AustLit

Authors: Estelle Castro-Koshy and Romaine Moreton

Estelle Castro: You had an outstanding performance on…

Romaine Moreton: Thursday night.

EC: The session was called ‘Talkin’ Up: A Celebration of Indigenous Spoken Word’. Anita Heiss read from her novel, Michelle Blanchard read from her play, and you read from your poetry and then you performed. Do you think the emphasis was put on orality, and on the oral tradition?

RM: I think it was. It was really, really reassuring and comforting and validating to hear Anita’s work and Michelle’s work presented in the way that they did it because I think they were greatly animated in their deliveries and they really engaged the audience. They spoke to them rather than at them. I think there can be a tendency when you’re presenting textual works to an audience to not really focus that much on the presentation of it, so it was really a great space to be in, where both of these authors actually did invest their energies in communicating with the audience – well, I thought they did and they did that successfully. I think that’s a great thing to see – the continuation of oral culture and it's a beautiful thing that textual culture does not take away from that.

EC: You performed on Thursday, but you started by writing poetry.

RM: I guess I just wanted… Writing poetry and – poetry that’s written for the page and stays pretty much… you know, where the greatest meaning is derived from the page, where it’s often a play on word, it’s a play on the presentation of how the word is placed on the page. I guess the visual aspect of reading from the page. It’s very different for me. It’s luxurious, as well, because I can present poetry that doesn’t have to be necessarily rhythmical. It can be… I guess it’s a standard piece of poetry in that way. But when I present work that is to be performed, there is a process that I have to go through to get it to a place where it is ready to be performed. I think it’s really important that the pieces that are performed are very rhythmical, so that the audience does not get lost in it. I guess the difference with the page is that you can take a chance, that people will sit down and be still and read it and have that time to go over it and over it and over it. But when you perform, the clarity, the transparency has got to be there, but it has to maintain its musical essence as well. So, it’s not quite a song but it is definitely musical.

EC: You spoke about adaptation on Thursday. Did you write those poems to be sung, or did you write the poems as poetry and then you adapted them?

RM: I think the majority of them were written as poems for the page and when I was getting ready to do – in the early days of getting ready to do performance – I quickly went through my collection to see which pieces could work as being read out, and I greatly favoured those where there is an amount of repetition… But they’ve got to maintain their integrity on the page as well, so the real challenge for me is that they have to be as simple as possible yet while maintaining a very complex message. So, that’s the real challenge. It’s not to choose poems that, I guess, don’t journey, don’t travel, that people can’t relate to. Yeah, the majority of them actually started out as being written for the page and I adapted them.

EC: The first time you wanted to sing them was when you went... You spoke about being influenced by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Is that when you started to have the will to sing?

RM: Sweet Honey in the Rock’s concert... I think it was in 1992 and I did not know they existed. I went along at a friend Judith Cobb’s invitation to this concert and I was absolutely mesmerised by their beauty, their simplicity, yet maintaining their integrity to their intellectualism as well, and their activism. At no point did they condescend to their audience, at no point did they present oversimplified works. They maintained the very complex message and asked the audience to come and meet them at the point from which they’re speaking, rather than adapt their message to their audience. Of course there is always an element of adaptation, but that occurs between individuals anyway in society. We adapt every time we reach out or communicate with each other and I guess that is something that is also true for performance pieces. I loved them because I was also… I started university and one of the first pieces I wrote for writing classes in my undergraduate years was a piece called ‘Me & Alice’ about Alice Walker. For the first time, that was actually a piece written with a bongo beat in my head. You know, there was a bongo beat, and when I read it to the class, they said they could hear the drums. And that was like, oh okay, wonderful! If you can hear the drums then why not put drums in there, why not work with the drum? And so, a lot of this work actually started out as a dialogue between myself and a drum.

EC: So you did not see the performances as a new medium for communication, not at first.

RM: No, no. I just thought of it as presenting a piece of poetry where it is made accessible to an audience. It’s entertaining and music has its own power, so I guess a lot of these poems may be more challenging without the musical elements. But to have these words, these stories, these essences communicated while people are taping their fingers, and drumming their fingers, or nodding their head, moving to the beat of the music… I think that makes the greater possibility for them to actually hear the message, and it can resonate, it will resonate hopefully with anyone.

