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165case they're giving us the minerals under the ground". Aboriginalawareness of the essentialvalue ofland as an economic resource is finnlydisclosed by Noonuccal: "gave us the land [and] enough money to runthe land".The 1960s marked a great change in Aboriginal history. Whitepeople in Australia fmally admitted that they had treated Aboriginalpeople badly andin 1967,"89 per cent of all Australians of voting age agreed to thereferendum proposals that Aborigines should be included in thecensus count and that the federal government should be givenpower to legislate forAborigines" (Broome, 1992:178).In the following years the campaign for Aboriginal Land Rightsachieved a remarkable success. Aboriginal people gained what they hadfought for as from the 1970s the Commonwealth and some Stateparliaments began to pass Aboriginal Land Rights Acts (Buckley andWheelwright, 1992:22).Thus, they could control much of their own landand especially in the Northern Territory they "succeeded in extractinglarge royalty sums from mining companies" (Buckley and Wheelwright,1992:22). Aboriginal people's struggle for their land rights; however,still continues. The majority of Aboriginal people have not got thebenefit fromthis landrights legislation, particularly those living in urbanareas such as Redfern in Sidney. These urban Aboriginal people do notobtain practicable landcompensation fromthe government.D. ConclusionAboriginal people's struggle to regain their lands is carried outin various ways. They protest to their white counterparts over their landdispossession through political demonstrations and art. They, withoutfalling into despondency, undertake this struggle as land makes up aconstituent part which is very essential to their life. Land has not only areligious but also an economic tie to Aboriginalpeople. This religious tieAboriginal Land Rights Issue (Sugi Iswalono)
---166is strongly attached to them. They have to protect land spots which theyconsider sacred. They are originally hunters and food gatherers and,therefore, they did not cultivate much of their land for agriculturalpurposes. This Aboriginal way of life was misunderstood by whitepeople during their early settlement in Australia. Even these whitecolonists thought that Aboriginal people were nomadic so thatthey couldlegitimize themselves in taking Aboriginal people's land. This actionconstitutes the problematic essence between Aboriginal people andwhite people.Oodgeroo Noonuccal is the first Aboriginal artist who recordsthe Aboriginal-white problem in herpoems. "WeAre Going" is her mostpowerful poem which well records this problem. Automatically thispoem can also be seen as protest poetry. She portrays how the Aboriginalland dispossession has always caused her black people to live in misery.She also shows that white people's view of land is different fromAboriginal people's. Accordingly, they treat the lands differently. IfAboriginal people have more religious considerations of the lands, whitepeople tend to base themselves on economic value as theirconsiderations. In fact, Aboriginal literature has become an importanttool to record Aboriginal past history as well as to show Aboriginalprotests over the white injustice andbrutality.The 1960sand 1970sare closely associated with the significantmovement in Aboriginal history. These years not only saw the firstpublication of Aboriginal literature but the significant change inAboriginal life as well. Aboriginal people began to be formallyacknowledged to control their lands. Nevertheless, their struggle is stillseen to go on, for many have not got the benefit from this landcompensation. The Aboriginal land problem is still complicated.Aboriginal people cannot escape from the white domination. Practicallytheir land management is under the white law although they have adifferentview of the lands.DIKSI Vol.l1. No.1. Januari 2004
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Page 11: ---168Tiffin, C. 1985. "Look to the

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