Protection

Read the poem here
or read it below

The poem:

Protection

by Eva Johnson

In the days when our land and our people were free

We lived in a spirit of dignity

Teaching our children the way to be free

And we never needed PROTECTION.

When whitefella came from over the sea

Teacher, official and missionary

They herded us on to reserves and agreed

It was all for our PROTECTION.

They set up a board with a policy

To bring up our children as white as could be

Stealing them first from our black family

All in the nature of PROTECTION.

Gone were our children to missionary

Gone was our land and the power to be free

Gone was our spirit of dignity

Such was the power of PROTECTION.'''







Original:
 This is a beautiful poem about the aborine children being taken away. The author is trying to tell us about a forgotten, horrible moment in Australian History. The author uses the word PROTECTION a significant amount of times. The author uses the word PROTECTION a significant amount of times. This is supposed to represent that what they said was protection, was actually torture. This poem is very sad, and makes us feel the guilt. They are bitter about their children.



The slightly edited and completed:
 The poem in the link is a beautiful (yet saddening,) poem about Aboriginal children being taken away from their families. This moment in history is called the Stolen Generation, a dark period on the Australian timeline. The author, using the power of repetition, use the word protection a great several amounts of times, making you feel guilty each time the word protection comes up. This is supposed to represent that what they said was protection, was torture. They feel bitter about their children being taken away.

The poem is about cultural power. The British people came to Australia and took away the aborigines children. The aborigines, due to racism, had no power according to the British.