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QMNQMNQMNQMNapartheid man, this is what this is and this is what a lot of country towns arelike. These people hate Aboriginals and a lot of Aboriginals know this now.Aboriginals comprise some three percent of the Australian population, yetthey occupy some thirty percent of the prison cells. I understand you yourselfspent some time as a youth in various institutions. Why do you think thishas occurred?I think one of the reasons why so many young Aboriginal kids ends up ingaol is because they don't have any stake in the large society around them,that they are treated as separate and are victimized as soon as they areconscious of realising their position, and because they have no stake in thewider society they do stupid things like steal cars and so on. This is happeningall the time and it's still happening.Do you find then that this reflects many of the problems facing Aboriginalyouths today?Well the problems facing Aboriginal youths are or is the sort of underlyingracism in Western Australian society, and Aborigines are very conscious ofthis and so a lot of Aboriginals, especially those who are sensitive or don'tlike it, want to rebel against it. Usually how they do this is by doing somesort of crime and so end up in gaol. It's very difficult for Aboriginals to enterinto white society and accept their values now. One of the things is that, sayin my case and a lot of other Aborigines who were institutionalised, we moreor less learn how to fit into just about any type of situation, especially aninstitution. So that is why we live in a society. Now other Aboriginal peoplehave adjusted in different ways to the white society, like one old guy KingWally, who was sort of famous for his bringing the hunter into an urbansituation like Perth and surviving very well as a hunter and getting moneyby different types of tricks and so on, and he was a perfect example of howan Aborigine can survive in white society without selling out. And this is theproblem - that selling out - that happens to too many Aborigines oncethey get a job, once they get a salary of say twenty five thousand they startfeeling white inside.In your collection of poetry The Song Circle of Jacky you have highlightedthe problems of, the Aborigines in the penal system particularly "Death ofa Poet ': In view of the death in custody of John Patt, Charlie Michael, RobertWalker and others - do you feel that there is such a significance in thetreatment of Aboriginals by the police and prison officers?Well the police are what you consider a sort of colonial force making surethat the Aboriginals don't get out of their place, and don't get too upity, andtherefore any Aboriginals who do start protesting and talk back to policemenend up in gaol and when they go before a judge they usually get longersentences, even for little things. This happens all the time and so Aboriginalprisoners are treated differently. And white people regard the Aborigine asa conquered people, and so if the Aboriginal people stand up for their rightsthey find themselves in fucking Freo.Although you have stated that Wild Cat Falling is not an autobiography -are there parts in the novel that have actually been drawn from your life?Well it's very interesting that question because what happens at the end ofWild Cat Falling is that he looks up into the eyes of a policeman and asks'did that cop really die' and the cop says 'no he didn't' and he feels this rushof gratitude in his heart for not killing the policeman. So when this happenedrecently, and I will get back to it later on, is that because I was at an AboriginalNational Theatre they had a convention in Canberra, and there was so manypeople around, and also I had written a script of Wild Cat Falling based84WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989