After Australia

by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Genres: Anthologies

Synopsis

Climate catastrophe, police brutality, white genocide, totalitarian rule and the erasure of black history provide the backdrop for stories of love, courage and hope.In this unflinching new anthology, twelve of Australia’s most daring Indigenous writers and writers of colour provide a glimpse of Australia as we head toward the year 2050.Featuring Ambelin Kwaymullina, Claire G. Coleman, Omar Sakr, Future D. Fidel, Karen Wyld, Khalid Warsame, Kaya Ortiz, Roanna Gonsalves, Sarah Ross, Zoya Patel, Michelle Law and Hannah Donnelly. Edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Original concept by Lena Nahlous.Published by Affirm Press in partnership with Diversity Arts Australia and Sweatshop Literacy Movement.

Release date: June 9, 2020

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

I’m gonna educate you gronks. I get pissed off when white people wear the Aboriginal flag. Hey you, yeah I’m talking to you. At protests, at exhibition openings, in selfies on Invasion Day, or because you lived in the Northern Territory for five years. I don’t think there is ever a time in space for white bearers of the Koori flag. I should say Aboriginal flag cause south-east Aboriginal people, we don’t own the flag. I had a Noongar housemate once who would always get annoyed when it came up and say, ‘Yeh, you mean the Noongar flag.’

I used to have a sticker of the flag on my old red two-door Holden Barina. At the bottom, it said: one mob. I remember this footy head I hooked up with at the Koori Knockout laughed when he spotted it. ‘Why do you have that sticker on your car?’ Maybe, like so many others, he decided he was more black than me so he could laugh at my existence. Maybe he was just freaked out that I was parking my car out the front of his place when I stayed over and now his cousins knew he was sleeping with an Aboriginal woman and his masc Aboriginal self was disturbed. I don’t know. He probably just wanted to make a Bob Marley reference, one love one mob.

After he pointed it out though, whenever I jumped in the car, the flag loomed large. It weighed on me so much that I started to think it must be weighing on everyone, and that a redneck with Southern Cross mudflaps would see it one day and try to run me off the road. Months after I stopped sleeping with Footy Head cause he was too much of a bitch, I was driving down to Coffs Harbour. I parked in a standard concrete residential parking lot with hedges and steel fences. I was gonna leave my car there and get a lift with another friend further down the coast. As I started getting out, I heard a wheelie bin rumble. I saw this older guy in double plugger thongs and Union Jack boardies taking his bins out right next to the boot of my Barina. I thought nah I gotta peel that sticker off, this fucker is gonna do some shit to my car if he sees the flag. Once Double Plugger was gone, I picked at the edges of the sticker furiously with my nails and it came off in flaky pieces. There was a dusty, sticky outline of where the flag had been. That outline never went away.

Everyone thinks that the flag belongs to them, to us the people, but that’s not really true. Since 1995, it’s been recognised as an official flag of Australia under the Flags Act, but only one person owns the copyright: Luritja artist Harold Thomas. It was the era of the Tent Embassy and land rights activism, and it became a symbol of the black power movement here in Australia. The flag is what those activists needed for a united Aboriginal movement of many nations. Powerful stuff. Nowadays, the company that has exclusive rights to use the flag on apparel is co-owned by a man who got done for selling fake Aboriginal souvenirs through yet another company. That’s capitalism in the colony for you: making money on what’s real and what’s fake without sparing a thought for the culture it represents.

It’s as simple as etching three lines into any surface: one horizontal line, a circle followed by a horizontal line, some people might add two vertical lines to bracket the meaning. Either form is a secret message to the next blackfella who finds your scratchings. I was here. You are here. We are still here. And that’s why the flag feels like ours when you wear it, no matter the copyright, or who profits, it’s a pan-Aboriginal thing, not a tribal thing.