EC: Your earlier works were much more political than the new ones. I really felt the shift when I listened to you on Thursday. Would you consider yourself to be an activist?

RM: I think I would have once upon a time in my life. But I think a lot of my earlier works were... I was focusing on writing about the Aboriginal experience, but I think there is a tendency for people to think that the so-called Aboriginal experience is not a valid human experience – that they are not elements that other people can relate to. The truth is… that it’s about our plight as humans, it is about sovereignty, it is about our culture, but there is an essence in there about wanting to survive, wanting to maintain your own cultural integrity, and wanting to maintain your own morality and not give in to morbidity. All those things that are about being a healthy human being. So I think initially a lot of those works were exclusive and excluding. So rather than, I guess, position myself like that, the nature of the performance then… Actually, I shifted in how to communicate the same stories but open them up. How to work other people into this experience to say these are things that we can talk about as people. This needs not be about politics, politics affects all of us but how now to communicate what is the experience of being an Indigenous woman in this country in such a way where should the most extreme or white male could relate to it. While I am not shifting my voice, or changing the message or my style drastically, it is about how I now choose to communicate that, and I looked at a lot of the – I guess the most successful – songs and just music that I really love. I looked at them and focused on what the successes of these were. And often it is just about that, about communicating between people.

EC: That’s what you said on Thursday. You said performance gives the power to create that common understanding. I think that’s what you achieved on Thursday because the audience was really mesmerised as well. You could feel the atmosphere was very dense, people were touched, and there was silence. I think something happened that day.

RM: That’s wonderful. If you can have moments like that. It’s a lot of alone time in preparing these work. It’s a lot of isolation, stress, whether I get it right because often I actually don’t get to hear it until I perform it. Ysaye, Dr Ysaye Barnwell, Sweet Honey member, she emphasises the importance of being prepared and preparation, and investing in that process as well. I find the more I prepare then the more I can actually relax and enjoy the moment as well. I think that’s great. It’s a huge compliment.

EC: I think it was really powerful. You really put yourself into the lyrics, the song and the music. And I think it is also due to the repetitive pattern.

RM: Ah good.

EC: Yes. Which is one of the characteristics of oral storytelling, isn’t it?

RM: Yes, it is. It’s the cycle. I think… Well, all texts come from oral cultures anyway. Homer used to deliver oratories. That’s who he was. He wasn’t a writer as such but he was reciting and I think there is just great beauty in that repetitiveness.  I think it is lost in the modern world’s desire for complexity, for security, when really, the essence of who we are need not be complex or obscure and we can take a chance that we won’t get bored by that, by the repetitiveness. I think I’m just constantly awed by the great storytellers that are born from oral cultures. They’re just fantastic, they’re my true, true inspirations.

EC: And there is a cycle in this as well. Your people are from an oral culture, you started to write poetry, which was written poetry, and you’ve gone back to orality.

RM: That’s exactly right. I’ve just been in so many audiences where people have read from the pages and I thought… It did not work for me. It did not work for me. I guess – rather than expecting audience to work really hard and struggle with what I am trying to communicate, there’s going to be an easier way. All roads lead back to orality. Everything I’ve tried delivered me back to this place of… speaking. And that’s a journey in itself because then you’ve got to deal with the performance aspect. And I wasn’t… I was a writer. I never considered myself a performer or even thought of performing. And it was just something that occurred because the word deserves to be given its best chance and that’s back to orality.

EC: Do you have a sense of continuity between your tradition, your people, and what you’re performing? Do you see yourself as playing a role in this ongoing process?

