AustLit

Estelle Castro: When did you start writing?

Lionel Fogarty: I think I started writing when I first came down from the mission, by just reading signs, on the streets. I wasn’t reading and writing when I first came into the city until I went up to Aurukun and to Mapoon, and there I started to write poems about the history where I came from, basically about the conditions in the mission and things like that. And then the lady that was with me, she kept my writings, which I thought were just scribbles and then I came back, and then it must have been in the 70s I started writing things.

EC: What made you want to publish? What made you go from writing to publishing?

LF: What I found was that when I was writing, in the early part of the seventies and the eighties, it gave me an opportunity to get into magazines, like the black community newspapers. Then I’ve seen that the best thing is to get out a book because it followed in the same tradition as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, and Jack Davis, and Kevin Gilbert. Then that’s when I got a book called Kargun, which was first got out in Melbourne, I think in 1979. What inspired me was that lots of people didn’t see Aboriginal books coming out. It was a kind of new thing. What made me really get out a book was that, seeing articles in different newspapers. Well, I can use that to perform it as a book. The whole idea for me at that time was to just write about the political situation, about the apartheid that was happening in Queensland at that time, and about the police. But then I found that English was very difficult for me to write down, but the expression of the English on the piece of paper gave me the opportunity to search for language and to enclose the language or little bits of pieces of languages into the writing style of poetry, which gave more meaning to Aboriginal readers and also even, I think, to the non-Indigenous readers.

EC: Who do you write for primarily? Who do you think your main audience was/is?

LF: I wanted at the time to stretch out to the younger generation, as well as even older ones too, in the Aboriginal community. Especially with people who are just about gone from high school into university. To more or less grab that audience because I was afraid, I had the feeling that these young Aboriginal people that are going to university are going to be brainwashed with the same kind of things that I was brainwashed with when I went from state school to high school. What they were teaching me was just European history in Australia, which is white Australian history, and teaching us all the wrong things about the history of Australia. So I found that the audience that I wanted to get was the Aboriginal community audience, at that time. I think over the years with proceeding with all my writings it stretched out to other audiences which came out of different races or people that really wanted to understand my writings.

EC: And you’ve travelled internationally as well. Is it the same thing when you’re performing, or when you’re reading your poetry, or when you did speeches abroad?

LF: Yes, I found that… I fight for all Aboriginal people. Around a campfire, in the reserve where I’m from, or the community where I come from, Cherbourg, the storytellers… No one really wrote nothing at all. Everyone is singing songs, dances, and just tells stories. And to me, that was like performers and the performance of experience of life that made me increase my knowledge. Well, to me, when I went to international places, I tried to express that not all Aboriginal people are into reading or writings. They preferred the oral language, or the dancing or the expression of body language, which gave more of a meaning in the story of the everyday life. And so with me going internationally, I expressed that most Aboriginal people want to, or myself in my writing, wanted to just break the English so that language can become available, even in the detribalized areas. Like for example Cherbourg, has about 37 different tribes that were sent to this one community from the Brisbane area, from right up north, from everywhere. But no original language was being taught in schools or being in written form in teaching. So I found with international audiences that my expression to them was to show them that the whole idea about something like my writing is to put a blockage to English, to use English as much as possible as an avenue for the pathway of Indigenous languages coming along. I think that these days, there is a lot of availability now in Aboriginal languages, that is written as well. Even from the tribes that I come from, the reserve where I come from, a lot of them are starting to write in their own language and are starting to produce all this.

But just to get back to your thing that you asked me, the audience, internationally, I tried to express to them that we use, I use the English language as an expression, as a performance of expression for some people, or lots of people who speak, and who sing, just yarn or talk to themselves or talk about certain things that are in their experience of life, but they can’t write it down. So, if you’ve got someone who could write it down, what they’re trying to express, that’s much better. Like for example, lots of Aboriginal people swear a lot… sometimes they’re afraid of going into the academic area, of intellectualizing. But if you’ve got someone that can write down what they mean, like picking up a lot of the ocker language in Australia, which is part of the Australian way of living… there always has to be an expression… I’m not saying that there is a culture in it, but Aboriginal people always get caught in between with that ocker language. I find it difficult to find an expression through it.