I read a rant on the internet that said Harold Thomas stole the design off another blackfella, let’s call him Mr B, who was his student at a community college. Harold was eventually declared the owner of the copyright of this flag by the Federal Court. Two other people came forward to claim ownership of the copyright in 1997. Of course, one was a culture vulture white art student, and the other was Mr B. Over twenty years later Mr B was still trying to get what he thought was his due on the internet. When I read this viral post on Shitbook, I couldn’t tell if it was just some right-wing troll on the other end of the flag rant. See, the internet is the place where the undefinable cultural authorities and the right-wing Nazis can become the same thing. Would you ever expect a black person and Andrew Bolt to say the same thing? No, but fuck me dead it happens – what happens when an emu and a lamington walk into a bar? Crickets.

I don’t dispute that Harold Thomas designed the flag. I just find the internet does remarkable things to the truth. Standing on sacred ground living on syndicated capitalist time. Solid Rock was written by white people. Out of all the various possible realities, Australia is just a glitch.

There are t-shirts you can buy that say ‘Free the Flag’ cause Aboriginal people get cease-and-desists from the fake art company. There are still local councils that won’t fly the Aboriginal flag and I haven’t even mentioned the Torres Strait Islander flag yet – the TI flag is another official flag of Australia, designed by the late Bernard Namok, and the copyright is held by the Torres Strait Island Regional Council. The TI flag and the Aboriginal flag are like cousins when they fly proud together over rooftops and entrances.

I remember when I asked my high school principal if we could leave the Aboriginal flag up after NAIDOC Week finished, he choked on his reconciliation scone and said, ‘We’ll have to think about it,’ while licking jam and cream from his lips. In my last year of school, the principal conceded to fly the flag outside of NAIDOC Week, but only on the condition that an Aboriginal student had to learn how to ceremoniously raise and lower the flag, and be responsible for doing it every day. I would get to the flagpole and raise my flag before the groundskeeper was able to raise the Aussie flag because I knew it was improper protocols and it would annoy the teachers. Black flag is black pride. I wear the black flag. I don’t know what people see when I do. Possibly that I’m some unidentifiable minority with a Koori flag on. Maybe she’s a quadroon. Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe she’s black black black.

The wind settled. High-pitched howling replaced by a gentle murmur. She thought it sounded familiar. Like a warm lullaby she’d once heard. Tears spent, Lilith wiped her face with the hem of her dress. Listening to the wind, she recalled that she’d never had a lullaby sung to her, let alone felt the warmth of human kindness. Momentarily forgetting what had just happened up at the house, she was lulled by the wind, even though she knew this faint essence of a familiar song was just false memories taunting her again. She leant back on the tree trunk, feeling its strength flow up her spine. When younger, she thought this large gumtree was hollow and had searched for a hidden entrance. She spent a lot of time in this clearing, down by the river; whenever she felt lonely or wanted to escape Mrs Barton’s sharp tongue for a few hours. Despite the closeness of the river, it was a barren patch of land, with the old gumtree in the centre. This tree had a deep, elongated scar; as if someone had cut a canoe shape in its wide trunk. She often talked to the tree, sharing secrets; happy moments, and what made her scared or sad. Things she’d say to her mother, if she could.

She got up slowly, fresh bruises making movement difficult. She had bolted out of the house when she’d heard Mrs Barton call for Ted to fetch the rifle. Barefoot, with no possessions, Lilith was unexpectedly free at last. She listened to water flowing in the river and thought she might follow it, all the way to the sea. She’d overheard the seasonal workers’ tales of seas. With one last look at Barton Homestead, she walked into the night, vowing to return one day, with lullabies for her boy. She asked both wind and tree to mind Johnny until then.

Jack Barton excused himself, expressing a need for air. As he stood on the wide verandah, he looked towards the old gumtree. Just a stump, no longer a tree. His grandfather had cut it down years ago, before Jack was born, at the insistence of Grandmother Mary. Jack’s father, John, had told him stories of climbing that tree when he was young; hiding from his mother on the highest branches. Only once did young John fall. He’d broken an arm that day, which is probably why she’d demanded the tree be cut down.

Along with boyhood stories of solo adventures, exploring the country surrounding the family’s homestead, his father had told him that tree was significant. He couldn’t say why; it was just a feeling. Jack understood, as he felt safe whenever he was near that stump. The surrounding land caused a different feeling: disbelief and grief. Jack once again wished his father was still here. He hoped that pain would lessen with time. He moved towards the steps, intending to walk to the stump. Hearing his name called, he paused. With a deep sigh, he went back inside to mingle with guests at his engagement dinner.

