English

English

Both Noel Pearson’s eulogy and We Are Going explore the issue of Aboriginal land rights by adopting a similar tone. Noel Pearson’s eulogy begins with a sombre tone when he describes his childhood and experience as a young Aboriginal boy on the reserve as ‘growing up near the wood heap of democracy’ conveying the despair felt by the Aboriginal people, but also the cruel disregard and dismissal they experienced at the hands of their own government. Similarly, the speaker in Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s We Are Going is the perspective of an Aboriginal person who has experienced the same vilification at the hands of white men who have taken over their land. The litany, which begins with ‘we are as strangers here now’ which is echoed in the sorrowful final line ‘we are going,’ emphasising the sense of loss and grief felt by the speaker and her people as they have been displaced, and are suffering as the white man has removed their sense of autonomy. The poem and the eulogy both employ a solemn tone to convey the serious existential threat that the ‘strange’ white man represents to the Aboriginal people. However, the tone of the eulogy shifts when Pearson explains how the policies and reforms of the Whitlam government helped shaped his life and allowed him opportunity, overturning the ‘malice’ of discrimination that he had felt for most of his life. Pearson affectionately asks, ‘apart from all of this, what did this old man ever do for us?’ inviting the audience to share his sense of celebration of Gough Whitlam’s life, and to show that reconciliation and mutual respect between the Aboriginals and white men are possible, concluding the eulogy with a victorious tone.
Both Noel Pearson’s eulogy and We Are Going explore the issue of Aboriginal land rights by adopting a similar tone. Noel Pearson’s eulogy begins with a sombre tone when he describes his childhood and experience as a young Aboriginal boy on the reserve as ‘growing up near the wood heap of democracy’ conveying the...

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