EC: Who do you see as your community of writers? Are there people who influenced your writing, or people whom you share your writing with?

LF: I found that people that influenced my writing were the people in the land rights marches and people who were outspoken in the community meetings, and people who were speakers upfront. I found that – reading a lot of the other Aboriginal people’s writings – some of them did influence me, but I found that some of them have based a lot of their writings on criteria that are acceptable to the conservative society – that you have to write in a certain way, to express yourself, to maybe get published, or to get theatre, to get a good script going. I don’t want to base myself on any of this kind of writers. I wanted to write my own way, write my own style of writing, like in three times double standard. When someone starts to read you they have to read you in three different ways. And that’s the way I like to do it. But I think my influence would have been a little bit of Kevin Gilbert’s writings, and Bruce McGuiness… Oodgeroo Noonuccal, some of her writings have influenced me. But I don’t think anyone really influenced me. I think my influence came from what I was saying before, from campfire stories, and from people telling, talking about their everyday life, and their experiences.

EC: Some people have noticed that the first generation of writers was less vehement in their ways of speaking and that the second generation of Aboriginal writers was more blatant and more – some people say – ‘angry’ in their writing. Do you think that’s true? Or do you think it’s just the political context that actually allowed—

LF: No, I think that people back then were trying to write, in a sense, to give intelligence to their anger, but it came out too conservative for a lot of people and the younger generation now is starting to really focus on the target of what anger and bitterness is all about. And even what the fight was about. For example, you’ve got someone on a megaphone in a land rights march who’s screaming their guts out to the other people and they’re going to sit down and they’re trying to write about… Yeah, I think that the writings in the young Aboriginal people today have started to change a little bit. But you still have this... trying to write the European, or the Australian way, just to try and get it onto a stage for the audience, but do it in a patronising way. I find that a lot of people have written… But I don’t really want to criticise Aboriginal writings because I feel that a lot of Aboriginal writers have their own individual as well as their own community style of writing. I think that’s the best way I can explain it.

EC: You have said that you can have, in your poems, double meanings, and it’s true that with your poetry, you have to read or reread the poems – at least as a non-Indigenous reader and… probably for Indigenous readers as well – to try to understand the complexity of the meaning that you’re bringing forward. And you wrote in one of the prefaces that you thought that the non-Indigenous readers would never be able to really understand what you’re talking about. So do you think that your poems need to be explained? Do you think that there should be explanations with them?

LF: I was afraid that it was going to be difficult for non-Indigenous people to read my things, but then over the years with travelling internationally, I found that a lot of non-Indigenous people are starting to understand Indigenous writings because of the face-to-face, sit down and translate. Like to translate into Spanish a lot of my poetry is good. Some has been translated into Spanish. Some has been translated into Zulu. Some has been translated into German language, Italian language. It’s difficult even for me at times to appreciate the language of English. The whole idea was to smash the racism within the English, by a black point of view, a First Australians’ point of view, to smash racism. And to do that the best weapon is to use the enemy’s tongue. The enemy’s written down material. A long time ago, when they first came to this country, Aboriginal people could not understand the English. But they used to look over the shoulders of the surveyors, on the English sheets, of what they surveyed, which sparked their knowledge of what fighting was about. Fighting for the land rights. How can I explain? I just find that it’s important for someone like myself and for other Aboriginal people to still use the English language, to open that gap up so that our culture, our language can become available for our younger people that are coming up.

I think the younger people that are coming up today realise that a lot of the seventies and the eighties, and the nineties, Aboriginal writers, we had to write in that atmosphere of what the politicalisation was about, and what anger was about, whether it was a conservative anger or whether it was a radical anger. But today I think that the motivation should be… Languages, lingo of Aboriginal people should be in different forms. I’d like to see in the future, in 50 years’ time it will happen, or 60 years’ time… the English that I wrote or the stories that I wrote would have been translated into Aboriginal language. That’s the whole idea. For I think all Aboriginal writers are to have – or that’s my thing – just to have our written material translated into Aboriginal languages. But that’s in the future. At the moment, we have to put up with the English. And the best way is to understand that non-Indigenous people sometimes would find it difficult to read Aboriginal people, even if it’s conservative writings. But they have to push down minds I think. It’s like us when we were forced to read their books, to read their stories from overseas, which gave them their experience of life today. It’s about time for them to push themselves into understanding what we wrote about.

