Poetry Analysis — Australian Indigenous Poems
The Star Tribes
By Fred biggs
Look, among the boughs. Those stars are men.
There’s Ngintu, with his dogs, who guards the skins
of Everlasting Water in the sky.
And there’s the Crow-man, carrying on his back
the wounded Hawk-man. There’s the serpent, Thurroo, glistening in the leaves. There’s Kapeetah,
the Moon-man, sitting in his mia-mia.
And there’s those Seven Sisters, travelling
across the sky. They make the real cold frost.
You hear them when you’re camped out on the plains.
They look down from the sky and see your fire
and ‘Mai, mai, mai,’ they’d sing out as they run
across the sky. And, when you wake, you find your swag, the camp, the plains, all white with frost
The Song of Australia
By Henry Lawson
The centuries found me to nations unknown —
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light —
A girl called Australia — I’ve come to my right.
Though no fields of conquest grew red at my birth,
My dead were the noblest and bravest on earth;
Their strong sons are worthy to stand with the best —
My brave Overlanders ride west of the west.
My cities are seeking the clean and the right;
My Statesmen are speaking in London to-night;
The voice of my Bushmen is heard oversea;
My army and navy are coming to me.
By all my grim headlands my flag is unfurled,
My artists and singers are charming the world;
The White world shall know its young outpost with pride;
The fame of my poets goes ever more wide.
By old tow’r and steeple of nation grown grey
The name of my people is spreading to-day;
Through all the old nations my learners go forth;
My youthful inventors are startling the north.
In spite of all Asia, and safe from her yet,
Through wide Australasia my standards I’ll set;
A grand world and bright world to rise in an hour —
The Wings of the White world, the Balance of Power.
Through storm, or serenely — whate’er I go through —
God grant I be queenly! God grant I be true!
To suffer in silence, and strike at a sign,
Till all the fair islands of these seas are mine.
Fred Biggs’ poem, The Star Tribes and Henry Lawson’s poem, A Song of Australia reflects on Australia. At the time when both poems were written, the country was still newly settled and both of these poems reflect this. The poems, even though written by two men with completely different backgrounds, do have similarities as much as differences. Both poems were written around the same time in the late 1800’s and even in the same state, New South Wales, however from different perspectives due to many factors compared and analysed below.
The Star Tribes is a poem written by Fred Biggs in the late 1800’s. Fred Biggs was an Indigenous bushworker and singer. Fred grew up in a camp near Ivanhoe, NSW. He was the son of a white stockman and an Indigenous woman. Fred was an enthusiastic storyteller and had hope that the traditions of the Indigenous would be taught in schools. It is clear that Fred was educated as the poem is written in both English and Indigenous language.
Van Toorn (2006) states that for those living on missions and reserves, literacy and the English language were powerful tools of another kind, tools that enabled Indigenous people to communicate with a new force that was shaping their world: colonial governments.
At first look, The Star Tribes is written in a way that you could easily speak.. Fred Biggs used Indigenous wording but also English as it’s main language focus in the poem. As the title suggests, The Star Tribes were told in the poem to be men who had passed over from the Indigenous tribes who were now in the sky as everything is interconnected. The concept of the spirits being in the sky, possibly as the stars is apart of the Indigenous spirituality and rituals. The Indigenous belief of a circle of life, that when humans pass on, they become the environment around is a strong theme throughout the poem. The poem attends to this through it’s descriptive nature of who the “stars” are with Ngintu and the role he plays, the Crow-man, the Hawk-man, Thurroo, Kapeetha, Moon-man and the Seven Sisters, all of these spirits are taking care of certain things to help the evolution of the land, the environment and the changing of seasons.
Rose (1996) states that for many people the sky country is where the lightning men and women live, where their dead relations may be living, and where creative beings have travelled and stopped. In the south-eastern parts of Australia, sky country is where the great creative being Biame stays. Fred Biggs, a Ngeamba man from the Menindee (New South Wales) area described one aspect of sky country. His words not only discuss the sky country but also link it to the earth through seasons and weather.
The poem The Star Tribes, has a calm context to it that describes the land and flows with ease as it creates a very clear picture of a story and the land in your mind. It also has a tone that reflects the idea that even as the men may pass, they take a role within the sky as stars and they are always with you. It’s quite a comforting prose to read, with a structure that is telling a story, with no definitive structure to sentences, unlike Henry Lawson’s A Song of Australia.
The structure of Fred Biggs’ The Star Tribes is distinctive to Henry Lawson’s A Song of Australia as it has a completely different flow and prose. A Song of Australia was written in the late 1800’s by Henry Lawson. Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. He was born to white middle class parents, a poet, publisher and feminist mother and a Norwegian born miner father. Henry Lawson’s A Song of Australia, as the title suggests, is a poem ‘of Australia’. Henry Lawson describes Australia as a female, who was founded, crowned and made a throne. This exemplifies the idea of ‘Terra Nullius’, that Australia was founded with no occupants, which we now know is completely untrue.
Smith (2012) states that in its instantiation of the enlightenment enterprise; the heroism of the Australian foundational moment constitutes a credible match for the histories and traditions underpinning the nations of Europe from which model this nation derives its legitimacy. The discursivity of an institutionalised historical past is constituted by the archivalisation of facts: dates, titles of momentous events, charts, names of discoverers, navigators and pioneers, and of places. These objectify the past as fixed, recoverable and spatial; it is now a resource, which can be put to use for the purposes of public commemoration. The past is shaped according to the contours of a linear, chronological narrative, akin to that of the realist novel or biography
A Song of Australia has strong themes that Australia is a new country, that new cities are being built and the ‘occupants’ of the land are the strong and worthy and brave white people. In the poem, Henry Lawson is telling a story of how Australia has something to prove to the rest of the world, as it is still new. This in contrast to The Star Tribes, where the land is just as it is and the circle of life will keep turning and that is what keeps them happy. There is a distinct stressful tone to the poem, which is written in an older type English language and is very structured with its prose, in comparison to The Star Tribes. A Song of Australia stressed an attempt to keep its strong allegiance to England. There are racist connotations with lines such as, ‘The wings of the White world, the balance of power.’ The poem is about Australia, and there is no mention of the Indigenous at all, just the white person and it inhabits the land and the need to prove to the world it’s worth. This is very white world minded and is not a surprise when reading the poem.
The Star Tribes and A Song of Australia are similar as much as different, as there is romanticism in both of their poems. Fred Biggs is romanticising the change of seasons and the interconnectedness of the land and it’s existence, and in contrast Henry Lawson is romanticising Australia as a female, who is regal and proud, but who is spilling it’s worth out across the land so to be prove something to the rest of the world. Both poems are both telling a story of sorts, and they are telling a story of what they see in the different worlds they live in. Fred Biggs living as an Indigenous man in camps throughout outback New South Wales and Henry Lawson living in the city as an educated white man.