This week Australia lost Archie Roach, a A Gunditjmara-Bundjalung senior elder, community worker, extraordinary story teller, father, and musician that was part of the cultural fabric of this country. It was the kind of news that made everyone I know sigh sadly, even if his music was sometimes too hard to listen to - themes of dispossion, racism and colonialism form part of his body of work. Whilst it may be hard to listen to sometimes, for Australia it's essential to pay attention to these songs of the heart when politics can sometimes - often - ignore it. Traditionally, this nation has had a habit of sweeping it's atrocities under the carpet. Archie Roach didn't sweep anything away - he told his nation's story in poignant detail.
If there's any song that defined the trauma and hope of Australia's First Nation stolen generations, it's Archie Roach's 'They took the children away'. If you're not aware of the stolen generation, it was one of the worst things in our history and part of a larger atrocity committed against the First Nation people since Europeons settled here. The violence of the fronter wars transformed into a 'protection' era where the state was in control of Indigenous people - every single aspect of their lives. Where they worked, who they married, where they lived. Children were often removed and placed with white families.
In 1989, he performed his response to this with Paul Kelly and the Messengers, and it continued to take everyone's breath away every time he performed it. Apparently at this performance the audience were stunned to silence and Roach thought they'd hated it - turned out they were just gathering their applause.1. Apparently people were just sobbing. I challenge you to listen to this song and not shed a tear yourself.
“The welfare and the policeman said you’ve got to understand - we’ll give them what you can’t give. Teach them how to really live. Teach them how to live, they said. Humiliated them instead. Taught them that and taught them this. And others taught them prejudice. You took the children away.”
This one always seemed to be on mainstream radio. He wrote autobiography of his life titled the same, which I'd like to read - it recieved much acclaim.
Archie Roach was part of the stolen generation himself, who was taken at 4 from his ancestral lands not far from where I live in SW Victoria. One of seven kids, he was taken by force by welfare officers and put into foster care and later adoption, where his adoptive parents were told that his parents had died in a house fire.
Roach set off in search of his siblings at 15 when he received a letter from a sister who told him his birth Mum had died, and he never saw his adoptive parents again. Whilst in Adelaide at the Salvation Army, he met Ruby Hunter, also a teen of the stolen generations. I always admired their deep love for one another, having children together, suffering homelessness and alcholism, and singing and performing together.
Singing in his big, resonant voice, Archie sings of both heartache and hope. In later life he reclaimed his lost identity, becoming a hero of his people and much loved by many Australians. Music is truth for us all, crossing the divide between cultures and attempting to heal wounds. I'm sure his voice will continue to do so for many years to come.
I love what writer Jack Latimore says of him:
a life of weathered terrain imbued with a 65,000-year backstory. An ancient wisdom travelling at once forward and throughout the songlines and blowing along the streets. A message from the Old People to us: “Remember well what we have told you. Oh, don’t forget where you come from.”2
This was written for Three Tune Tuesday, run by 
With Love,
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