EC: Do you think that if non-Indigenous critics or people are interpreting, for example your poems, they should consult you? Do you think that people should consult you before giving readings of your poetry?

LF: Yeah, consulting is very important to give the authenticity… There should be copyright! That should be straight away: contact the person first before you give a talk about, or read about. But then again, if someone over in Western Australia hasn’t met me – that was the whole idea about getting a book – they read a book. It’s like the honourable Matthew Foley, in Queensland, one of the politicians. He went to my community in Cherbourg, and read four of my poems to the students. But he never asked me for permission to read the poems. But that was the whole idea, to try to force, or not force, but encourage the non-Indigenous people to give an expression from what they have picked up. But if they can do it in a way of expressing it to even an Aboriginal community, that’s even better too. In a way.

EC: Most of your books have either pictures or drawings, by you or other people. Do you think that they are different ways to tell a story? Or do you think it just appeals to different people?

LF: I think it’s trying to show that in the beginning before I started to write, I was confronted with a lot of artists, with painters, with people who painted boomerangs, and didgeridoos, had done gigantic paintings, small paintings or even sand drawing. I’ve tried to show that not only words can tell a story. Paintings can tell a story too. I’ve been trying to get back to it, after all the political days of my life and all the writings that I have tried to write in English, as well as bits and pieces of our language. I’ve been trying to say that yes, we have art, but then I’ve never really… All the books that I got out was giving what you call respect to our artists. To say that when artists do his or her work, it has more meaning than the English itself. That’s what I’ve been doing with all my books that I’ve got out. To give other artists respect. To say that the painter has more of expression than the word itself. But then with a lot of my last book, and my next book that will come out internationally, they’ll see a lot of my kind of artwork. I’m trying to show that instead of reading me in three different ways maybe you can read me one way now and then see the art. Or see the art first and then see the meaning of what I was writing about.

EC: So what’s the next book that is going to come out internationally?

LF: Well this next international book is coming out with some publisher in England. John Kinsella. He is a professor of English or a professor of poetry. He’s an Australian bloke, but he went out to Idaho in America –– he’s a university professor there. Anyway, they connected up with me in May last year, when the Arts Council approached me to go to Italy, to meet up with about ten other poets from around the world as well as from around Italy, in Rome. So when I went, I went to England first, and that’s when they said to me before I went over: ‘why don’t you bring all your writings, Lionel? Every single writing that you’ve written since the seventies? The published one as well as the unpublished one.’ Which is what I’ve done. I put them all together. They said they were going to do an anthology with all my writings. There’s been a negotiation since May last year. Also, they’re going to put in my artwork, too. Also, they’ve got three different students going through editing some of my writings, with my consult. I think they’re going to get out a 800-page book, of anthology of all my writings. Which is going to be my first international book, even though I have been translated into some little other stuff, too –– magazines and things. But this is going to be my first one. So I’m looking forward to it. Once it comes out I can do a tour.

EC: Have you had a lot of editing to do, or work to do with editors before this time?

LF: Yeah, well. The Manhattan Review – the thing here, see that’s just come out. And this one just came out from Britain. What they’ve done is they approached me to put down some of my unpublished writings. They only put a couple, or a few of the poems, but at least that’s something. But what they used to email back to me all the time is that they want to take out this word and this word because it does not have any meaning to the readers that are going to read it.

So I wrote back and said: ‘you just leave it the way it’s written!’ And so they’ve left the way it was written because they respect what I do.

EC: I remember last year you said that one of your projects was at some point to have a DVD or a CD-ROM, that you wanted for the people of Cherbourg because you said that some of them don’t relate to the written word. So, it would be like a CD-ROM with your poetry that could go back to the community?

