[ad_1]
In 1992, Archie Roach gave an interview to a radio program looking into the recent death of a 19-year-old Indigenous man in Western Australia.
Louis St. John Johnson was beaten and run over by a group of white men who attacked him, they said, because he was black.
Archie’s family has given permission for his name, image and music to be used.
Paramedics arrived and found Lewis on the ground, assuming he had inhaled petrol. He was taken back to his home in suburban Perth and told to sleep.
Lewis had a broken pelvis, a perforated intestine, broken ribs and a punctured lung. He died a few hours later.
“We have to break down those stereotypes,” Archie said of Louis’ death.
“No one helped him, no one helped him and the boy was dying. But because they just saw an aboriginal boy lying on the road, to me the thought of my people … is he sniffing petrol or whatever.
“All I ask is why? And why can’t we do something to stop something like this from happening again in our country?”
Archie ended up writing a song for Louis called Lighthouse.
But the parallels with Archie’s own life are clear. Thus, it is instructive to think about what happened to Louis through the lens of another song released two years before the young man’s death: Toak the Children Away.
Like Lewis, Archie was taken from his parents by the state and placed with a white family. (Louis is falsely told that he was abandoned; Archie is falsely told that his family died in a fire.)
Like Louis, Archie tried unsuccessfully to find his birth family. Louis’ birth mother died in 2006 and was buried next to her son.
Toak the Children Away, Archie’s biggest mainstream hit, chronicles the experiences — rooted in Archie’s own story — of the Stolen Generation.
We will give them what you cannot give
Teach them how to really live
Teach them how to live they said
Instead, humiliate them
Teach them this and teach them that
And others taught them prejudice
It won two ARIA Awards and a Human Rights Achievement Award, and was later added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Archie’s hit gave a platform to people like Lewis, members of the community who were so wronged by the state but who had no opportunity to tell their story.
Archie tried to provide a path to healing, to look at the destruction of young Indigenous lives and say: this is not good enough.
As he said in this 1992 interview: “I don’t want to see my people destroyed anymore.”
“For [Archie]it is his cultural responsibility to use the power of music and storytelling to communicate, connect and heal to create a stronger, more cohesive and culturally respectful national story,” Artistic Director Rhoda Roberts told an audience at the Opera House in Sydney in May 2018
She was presenting Archie with the Community Excellence Award on behalf of Support Act, an organization that works to help musicians struggling with health issues.
Archie considered Toak the Children Away a healing song, despite its brutal subject matter.
There is a delay late in the song.
The children – and, through the use of the first-person pronoun in the last line, Archie himself – return, “back to their people, back to their land.”
“When I sing this song, it’s like I’m leaving a little bit of that,” he told Radio National in 2016.
“Who knows, maybe one day I’ll sing it and everything will pass and I’ll be free.”
More than two decades after its release, Took the Children Away has lost none of its power or — hopefully — its ability to heal.
“Songs outlive people,” Archie once said of the musical transmission of Indigenous heritage.
He will be proven right.
Visit ABC iview and ABC listen for special interviews and performances from legendary entertainer Archie Roach. From Anh’s Brush With Fame to Conversations, AWAYE!, Like A Version and more. And catch Blak Out with Nooky paying tribute to Archie Roach from 5pm on Sunday via triple j and Double J.
[ad_2]
Source link