RM: Absolutely, and that’s the beauty of it. I’ve learnt so much from performing and delivering my work in this way. A lot of Indigenous people believe, writers believe that more than anything we channel spirituality, and I believe that’s true of my work. And the most commitment I can make to my work is to maintain my focus on the ancestors, is to maintain the focus on why communicating at all, and that’s for the preservation and continuation of life itself. And within that, I am required to be as healthy and as well as possible and to understand what colonisation is thread by thread. Once I can remove those threads from me and, you know, stand symbolically as we were, fully naked in the eyes of gods, then that’s the starting point, that’s the beginning of the message. And that’s the beginning of why communicating at all and that’s for the preservation of life. That’s the only reason that I do it. Not for fame, not for money cause [laugh] you know money [laugh], that’s a long time coming, believe me. It’s driven by passion, and that’s what I love about Indigenous artists – that the majority do it because we are required to do it. To evoke change because change does not just occur, and it means our full commitment and participation in it. That’s what I love about a lot of our artists. It’s that it’s a driving force, and I’m one of those people.

EC: I just remember. I read "Auntie Rita", Jackie Huggins’s book, and her mother said she met a very famous performer, and she was very happy to meet him. And she asked him ‘so, are you rich now?’ And he said, ‘ah, too many relatives.’

RM: [laugh] Yes, yes, absolutely. David Gulpilil was a good… he talks about that.

EC: There are people who say that tradition is in the past, that there are not many traditional Aborigines now. But to me tradition is an ongoing process—

RM: That’s right.

EC: But your work is creation as well. So there is a link, you are the link, in a way, between the past and the present.  Do you see yourself as trying to give a message, or just perpetuate a message, pass a message from one generation to the next?

RM: Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. We can only live within the moment, and it is about how we choose to live in this moment. And rather than invest… I had the opportunity… We’ve all got the opportunity to look to materialism for a sense of security and comfort. But for me, I see myself as a direct link between the spirit world and the physical world. And there are a lot of writers who actually talk about that. Sonia Sanchez is a poet, an African-American poet and she talks about that. She sees writing as keeping the spirit gate open. And I thought, that’s exactly it. So then, if we write to keep the spirit gate open, if we speak these words every day, or just within those moments, then I’d imagine there is a huge gate that’s opening for people and allowing spirituality to return to the earth. That’s where it must come back to, for this earth to continue going on is to allow the divine being within all of us to be joined by the divine essence of the universe. Just to keep going. Yes, I see myself as a link. That’s the very reason I’m here.

EC: You said your work derives from an oral tradition. Do you think you’re trying to energise, reenergise a way of telling your story? Is it your story as the story of your people or the story deriving from your own experience?

RM: My stories derive from my own experience and the things I see and hear. And thankfully, thankfully… I used to be very conscious of audience. ‘What does an audience want to hear?’ I used to think like that. That was very bad poetry. I did not enjoy performing those pieces and I did not enjoy writing them. Because they weren’t about me, they were about something else. I was trying to be, I guess more than anything. The beauty of healing – it’s what I’m talking about – the beauty of that is that I’m talking to other people, my community members who, too, struggle everyday with colonialism and the constant demand of colonialism for us to forsake our traditions, our culture, so that we can become assimilated

within western society. And I think it’s a very validating process as well for them to hear it because I do know a lot of Indigenous mob have problems with literature, it’s a foreign culture. It’s a foreign culture. Rather than maintaining an obstacle in that way, I think it does give back to people, or give to people. You actually don’t need to write, but you do need to speak about who you are. Speak. Believe in your voice. And I guess that’s the underlying message. Just to have self-belief. Have faith. Believe in your voice. More than anything. Forget about the capacity to write stories. You don’t really need that, but you do need to have a voice.

EC: The repetitive patterns in these songs are allowed by the performance. It’s actually very difficult to see it on the page. Some people, at least the western way of reading poetry, could find it a bit… redundant?

RM: Absolutely. Redundant. ‘Repeat chorus.’ You often see songs are written down, you have all the beautiful lyrics, and then it just says – they put the chorus once and then: ‘and repeat chorus’. I have tried to avoid publishing my poetry like that: ‘repeat refrain’. [Laugh]

EC: The repetitive pattern also allows the work to sink into the audience’s mind and heart. I found it very enticing. This morning I was reading, ‘I shall surprise you by my will’, and you said at some point: ‘I shall spring upon you words familiar, / Then watch you regather as they drop about…’ I really thought that was what happened that day.

