Oodgeroo Noonuccal was an influential Aboriginal women who wrote about the colonisation of white people and how it impacted the Indigenous peoples of Australia and the land. She was the first Aboriginal women to become a published author in Australia and her excellent use of poetic devices helps her show the perspectives of the indigenous people of Australia and how white settlement was terrible time for her people. One of her many famous poems ” Time is Running out” shows the themes of this and this.
Indigenous poetry is an important part of Australia’s culture, the poetry helps us reflect and allows Australians to come together so History does not repeat itself. Her powerful use of words has allowed the reader to connect deeply with the poem, the words themselves painting the pictures. The main focus of this poem talks about the thoughtless destruction of the sacred land, and abusing the land for profit. This powerful poem tells the story of how people are ripping up the sacred ground of the earth and taking its precious resources. The poet meticulously describes the process of the mining as he sits “On his metal throne of destruction””Piling the mountainous minerals high”. The poet highlights how people don’t see the destruction they are causing because they are so focused on the end result and profit. Even though they live on the sacred ground they continued to ruin and destroy it nearly unobservent to the consequncss they could face. The contrast of the first line”the miner rapes” to the last line “love of land” a re vastly different which shows the two different perspectives in the different cultures.
The poets theme is that the aboriginal people were distressed with destroying of their sacred land. The first paragraph uses key words of rapes, violent, stealing, greedy, destruction and labours, they are all very heavy words and majority of the quite damaging which only emphasises even more what kind of actions the miners were doing to the earth. The aboriginal people do not understand why people would want to damage the sacred earth and steal its precius resources for something so greedy and bad.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal has used many poetic devices in the poem to paint a picture in the readers mind. The alliteration used in line 4 “bottling her black blood” talks about taking the oil from the earth and selling it for a profit. The harsh ‘b’ sound is used to show the poet is angry with how the miners treat the earth. There is use of repetition of the words ‘he’ and ‘violent’ (slight changes in that word ).
The pronoun ‘he’ and ‘his’ is used interchangeably eight times in the first 17 lines, it emphasises that
