Kevin Gilbert (author)
| Kevin Gilbert | |
|---|---|
| Born |
10 July 1933 Condobolin, New South Wales |
| Died | 1 April 1993 (aged 59) |
| Occupation | Writer, poet |
| Notable works | Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert |
| Notable awards |
The National Book Council 1977 |
Kevin Gilbert (10 July 1933 – 1 April 1993) was a 20th-century Indigenous Australian author, activist, artist, poet, playwright and printmaker. Kevin Gilbert, a Wiradjuri warrior, was born on the banks of the Kalara, Lachlan River. He was the first Aboriginal playwright, printmaker and author of the first political work on Aboriginal issues. He was an active Human Rights defender and was involved in the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972 and its re-establishment on a permanent basis in 1992. In 1979 Kevin led the National Aboriginal Government protest on Capital Hill, Canberra. His vision for a continent with integrity led to him being Chair of the Treaty ’88 Campaign for a sovereign treaty between Aboriginal Nations and Peoples and non-Aboriginal Australians, as a proper foundation for all people living on this land now known as Australia. He defined the legal argument for a Treaty/Treaties and Aboriginal Sovereignty in Aboriginal Sovereignty, Justice, the Law and Land. He is also the winner of the 1978 National Book Council prize for writers for Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert (1977).
Kevin Gilbert was the youngest of eight children born to a Wiradjuri mother and an Irish/English father. He was born into the Wiradjuri Nation on the bank of the Kalara/Lachlan River just outside Condobolin, New South Wales and at age seven he and his siblings were orphaned. He was raised by his eldest sisters and extended family on an Aboriginal reserve. He left school at the age of thirteen and picked up various seasonal and short-term itinerant jobs. His books Me and Mary Kangaroo and Child’s Dreaming reflect a childhood of intimate connection to his mother’s Wiradjuri Country.
His extended family would annually travel on the fruit picking circuit within Wiradjuri territory as “…a temporary release from near starvation … and above all, it meant some independence, some freedom, from under the crucifying heels of the local police and the white ‘station’ managers; an escape from refugee camps called ‘Aboriginal Reserves’.”
In his own words: "As a Black artist with all the contemptible misery and heart burnings of a poet, I suffered sitting in white dominated classrooms of rural Australia while white teachers lasciviously railed about ‘naked’ Aboriginals, who were described as heathen, too ignorant to know the basic manner of impregnating females, ‘whistle-cock’ sub-incisions, murderous, cannibals, no law or government, minute cerebral indices etc., only to be latterly ‘saved’ by the ‘glorious’ forefather pioneers who attempted to ‘smooth the dying pillow’ of the ‘pitiful remnants’. Asking questions, demanding answers and making refutations, we were inevitably sent from the classrooms to go out and sweep the yards, pick up scraps, clean the toilets, for, to conform with the late 1940s and 50s white dream of ‘assimilation’, we had to be made to prove we were incapable of any higher educational potential, save that of achieving fourth class primary level. And we had to conform to work patterns. White Australia, like its corrupt confrere white South Africa and America, wanted Black houseboys to service their peculiar life styles. "I attained a fourth class primary education level before leaving school at fourteen. Only in prison did I finally have access to reading materials. I attended an art class to try and paint a recurrent image in my mind of an old Aboriginal sitting at the entrance of a cave filled with painted images, while looking out and down over a wide valley filled with eagles. Of course I couldn’t afford oil paints, so I started with lino prints, and was most pleased with the imagery and body involvement of utilizing that medium to protest the continual victimization and genocide against Blacks. I was lucky enough to be able to scrounge some old lino from the prison workshops, inks from the prison printing shop, and had the good fortune of being in the printing section when a reasonably humane guard was in charge and graciously turned a blind eye to my extravagant use of inks, printing paper and to the fact that I virtually tucked myself away ina quiet corner of the workshop each day and did my own thing. Initially, I had to have my poems and prints smuggled from the prison. Exhibitions of my work brought a focus of attention from the printmaking world, when the works were exhibited at the Robin Hood Gallery and the Arts Council Gallery in Sydney. The exhibitions confirmed my resolve to use my poems, writing and art to open up the question of the continuing denial and injustice against Aboriginals, in an effort to bring the reality of the white Australian inhumanity into the open."
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