RM: That’s become a bit of a dictum. I guess that poem has been… In Yeperenye there were 36,000 people. And I performed that poem. Yeperenye was Federation. It was Indigenous Federation. In 2001. In Alice Springs. And when they say Indigenous people aren’t literary and don’t appreciate literature, well, ‘I shall surprise you by my will’ is actually evaluative. It does serve as literature for me. Yes, I guess it’s a dictum. A guideline. When I wrote that poem it was more fanciful thinking than anything else. And it’s been something that I have been, I guess, living up to ever since. To be able to perform that piece of poetry with integrity intact. It means… now I have got to actually live these words. That’s what it means. I’ve got to arrive to the place that the poem talks about. The proposition in it. I’ve actually got to rise up to meet it. That has been a journey ever since. But it’s great you believed that happened. That’s wonderful.

EC: You have a real presence on the stage.

RM: [Laugh]

EC: You’re doing research. Do you think it’s linked to your real presence on the stage?

RM: Yeah, actually, you know… In the year 2000, I applied for a PhD at the University of Western Sydney and when I mailed that application, I heard the words ‘this is going to change my life’. I would say I was emotionally and physically unhealthy in many ways, as is common to a lot of our mob, living under the cloak of a western society that invalidates you every way or seeks to invalidate you. It becomes a personal struggle to self-validation. So, the research on the English language, which is what this has been about… It’s actually on the relationship between the Indigenous body and English language. Again, all roads lead back to orality. The things I’ve found out during this research, the things I’ve been self-informed with now has actually, you’re right – I’ve never thought about it like that, or made that connection – contributed directly to my own self-esteem. I absolutely believe in our culture and how it really did work with the earth. And that to me has given me so much because I don’t need to engage with negative opinions about Indigenous people. I don’t need to listen to the people who say that massacres didn’t happen. Because I can just walk away and go… ‘Well actually they did.’ And that’s it. So yes, it has. The more and more my comfort has grown is reflected, I guess, on the stage. Because when you’re up there you’re so exposed, and I guess performance has really encouraged me to be able to be standing in front of people with as much comfort as possible. It’s not about getting used to people constantly staring at you – that’s coming second to nothing – it’s all about how comfortable I am in my own skin. So the research is really expanding that on a daily basis. Because that’s in phenomenology. The science of writing from experience. So every moment I’m occupied with this research anyway, I’m central, integral to it. So I’ve learnt lots.

EC: I also really felt it when you sang: ‘This is my earth. She’s the colour of black’. I felt you were very grounded, almost in the land. Although you were up on the stage.

RM: I really believe in that poem. Again it did not start out like that. It was the struggle to memorise the words, all about. But it was actually done in a museum the first time. It was written for an exhibition. Brook Andrews commissioned me to write a piece of poetry. And that’s what ‘Blak beauty’ came out of. But the best way I think to deliver any work is to believe in it, is to believe the words, and I think it’s what a lot of people struggle with, to believe their own words. That’s a whole process in itself. But I absolutely value the earth and all the life forms. And you’re right. I do totally believe in the earth and that’s what keeps me grounded. Anytime I may drift, or get distracted, it’s the earth I must come back to time and time again. That’s what gives me meaning, in this life.

EC: Do you see your performance as basically reasserting your presence on the land, or it’s a natural—

RM: Yeah, well…

EC: When James Miller said, ‘you three women have been erased by the history of this country…’

RM: He was talking about the fact that we were… ‘writing ourselves back into history’. That’s a beautiful thing to hear. I did not have that in my mind, didn’t have that mindset, the capacity to see that. And I won’t have that capacity to see it because it could become a distraction for me. I really value that. And he’s right. I believe he’s very right when he says that. And I think that’s the thing. When we work together as a community – I’m talking about everybody – when we work together as a community, we can afford not to see some things, and not to be preoccupied with some things because we have somebody else who is connected, who is our eyes and ears. We have many different perspectives. So then it becomes about valuing each others’ perspectives, which is what the community, all community aspects of living in this country is about. We don’t have to know, and see, and be everything. We can afford to be human and focus and have that specialisation. But we don’t need to be the all-knowing being. I think it’s a misconception and a distraction that our superstars have borne. And I have no intention of becoming or wanting to be a superstar, or wanting to be famous or anything, because I am progressively removing myself from my community to do that, and I prefer not to. I prefer to speak from within the boundaries of my community. That’s what gives me meaning, that’s what informs my work, and should I suddenly step outside of that to become a hyper individual, a superstar, then already I would be speaking about different things and removing myself from the very things that ground me.

