully plays
Its part in what is our devotional
Thought
Which is why we wont eat them
And why we have fought

We learn of their character
Sharing their dreams
Its right and attested
Consciousness streams
Are everywhere nowadays
All over this land
We subsist and endure
And ofcourse understand

The knowledge and ways
Of the first born
We see
On the rocks in the caves
Where these spirits be
Acknowledging animals
From long ago
Like the Red Kangaroo
The great leaping glow

The light in the darkness
Whose shadows we see
We learn from their stamina
How we can be
Loving and kindly to all of our kin
And of course and essentialness
That did begin

With the great march of time
And the red earth in view
The lifesblood we tasted
Its Content so true
The fruits of the forests
The souls of the sea
The termites hard labour
In the eucalypt tree

We have had to endure
When the prejudice came
We were tossed by the wayside
And we got the blame
Our children were taken
To boarding schools where
They were exploited
And left to despair

The road was a long one
The millions of years
Gave us an edge
But heightened the fears
Respecting ancestors
With cultural highs
Brought us to now
But still all the lies

Dragged us through levels
Beyond our dreamtime
The solace of feeling
That inevitable climb
Out of the darkness
To where we are now
Very much on our own
Really wondering how

We ever can feel part
Of the white brain
Whose cogs churn against us
And leave us in vain
To struggle with weaknesses
Brought to our doors
In their jails many languish
And we are the cause

Feeling hard done by
For the outback was where
We nomads were living
In hot dusty air
How you stole our lands
And made it clear
You didnt want us living around here

We could work building roads
For a measly sum
Our skin parched and burned
By the heat of the sun
Our music was great
Our crafts were great too
Just as long as we all stayed
As far from you

So we feel the agony
And we feel the pain
Our totem animals
Again and again
Shot in the spotlight
And left in the dust
Disrespecting the earth
With the white brain disgust

And now the uranium mining
It comes
To stifle our souls
Our land it just numbs
Our age old resistence
And the love that was deep
That rapidly eats into
Us whilst we sleep

We dance with tradition
With kaolin white
With our didgereedoos
We lighten each night
We appeal to the spirits
And honour them we
Feel that growing resentment
That many now see

Cities grow bigger
The outback becomes
Desert the wilderness
Just about sums
Up all our futures
Tearing down trees
The decline of our landscapes
And so many bees

So many cattle
So many sheep
Ranchers come calling
The land mass can weep
Mining for coal
And the fracking as well
Sees our precious countryside
Becoming a hell

The koala are dying
The kangaroo’s too
Chased down and shot
For pet food its true
Our beloved bush angels
Who live side by side
Are so disrespected their
Places denied

They call us the indigenous
They cast us down
We live in our places
Mostly out of town
They cannot apparently
Understand why
We live as we have always lived
Under the sky

We are the abandoned ones
Lost to our thought
We have been here for aeons
In light realms were caught
We have acted as guardians
Protecting you all
From the rigours of nature
And infact do stand tall