Taken from the Takatāpui Australian singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album, I Am the River, the River Is Me, an impassioned, powerful track inspired by her country’s Kulin Aboriginal Nations, oppression, identity and culture. Cloher, who is a Māori of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu descent, describes the song as “earnest and basic and raw … Reclaiming your culture is an awkward and messy business. When you’re not living on your own lands, you have to seek it out and find the people who can support you.”
The video features the Melbourne-based dance troupe Te Hononga o ngā Iwi (translated as “the connection of nations”) – who also add haka chants to song.
Out on Milk! Records. To explore more work by Jen, see also the other embedded links below.
Hey! my words
What I say
Heavy as clay
Hey! my hands
What I make
Falls through like sand
How to stay open
When everything is closing
Hearts and minds
How to keep speaking
When everyone
Wants to move on
Don’t turn away
From the flames
Don’t turn away
From the pain
Being human
Is learning how
To let go of what you
Think you know
Staying human
Is listening listening listening
Come on, come on, come on
Come on, oh!
Come on, come on, come on
We all know
Sovereignty never ceded so
Land back or we gotta go
I was born on Wurundjeri land
Everything I know
Everything I have
Is because of what they lost
Our ‘common wealth’ came at their cost
I was taught on Kaurna land
But I never heard of them
At my school we only learned
How to bury what we burned
I got paid on Gadigal land
Everything I made
Everything I am
All my opportunity
A genocidal legacy
I am Māori, Pākehā
In so called Australia
As an uninvited guest
On stolen land I can’t possess
I stand in solidarity
My Tūpuna they stand with me (ancestors)
As Tāngata Whenua (People of the Land)
Tino rangatiratanga! (absolute sovereignty!)
Don’t turn away
From the flames
Don’t turn away
From the shame
Being human
Is learning how
To let go of what you
Think you know
Staying human
Is listening listening listening.
Come on, come on, come on
Come on oh!
Come on, come on, come on
We all know
Sovereignty never ceded so
Land back or we gotta go.
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