EC: You spoke a lot about shared elements, that’s also what you mentioned regarding Sweet Honey In The Rock. You said that one thing that you were sharing was that you ‘landscape where you are through songs’.

RM: Yes, yes.

EC: And when you sang ‘this is my earth, she’s the colour of blak’, I thought that you were actually applying—

RM: Yes, well, you see, I write this about an Indigenous experience. And a lot of African-Americans actually came to the shows. So there was a lot of African-Americans in the audience and I was mesmerised by how much they related to the work. And I thought God, you’re black too! You’ve been removed, too! You come from the earth as well. Right! And I was just repeating lines like, ‘shake the dirt from the soles of your feet’. It’s actually a story about slavery. That is a slave story. I was pleasantly reminded, reassured, inspired by the fact that okay, so these stories don’t need to be Australian, they don’t need to be Aboriginal. They’re actually about everyone who can relate to this experience. And the song lines really stuck with Sweet Honey, they kept wanting to know more about the song lines. At every airport, it was like, tell us me more about the song lines. It was beautiful. And they’d share some of the stories, about the stories that were handed down through songs. And a lot of them were about how to escape from slavery. If you follow this road up behind the tree, and up to where… the big dipper we call it. So you had these African storytellers who are now in slavery, or enslaved, but not slaves because they are wanting to be free and return home. They were using their culture and tradition. Like you say tradition is an ongoing process. So their culture and tradition wasn’t passed, it was actually used in the present, in a moment, to acquire freedom. And that’s the beauty. Our comparison within a textual context is that people would require a map and need to read about it, a compass to locate yourself. Really, these people, and we inclusive in that, we can look at the stars, the murri mob, the murri people, great gazers of the stars, we can look at the very earth and you speak your story and it informs you, and you can be free, and that’s what I got out of that.

EC: You are, you said you were very connected to the land. You said you were from Stradbroke Island. Do you feel very connected to this place?

RM: Stradbroke?

EC: Yes.

RM: I do, I do. But the tour took me to countries that I had never been to before. Hobart, Pallawah country, the Kulin people of Melbourne the Ngunawal of Canberra, or, Canberra is actually named after the Kamberri people, up to the Yuggera people of Brisbane, and I found a multiplicity of being in being on that country, because the misconception about Aboriginality is that we are homogenous. So for me it was eye opening and just awesome to walk on somebody else’s land and being really conscious of the fact that it’s someone else’s land. And through prayer and meditation I do connect with them, and with much respect I’m doing this work for all of us because it must be done. I love the sensation of the connection but only through invitation. It’s not my actual right to be there just because. It’s constantly that I ask them directly, and I believe they only take me where I have permission to go. So I consider the whole country like that.

      So Stradbroke is my grounded place. It is Qandamooka, it is the spirit of the water. It’s where a lot of whales went past and I love that. Because I immediately see the whales. There are ancestors in South Australia who used to talk to the whales. And they used to prove it. They would sing a song and ask the whales to do something and the whales would do it, like spin around in the air or something like that. Just to prove that there was connection. The song lines which kept coming were about… This is very essential… Not only does it locate you but it actually means that we are all connected, the whales travel all around the country, all around the world. I realised these are mighty beings. Anyway, Qandamooka is the spirit of the water. And that’s why I so much relate to that and ongoing communication. And when you start to see the world like that – we’re all part of the same things, the seagulls, the little spider, you know – when you start to see that we are in every thing and every thing is in us, it makes it very difficult then to objectify that being and to disregard it or disrespect it. It really changes everything. So, that was one of the fundamental changes I experienced while on that tour. So much happened.

