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lands or which have been taken over, we want more or less some sort of rentto be paid which is reparation for the stealing of the land. This money willbe used to further the urban Aboriginal people socially, economically andso on, and this is how it should be done and can only be done. But Aboriginalpeople don't want to own Perth and Melbourne and so on, but they wantcompensation for it, and urban people want this compensation and that iswhy land rights is important for urban Aboriginal people too.Q As we are all aware, land rights has really dominated Aboriginal politics formany years now. Do you think there are other areas of Aboriginal cultureand heritage that are being forgotten?MN I don't think so, because in Aboriginal thinking everything comes from theland. So land contains everything in every aspect of our culture. So once wehave our land rights, we'll have all the other cultural rights.Q Following the major achievements of the Aboriginal movement during theWhitlam and early Fraser years, what do you think have been the greateststumbling blocks in recent years?MN Well, I think it's the Australian Labor Party.Q When the lAbor Party in Western Australia came into government, did theymaintain a status quo, or did you go backwards?MN Well, if we take Western Australia as an example, we have really gonebackwards, and with the Labor government in Canberra who had thiswonderful platform containing all sorts of Aboriginal aspirations, these havebeen deliberately destroyed, and the Aboriginal people cannot expect verymuch from the Hawke government and possibly even worse from a Liberalgovernment.Q I suppose, in a way, the government is treating the Aboriginal movement asjust another lobby group it has to contend with?MN Well to a certain extent the Hawke government and Western governmentmight think we are just another lobby group, but the Aboriginal people knowthat they are not just another lobby group, that this is their country.Q As an Aboriginal can you feel a positive undercurrent of change in theattitudes of white Australians to the Aboriginal people and their presentcauses?MN Well, I think because Aboriginal people in the 1960s and 1970s becamepolitically active, refused to sit down and take it any more, that white peopledid come to terms with not only Aboriginal people themselves, but Aboriginalculture, and then again the only Australian thing in Australia is Aboriginalculture. Everything else is a European import and so people overseas, if theywant to know about Australia, want to know about real Australian cultureand Aboriginal people, and not something which comes from Europe andwhich usually Europeans or Americans can do very much better thanAustralians. I refer here to their literature and so on, which is usually copiesof American or English literature.Q How do you see yourself within the Aboriginal movement?MN Well, the Song Circle of Jacky and Dalwurra were written to sum up mypolitical position, and also to state this is what's happening to Aboriginalpeople, and this is what Aboriginal people want, and to some sort of degreethey are like bullets, machine gun bullets going everywhere, and they havethat force behind them. Now with my long poem, which is called 'PerthStained in Blackness', I wrote that as my gift to the Bicentennial of Australia,and after I had written it, I heard that 'gift' in German means poison, sothat's what I mean.88 WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989