Monstrosity under the Guise of Civilization: Critiquing the Project of Colonialism in the Selected Poems of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's We are Going

In the 18th century, Australia became the victim of British colonization. Since then, the British colonizers has taken Australia, broken Australia, and made Australia a new. They tried to civilize the native Australians, in their own way. But in the process, they themselves have been turned into a barbaric citizen and brutally killed the tribal Australians to have possession in their own land. Now in the 20th century there remained only 2% aboriginal Australian people in the present Australia. In such a critical situation, some people among them have picked up their pen to paint their pains and agonies in their writing, and questioned the notion of civilization formed by the white peoples- is it the real civilization? Is it a fair civilization for which the British Australians are taking pride? Or it is a destruction of a unique “native Australians civilization” by the so called “civilized” in the name of development? The objective of my paper is to discuss all these questions and to find out how the project of British colonization of Australia is inseparably related to the project of eviction and deforestation, with special reference to some chosen poems of “We are Going”, a collection of poems, published in 1964, written by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, an Australian aboriginal poet. In the process of the development of the argument, this paper may refer some branches of eco-criticism like Deep Ecology, Anthropocentrism, Anthropomorphism, Environmentalism etc.