EC: I was very moved by your songs on Thursday. It reminded me of… Do you know Big Bill Neidjie? He has a poem that has been translated into French. I’m going to translate it into English for you, so I am not citing the original. He says: ‘You feel the wind blowing / For the land, it’s the same / You feel it, you can see it / It’s the feeling / that enables you to exist.’

RM: Ah. It’s beautiful. And that’s it, isn’t it. And it only needs to be five lines. That’s beautiful.

EC: You told me you thought a lot about the music, that you only wanted drums.

RM: I’ve been collaborating with musicians ever since the spoken word experience started for me. It’s very difficult to coordinate with musicians. Especially when none of us is getting paid a hell of a lot. And I felt really bad that they would often have to travel far and rehearse very little because we didn’t have the time or the money. It was a lot of stress. And usually, as well as trying to prepare for my own performance, I was coordinating other people and that’s just a huge amount of stress because I did not have the money to employ someone to do that, you know, fulfill that role for me. With Sweet Honey, I was actually working with a musician at the time anyway who was using a lot of orchestra stuff. And I spoke to Bernice Johnson Regan from Sweet Honey – she’s the founding member – and she suggested something a bit more intimate. Which suited me fine. It really did, which meant I returned to the drums, and returned to very simple musical backing which was always my intention. But like I said, it is very difficult when you’re coordinating with other artists who have their own needs to fill, you know, creative needs. And urges. So it was a process of saying very clearly: ‘Just something like this. Just drums. Just a drum and a bass. That’s all. Sweet Honey only uses acoustics. That’s the only instruments they use, beside their voice, so I guess the desire was very specifically about complementing their show as well. So I wanted to keep it in that vein. It was to be a whole show. It wasn’t to be me jar the audience out of their tranquillity and then Sweet Honey come on. To stay true to who they were as well.

EC: So when you adapted your poems, did you think you were creating new meanings?

RM: No, I really didn’t, you know. A lot of people say it’s very fresh work, it’s different. To me, I’m still just doing a poem. To me, a lot of the time… Initially I was very worried about the literary quality of the work. Then I just threw that out because there is nothing I need to be concerned with. [laugh] So when people respond to the work, that’s the truest indication of whether or not it is successful in communicating. [laugh] I do poems that are really bad, too. I just choose not to perform them [laugh].

EC: The poems you performed on Thursday create that common understanding you were mentioning. Maybe that’s because they’re not so much the words of anger of your early poetry.

RM: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

EC: Although they are very confronting. They are. I had the feeling that you were more putting the emphasis on something to treasure.

RM: Yeah. That’s exactly right. A lot of my early poetry was… I was angry when I wrote it [laugh]. I was still living in my community. I was on a very daily basis confronted with racism, and it’s hard not to be angry when somebody is treating you with no respect constantly. That’s very hard. If it’s in your face everyday, it’s a big ask for people to say ‘just get over it’. Because it’s ongoing, you can’t get over it, it’s every day. So, rather than stay in that space and stay angry about it and – back to that research project, being informed now what my rights are, being totally inspired by other Indigenous artists who talk about sovereignty – I began to understand what sovereignty actually is. While western culture may not be able to appreciate our sovereignty, they don’t, they don’t recognise it, it doesn’t mean we don’t have to. So we can. For me it is about constantly talking with my sovereignty intact. To always remember I have sovereign rights in this land and I can always say what I damn well feel like, pretty much. So rather than abuse that right and speak constantly in anger, why not again reinforce the tradition of orality in this culture, on this land, which is always about love, it was about responsibility, which is about justice. It was these beautiful essences and values that were being communicated. We did not dwell on the negative nature of life. I don’t think we did. I don’t believe we did. That’s not the feeling I get. And that to me is reinforcing colonialism then. So to me to stay angry and divide myself from the rest of the world, and divide myself within myself… The best I heal and then begin to stay true to the oral nature of this work, and the cultural essence of it and speak from love… it has to be spoken from love.

