The Journey from '67: My mother told me a story

Mothers waiting for their children by Hazel Mackinnon

Stolen by Hazel MacKinnon

My Mother Told Me A Story

Many years ago my mother told me a story

a story about when she was a child

and it goes like this:

it was a cool sunny day

and all the coloured kids

were playing around in their way.

But coming in the distance my grandmother saw

white people

coming towards the station.

My mother told me this story

a story about when she was a child

growing up on the station -

my mother told me this story.

Some of the mothers started to run

and hide with their kids

down towards the waterhole in the bush -

but they took every half-caste kid in sight.

But my grandmother hid my mother

in an empty hay-sack bag.

My grandmother waited for the whites to go

but it was sadness that day

for the mothers of that land

'cause their children were taken away

from their dreaming and their culture.

This story makes me sad -

what my mother told me.

by Michael Fitz Jagamarra
published in Voices from the Heart:
contemporary Aboriginal poetry from Central Australia
collected and edited by Roger Bennett
and published by IAD Press, Alice Springs