pdf download - Westerly Magazine

JOHN WILLIAMSONand RON RUDOLPHYInterview with Mudrooroo Narogin (ColinJohnson)Q You are a member of Bibbulmun Tribe - you were brought up in thewheatbelt town of Beverley and left there at the age of nine - did you livein the township or in the much publicised fringe dwelling which exist outsidewhite country towns?MN Well once upon a time I was thinking of doing an autobiography and I wasgoing to call it "We Lived in a House" because we were, I think, the onlyAboriginal family there who lived in a house and this was just an old shopor something on the outskirts, the furniture was very little and there was onlycold water and no refrigerator or that stuff. But we lived in a house and Ithink this was quite important - I think in Wild Cat Falling the motheris very conscious of living in a house as it could mean certain things like gettingwidow's pension and so on that could prove that we could live like a whiteperson.Q Can you give us some of your other impressions as a young boy in this sortof environment?MN Well it depends - when I was really young I loved the bush and would wandereverywhere so I don't understand, say, city people so much because my earlyupbringing was in the country, but then again in this Beverley no-one wouldtalk to us because we were black, and we had very little contact with thewhite population in that town, and then again schools were segregated andall of the black children who did go to school had to sit in certain desks awayfrom the white people and the rest of it. So my impressions of my early lifewas that town was really bad but the bush was really good.Q When did you really grasp the significance of the Aboriginal heritage, wasthat at an early age?MN Well it was more a question of realising that I was not white. My motherwas very conscious of our colour and sort of instilled that in us, and thenit was only so my Aboriginality was always there for mixing with people andso on, but it was not a sort of conscious thing, sort of various thingsunconsciously entered into my life, like knowing how to get certain types ofbush tucker and things like that these are just there.Q Have you noticed any changes in the attitude of the white countrycommunities towards the Aboriginal?MN Well I would say people are worse now and one of the reasons is that theAboriginal people are not so willing to accept their oppression these days andthey are willing to get up and stand up for their rights and when this happensthere is a sort of backlash and we saw in Wiluna when Aboriginals votedand got a majority of councillors on the town council, immediately whitepeople take up a petition to split the shire in half and this is fucking ourWESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 83