EC: You convey a calm assurance and a calm certainty in those last words, and in the poems you performed. It also came up from one of the poems you didn’t sing. I wrote it down very quickly. ‘Humanity’s moment— ’

RM: Humanity’s greatest moment is death or life no longer. We all face… Basically, that’s just about as people, every day, we’re constantly faced with the prospect of death. That is our reality, that will happen. For life to continue it must happen. And best we accept that. [laugh] I think a lot of it is about death. A lot of the issues that are going on in the world today is about one day. We are mortal, we are limited, and we will have a limited experience within a limited time. Because we are not the creator, the creator is eternal. And all seeing, all being. Already we have a lot to talk about [laugh], if we can accept that we’re all human, we’re mortal, we make mistakes. We don’t need to write it in concrete though, because we can forgive each other. Accept death because it is part of life. Also not to fear death if you understand that death is about returning. What Ysaye said to me during the tour – Sweet Honey – was that we are spirits having a human experience rather than humans having a spiritual experience. And that to me just changed everything. Okay, so I wasn’t meant to live forever anyway and I am spiritual person, we are spirits having a human experience. That’s it. Best I’ll make the most of this human experience, in its beauty and its difficulties. Best I just learn from it and know that this is a spiritual experience, all of it, all of it.

EC: I think the message is beautiful because it embraces everybody… humanity.

RM: Yes, and it is, and it needs to be that way. I am not for the compartmentalisation that occurs within western society, I am not for that. I am not for the reference that – as you might guess [laugh] – removes us from each other. The negative ones. They’re all negative in their own ways. No, they’re all negative. Whether you call someone I guess a dole bludger, whether you call someone a drug addict, a junky, a lesbian, a gay, these are references that seek to remove each other from ourselves, as well as our community members, so the essence of it then is about not to place so much worth on these references and get down beneath them – which is embrace humanity, embrace each other. It has to be that way.

EC: You said you don’t think that complexity exists, at least as the western world sees it. Well I think I could describe your works and words as blinding clarity, that’s what it is for the

audience, but I think it tells us, even if you don’t think it does, it does tell us about complexity. In what seems to be a very simple way, it does tell us about complexity.

RM: [Laugh] Oh yeah. For me there is a simplicity in the essence of life, but that does not mean that the ruling forces of that simplicity are not complex. They’re very complex in nature. Our traditional culture in this country, to work out how the marriage systems were in place, around this country, and how we all related and we were land managers, and everything, the moiety system. Western society required its greatest mathematicians to dissect that information. So it tells me that we are very complex thinking people [laugh]. In every day lives though our behaviour does not need to be so complex, but there is absolutely – I am not saying to be brain dead or anything, it’s maybe just use it as a window of opportunity to enter into this world and within every day each moment has so much potential in its complex nature as much as its beauty which is simple. It’s hard to talk to myself all the time [laugh]. There is not much of a revelation going on when there is just me dialoguing with myself. It’s good. It makes it all clear. You’re actually helping me writing my thesis as we speak.

EC: That’s good!

RM: So that’s really wonderful.

EC: The beauty is—

RM: Yeah, the beauty is simple. Once you have that essence then you begin to see the complex nature of that beauty though. When you understand that what is required of us is a responsibility, it is our duty. Then you see oh, okay, that’s complex because western culture I think invests so much in escapism! The incredible film industry, so much entertainment that is geared for escapism and… there is the beauty of escapism but there need not be removal from our responsibility. We can still be entertained and maintain who we are, in the world. That is achievement.

EC: I was going to ask you a last question, but as you mention the film industry, what could you say about your experience with it?

