Speaker
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker appears as a distanced observer; the tribe is described using the pronoun "they." As the poem progresses, the pronoun transforms into "we" as the speaker gives voice to the Aboriginal community and identifies them with cultural practices and natural surroundings. This identification remains consistent throughout the rest of the poem. The band is no longer silent and subdued; they share a voice through the speaker that expresses their experiences, relationships, and culture.
The Aboriginal community
In the beginning of the poem, the Aboriginal group is a "semi-naked band subdued and silent" as they enter their old holy grounds (Line 2). The ongoing effects of colonialism and colonization are present in the description of the tribe. Being "all that remained," this band is a fragmented version of a past collective (Line 3). But as the poem progresses, the speaker embodies different temporalities and cultural expressions with the collective identification of "We are..." Their sense of belonging is merged with the landscape and traditional ways of being.
As different elements of the landscape are displaced, so too is the Aboriginal community.
The white tribe
What was once holy indigenous land has become a place where "the many white men hurry about like ants" (Line 5). Unlike the Aboriginal band, the white tribe are disconnected from each other and from the land. The society they have built is extractive and individualistic, and is based on the living implications of colonization.
The arrival of Lieutenant James Cook, and then Arthur Phillip in 1788, marked the beginning of white settlement in Australia. The ancestors of the white tribe in the poem displaced the Aboriginal community and dehumanized them. Legally, First Nations people were not counted as human. The land was defined as "terra nullius," or empty wasteland, thus marking the different ways in which white settlers and indigenous peoples view land.
In the poem, the speaker and the community have been estranged from their land as a result of colonization, but they know that "the white tribe are the strangers" (Line 8).
Nature
Nature exists in both the poem's present and evoked past as a force that the Aboriginal community connects with. For example, the poet personifies lightning and thunder as the speaker identifies with them (Lines 14-16). However, the landscape has been marked by the violence of colonization and the development of modern society. The scrubs, the eagle, the emu, the kangaroo, and the bora ring are gone (Lines 21-24). As a result, "the hunting and the laughter...[and] the corroboree" are also gone (Lines 21 and 24). Thus the changes in the landscape are inseparable from the scattering and displacement of Aboriginal "old ways" (Line 19).
