BT: My name is Ben Taylor Cuermara, Nyungar Elder from the Nyungar Whadjuk Yued Country.  I will now give you my, give you an introduction to know the land and the spirituality and the culture of the Nyungar Yued people. And I say these words of my ancient tribal people, spoken from my forefathers, my grandfather: [speaks Noongar]. 

I welcome you are onto Whadjuk Nyungar Dreaming track. For thousands of years the Derbarl Yaragan, the Swan River, where I’m looking at now, has been part of our culture, spirituality and religion. And today, as I stand here, I think back to my grandmother, when they used to make a fire and say: [speaks Nyungar]. Make a big fire and we’ll call in the Rainbow Serpent, our ancient spirit. Who is always there and who is the creator of the land for thousands of years. And we can feel the spirits come all around us as the smoke rises and you can hear the old people shout oh, oh oh! And then a mist would come and the water would stay calm. 

Well, the Dreaming track of the Waagyl starts from Fremantle, that’s the starting of the Dreaming track, heading right out past the brewery, all the way up to Success, right up to the Swan Valley; and the Waagyl is in all parts, in all of Australia. 

Wherever I go, when I go to the river, I throw sand or bushes and I will speak in my ancient language like my father, my forefathers did: [speaks Nyungar].  I come in peace and I bring you my children for your sacred water. And the water will stay calm. So that, that rainbow serpent, the Waagyl, was part of religion and culture, spirituality all around Australia. 

I went to Queensland, they got a different name for it. I went to Northern Territory, New South Wales, different tribes. And as I went, I gave a Nyungar blessing in my language and threw bushes and sticks into that water just to ask for my entry as a Nyungar from another tribe. In the early days we all had boundaries right around the Swan River. We would come there.  

And for thousands of years this has been handed down to these people. And, you know, my grandfather came to around New Noorcia in the 18th century, and he was lining up for government rations. And I sang out his name, Alfred [unintelligible] Cuermara. The black tracker sang out, the missionary and police patrol, giving out the rations said, change that name to Taylor! And the name Cuermara is still in the books in New Noorcia, and I still go back and I can feel the spirits as I go back.

My mother was born on Fraser’s Range on a station. She was born into the [unintelligible] tribe. My grandmother was a very powerful Aboriginal lady from the [unintelligible] tribe and my grandfather was a white station owner. 

My mum was taken away to Moore River and Carrolup and my father was born to the Cuermara people, the Yued tribe. That area there and he ran away with Mum from the Moore River settlement and you know, he had to get permission. He couldn’t read or write Dad, he had to get permission to marry my mother, even though she was Aboriginal, he was Aboriginal.  

And a bloke called Mr. A.O. Neville, he was a Chief Protector for us, for Aboriginal affairs and everybody had to get permission. He was the one who brought in all this 1905 Act and everything, you know, that really put a chain around our neck, all that policy. We were locked up in government settlements, settlements and reserves, degrading, dehumanizing conditions. We had to live in these conditions, they’d taken us away from our sacred land and put us there out of sight, out of mind. But we still practiced our Nyungar culture. Mum used to speak her [unintelligible] language, I speak a bit of that too. And dad always spoke his Noongar Yued language. But this was a policy that we weren’t allowed to speak our language when they took us away. I was taken to New Noorcia, then I was taken to Moore River and I run away from these places. That was a policy. You were locked up in a dormitory. There were bars on all of the windows, a toilet bucket in the middle and about 21 kids. You were all in there.  

They just came and caught us down the creek playing and used to lure us with lollies and everything, come down here, from there we were taken, taken to a government, put in a whole, put in trucks, said we’re going for a picnic. We were forcefully taken. Then I started to realize I couldn’t escape, there was police and all there.  

It was around East Perth that we had a Coolboroo League, where Aboriginal people had to be out of town at 6:00, and if you weren’t out, you would be, you would be locked up. And it was very sad that we were still living on the riverbanks, living all through Bayswater and all through there. And you weren’t allowed out, even my father got a job, he couldn’t get out because that was a policy. And you can’t even buy land if you had the money, if you were Aboriginal. And my brother-in-law came back from the war, he was locked up for being in town after 6:00. White soldiers got houses, land. Our Aboriginal soldiers got nothing. My brother-in-law died on the reserve. Now I speak to you with serenity, not with bitterness, because I know there’s a lot of good non-Aboriginal people like yourself. And I’m in reconciliation and all. You know. But this is what happened and so, you know, it was very sad. 

I can forgive, but never forget those days. Like a lot of my people of my age in the seventies, we bear the scars of that 1905 Act. Later on in life, they get recognised as human beings. And then in 1967, we were given drinking rights, and that was the worstest thing they could do. I don’t kick any of my people who could drink socially, but all of a sudden they said, you could go into a pub now. And very quickly I was caught up in that disease and after 30, 30 years of suffering, I put the bottle down and I knew, I admitted that I had a problem. I never tried to drink for 30 years now, and I don’t intend to.  

I got the Order of Australia for the work I’d done amongst my people. So, reconciliation, did work in the prisons and the hospitals and sitting down with my people in different places; in the Aboriginal medical service. I get sad when I, you know, I thought I could give them encouragement, count my blessings, that I’m not caught up in that homelessness, in that situation my people are today, where they caught up with alcohol. 

I give them that encouragement that there is life and there is hope. I kind of preach to that, even though they’ve had preaching since colonization, they have known about spirituality for thousands of years. They know that there is higher power. So, I must give them that. I must keep strong… stand upright and to give them that there is hope.