Please Don’t

By | 1 February 2019
              please don’t invite him to take

my identity, my right

                                      my culture

please don’t invite him to have

                                               what is not rightfully his

              please don’t tell him he’s got the name

                      of this or that Aboriginal family

                                                              so he just maybe connected

                                      just maybe one of those Mob

              please don’t tell him

he has

                            a good heart so

                                                   he must be a Blackfella

                                                                          please don’t tell him

he looks like a Blackfella

                                                                 so he just might be ONE

                            please don’t invite him

                                                                 NOT to be proud of his own culture,

                                                                                                                   his own identity

                                   please don’t make him

shame of who he is

                                                his own family belonging

                                                                                     please don’t make him feel

                                    his religion is one of nothingness

            please DO let him be proud of his own heritage


            please DONT let him rip off MINE.
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Kerry Reed-Gilbert is a Wiradjuri woman from Central New South Wales. She has performed and conducted writing workshops nationally and internationally, was the inaugural Chairperson of the First Nations Australians Writers Network (FNAWN) 2012-2016. In 2013, she co-edited a collection of works with the US Mob Writing (UMW) group ‘By Close of Business,’ and was co-editor for the ‘Ora Nui’ Journal a collaborative collection between First Nations Australia writers and Maori writers. She is a former member of the Aboriginal Studies Press Advisory Committee and her poetry and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies nationally and internationally, including in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and Southerly. She is a member of the ACTUMW and FNAWN.

More by Kerry Reed-Gilbert on Cordite Poetry Review →

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