She bit harder on her forearm, blood trickling from the self-inflicted wound. Flesh absorbing muffled cries of pain. Ignoring the kaleidoscope of sounds beyond her quickly made nest – rifles cracking, horses squealing in protest and upstanding citizens caught up in a blood-lust frenzy – she focused on the increasing contractions, biting down whenever the pain became too much. To make a sound could mean death. Hiding in the tree’s cavity, she tried not to think of the jigsaw of images and sounds she’d just witnessed. She was thankful for the protection the wind provided and hoped it would blow the furious men away. This uncanny wind joined her, inside the tree. It swirled around, filling the cavity with warmth. She felt it gently touch her mind. The wind gathered the young woman’s thoughts, filling up the hollow in the tree trunk with unspoken words. It asked for stories. So she shared tales that had been told to her by family, through the generations, and visiting storytellers. There was the one about how crow got its shiny blue-black feathers. Her favourite. And the yarn of when her father and Uncle fell into the water while trying to land the fattest fish ever seen in that part of the river. The wind listened, touching her bare skin occasionally, encouraging her to share more. She blushed when she told of how she’d met her fella. And then felt saddened when she realised he’d never hold their baby.

Swirling, twirling, the wind gathered words and stories. Still hungry, it asked for more. She told the wind of the boss-man and his woman. Short, stout and pale; both of them. They looked nothing like anyone in her family. All the newcomers were pale; white like the bones of long-dead animals. Boss-man made her kin work too hard, striking them with a whip if they dragged their feet. They weren’t allowed to hunt white-man’s fat beasts. The hooved beasts had slowly destroyed everything green, forcing the kangaroos to move away. There was a tinge of smoke on the wind, carried in from outside. She thought of freshly cooked meat and could almost feel warm fat running down her chin. Before the newcomers, there’d been lots of bushtucker. Now, Missus gave them flour to keep them strong enough to toil. They had to pick out the weevils before making damper. She also gave them tins of a sickly-sweet red paste to put on their damper. The young woman told the wind all those stories.

In return, the wind shared stories from the future. A glimpse of a lean, tall woman with an abundance of brown curls. This woman sat in a roughly built wattle-and-daub hut. The single room had two long rows of steel beds with lumpy pillows and scratchy blankets. The woman sang lullabies, surrounded by children. The wind showed a boy sitting on his mother’s lap. He too had curly hair. His eyes were most catching: one blue, one brown. His mother crooned him to sleep. The wind fell silent and the images faded. The woman felt a mix of grief and hope. She put aside thoughts of rivers of red soaking into the earth, surrounding the tree, drowning her.

She whispered to the future, ‘Can you hear, dearest one? These are our stories. Our language. The wind will keep them safe. Through these stories, we remember kin. And we will use them to fight for justice. We must never forget what happened today, on our land.’

She’d not heard him approach. She looked up, as the wind departed, and saw steel-blue eyes. Boss-man had found her.

He looked down at her in disgust. ‘What have you done now, Rosie?’

Too tired to speak, she thought: That’s not my true name. Pulling red-tinged steel from his boot, he leaned forward, into the tree’s cavity. The wind had not warned her this was how her story ended. She spat in his face before biting the side of his hand. The infant arrived on a river of blood, mucus and story. Boss-man looked down in revulsion, at his boots, and the baby. Bending, knife in hand, he roughly severed the umbilical cord and scooped up the newborn.

Lilith shivered. It was always windy by the old gumtree, although usually not this cold. Sometimes she imagined that she could hear voices on the wind. As a child, she had pretended they were stories from the time when people like her had lived unencumbered, before the newcomers had arrived. She’d once heard a black stockman call these newcomers white devils. Once, after Mrs Barton had given her a belting for breaking the sugar bowl, Lilith called her a white devil. Mrs Barton gave her another smack, and said she had too much sin in her. She made Lilith kneel on the rough bricks outside the kitchen door and recite Bible verses until her voice was hoarse. She found comfort in knowing she was not a Barton. They treated her . . .