For Olive Brown

Land rights, decent health and equal sharing of our wealth.
Too much to ask Australia?
Or is it.
It’s 1993
the U.N. Year
of the Indigene.
Rape, killing, theft,
chopping down what’s left.
In our town
an Aboriginal Embassy
talk of reconciliation
but no thought of sovereignty.

Too many friends have gone
but the struggle will go on,
for land rights, decent health
and equal sharing of our wealth.
There is no way to make amends
or say goodbye to absent friends;
Roy Marika in Gove,
Fred Hollows in Sydney,
or Olive here.

Read at a memorial service for Olive in Canberra.