The forgotten ones

Forgotten children
Forgotten by who
Forgotten by us
Or forgotten by you

They came in the daylight
My daughter they took
Because she was brown
With a whitish look

SHe was only a baby
Tossed into their truck
That is what happened
treated like muck

Seen as inferior
Enslavement was ours
Restraint and oppression
They had the powers

Discrimination
Disfranchised were we
Treated like dirt
Reduced to slavery

Torn from our mothers
Breasts
Such rigidity
Draconian laws
Would apply
And would be

The great british tyrant
Neville by name
Had come from England
Yea He was to blame

Assimilation
That was the score
We were just savages
The dominion meant more

Just white supremacy
Now was to be
Imperative it was proclaimed
By decree

Black stock to be
Weakened over a time
Absorbed in the mix
Somehow to climb

Social and biological
Engineering they tried
And If we could die out
It would be worth the ride

They were our masters
We dispossessed
Nothing about us
Could ever be blessed

Tribalised blacks
Savages we
Would face the duress
And constraints constantly

Do you know what that does to you?
How the heart breaks
Torn from your family
By these white fakes

Our civil rights
All Stolen away
Thrown into camps
And forgotten some say

Constant coercian
Assimilation
Hunger disease
A vile conflagration

Of spirit and lust
How we suffered so
To The white mans desires
From his loins yea below

We never felt mercy
Only big pain
Where was my mother
When In blood I had lain

Housed in Moore River
Where so many died
And so many more
Managed suicide

So much brutality
Everyday
Our language forbidden
To dance
No no way

Viewed with suspicion
That at our core
The white way was the right way
Of that they were sure

Neville the protector
In his custody
He wanted to save us
But the misery

Of conforming to his standards
Would Help us believe
White citizenship
Was how to achieve

We got our exemptions
But deep in our soul
Dog lives with them
Would not be a role

That we now could take on
So we would resist
We would speak our language
How much we had missed

Our birthright was ours
And we would surely be
Far far removed
We were aboriginie

Proud to be coloured
Nomadic and strong
We were Australians
Too all along

They had beaten our backs
They had bruised us and we
Had cried in our sleep
With the adversity

We had borne their affliction
And had sexually
Been abused by their antics
aboriginie

We could try to reclaim
The lives that we lost
We could dig very deep
Whatever the cost

Forgotten children
Forgotten by who
Not by our families
Stolen its true

Thousands of years
We were part of a race
Who lived for the dreamtime
Proud of our place

The missions were awful
Incredible hell
Abused and beaten
Till our bodies did swell

Some dyed their skin
Some died alas
But our spirits were shared
No matter how crass

The assimilation
Was rolled out and we
Were expected to become
White actually

They had the formula
Of our demise
Breaking our spirits
So no surprise

And now they say sorry
The white voice we hear
Having Stolen our childhood
Yea So so clear

Under our noses
And we’d never see
The smile or the tears
Of our mothers to be

Just one of the mothers
Whose child and whose grief
Would last all her life
It just beggars belief

The pain and the suffering
The terror dolled out
The barbed wire and hunger
The incredible rout

And the white voice says sorry
Words that aquire
Some sort of meaning
But deep down the fire

Burns in our bellies
Tossed away even now
In broken communities
Ask yourselves how

You feel about how we feel
Still to this day
When the white rangers came
And took our kids away