LF: A CD-ROM, yes. That’s what I found the best way to do. I’ve been doing that a lot recently. I’ve got a lot of material and things like that for the community.

EC: And how is that received?

LF: That’s been received pretty well. Because you’re so low on finance, it’s hard to get out… In the schools and in the TAFE colleges and things like that, it’s easy to do something there. But then when you go out to the grassroots or the community, the families they want something and you can’t give it to them because you’ve only got one copy. ‘Wait, I’ll come back, I’ll give you another copy some other time, I’ve got to make copies for you.’ So the eager thing in the community is to see poetry in motion, poetry in action, or what it is instead of reading it on a piece of paper. I think the picture itself tells the greater story sometimes than the writing itself. Then again we have a lot of young people who are quite articulate now who can read books, and appreciate the books, appreciate the picture. So that’s what I have been doing, yes. I’ve got some there. Maybe I can give you a couple of copies.

EC: And I can make copies.

LF: Maybe you can make copies, and take them back with you. Even with the little talk that we’re having now, you’ll find that, with all the information that I give you, you can catalogue something out of that. I’ll give you permission to do that, for when you go back. As long as you give me a trip to France [laugh].

EC: I think it would be wonderful. I just have one last question — something that I find at the same time interesting and confusing. When you say that English is the language of the enemy, I am wondering if that is the native language of a lot of Indigenous people today, and you see it as the language of the enemy, doesn’t it create bigger divisions than saying that you use it as a tool and that Indigenous languages should be promoted?

LF: No I don’t think. English is never a native-tongue. When you’re Indigenous to a country, you have to recognise that there are enemies out there, there is a war happening, there is a war of words, sometimes it’s covered up. In Australia… It’s like the deaths in custody. I went through the deaths in custody with a lot of different people over the years. Seeing the deaths in custody, you can see how the English can cover it all up, English law and English way of speaking. That covers it all up. We can’t really see the enemy no more. What it does is it causes frustration within people. I think that sometimes, with articulate and very gifted Aboriginal people in this country, as well as myself, we can use the enemy. It’s like racism. Racism is an enemy to a lot of Aboriginal people, and to myself, it’s an enemy. But there is a way where you can produce some sort of – not compromise – but a way of making racism go, or making divisions go between different styles of peoples, or between different individuals. I find that music is a way of humanising what the enemy was about and bringing it back to humanity. Sometimes in my writings, I feel it’s a humanitarian step. I was saying to myself in Australia they have a lot of different races, right, a lot of different cultures, but to me there is only one culture and only one race and that is the Aboriginal race, and there is only one culture and that is Aboriginal culture. But if you say that to someone, someone’s going to say that’s biased and that is bigotry, or prejudiced, or something like that. But that’s the truth.

EC: Do you mean in Australia?

LF: In Australia, yes. I always say to myself, the whole meaning of why I went overseas; my aim was to convince people overseas as well as in Australia: if you go to Australia you have to get yourself an Aboriginal passport. If you don’t have an Aboriginal passport then you’re alien straight away. If you can get an Aboriginal passport it will show you have taken the step towards the Aboriginal community by paying them tax money, by paying something out of it, or by understanding where the traditional areas are. Even the cities themselves, that are dominated – you know where all traditional areas are. Spiritually you’ll feel healthy about it as well as politically you’ll feel healthy about it. It won’t make you feel alien when you go on a land. I’m always trying to express through my gift to get an Aboriginal passport. This will cease any enemy that’s around. Like I’ve seen this thing about Christmas. Up north, on television. There is this Australian family who don’t want their children to be taught anything to do with Christmas at school. They believe in all religions, they believe in everything. I think that they basically were saying that there are Aboriginal spirits, Aboriginal Dreamtime stories in Australia that are more significant than Christmas. Showing that internationalism in terms of unity and solidarity is only based on what belongs to Indigenous people. I really mean that. Everyone should get an Indigenous passport.

EC: I think it’s not legal yet. I think the people who did use them got into trouble—

LF: At least it’s a start!

This interview was conducted on 16/12/2005 in Brisbane.