RM: Working with the Australian film commission, again, I am really struck and inspired and moved by Indigenous filmmakers who again operate from within that responsibility. All of us have the choice to create works that do not speak back to our communities. All of us have that choice. All of us have that choice to create works that are about raising revenue and making money. We all have that choice. What I love about Indigenous filmmakers – and I include them when I say Indigenous artists – is that personal sense of responsibility. And I think that’s really important. Films are so important. It’s huge, it’s the biggest text in operation in the world. It is a text, I think people can overlook that. It’s as big a text as the written word. You’re writing with light and photographs to write with light. So again, I think, Indigenous filmmakers are also very brave because their work is out there in the world in a way that is very public, a very public way. And then, because of that the pressure is great. And again there is not a lot of money in it. So again, it’s passion. I know that those people make these films, we make these films, I am a filmmaker as well, we make these films with our sense of responsibility intact. And that’s what I’d like to focus on. With the film experience. More than likely within the film industry you become a star in some way, so the challenge then is how you negotiate that process. It’s inevitable you become a star. If you’re a successful filmmaker you’re going to be a star. It goes without saying. So it’s about how we negotiate that. But as I said, we all have the challenge of that. In our everyday lives it’s how we use the moment.

EC: You obviously believe in the power of words.

RM: Mmm, mmh.

EC: Would you say that writing is now an integral part of self-definition?

RM: Well, you see, many cultures believe that life itself came from the word, the spoken word was the beginning of life itself. So I absolutely believe that when we speak, it impacts. What we think and what we say fundamentally impacts the world in some way. We’re all energy. It does, it must. I would say unfortunately the majority of us Indigenous people, because we’ve had our languages removed, we only have English language to define ourselves but you see already that’s a removal from who we are. So I don’t place too much emphasis on textual language to find out who I am. In fact I reject it totally. I must work with it because the people who are my audience speak English. They speak a dominant language.

So it’s pointless of me getting out there… I could go away and find out my own language and communicate entirely in that but then I am not communicating with other people. That would give me the chance to communicate spiritually – with the Creator. But to make this journey, to make the most of this life journey, it’s about communicating with other people, so while I’m using English I don’t believe in it. [Laugh] I really don’t. Yeah, it’s a necessary evil, a necessary evil. So until our own language is returned to us, it is what we need to do for now.

EC: I am just going to tell you another thing I was thinking about. About using the language. There is a Canadian critic and writer, Smaro Kamboureli, who wrote the introduction for an anthology on Canadian multiculturalism, and she said something about representation. She wrote: ‘I believe that we reside forever within the realm of representation: we represent ourselves through language and through our bodies, but we also see ourselves represented by others. […] Representation […] is a matter of construction, always something that stands in for something else.’ It makes the link with your thesis.

RM: I’ll get that quote actually. Well that’s it. The essence of representation, it is the struggle to self-represent. Aboriginality did not exist in this country pre-1788. It’s a colonial concept and construct. Before that we represented ourselves to each other, through our language indeed, through our totems, through our skin names, through our dreaming, that was how we were representing ourselves to each other. Aboriginality therefore is the process where the capacity, the ability, the rights to self-represent was removed. So to regain our language, to regain our cultural information is about the capacity to self-represent. Everyday you will constantly face others’ opinion of who you are. Everyday – whether it’s your mother, your father, your brothers. Somebody always has an opinion of who you are. And they usually believe their opinion is right. And they don’t ask you for what, how you think about yourself. It’s very rare. That’s oppression in some way. Oppression therefore is that removal of self-authoring, that’s how I refer to it. It’s to author ourselves, to name ourselves. And the right to be who we are. Western society itself is about having that removed, in some way. It’s the administrative system that requires reduction. The process of reduction is the removal of our right to self-represent.

EC: The fact that you are using English, it’s actually your medium, and yet you say you don’t believe in it. Doesn’t it give you sometimes the feeling that you’re fulfilled?

RM: I understand that it’s the tool I need to work with. I understand that is the challenge. To speak the language without becoming, you know – without being colonised. And that’s the true internal because our languages are – it denied our internal landscape as well as our external landscape. So you have the contradiction of…

EC: It is a contradiction!

RM: [Laugh] It is a huge contradiction and that is the struggle. It’s why a lot of mob I believe resist learning English so much; they fear losing the sense of who they are. So then… that’s the struggle there. [Laugh] It’s a contradiction. I’d prefer not to use it but hey that’s what we have.

EC: Thank you very much.

RM: Thank you.

This interview was conducted on 24/05/2003 in Sydney.