Views from Western Australia

This album is a companion piece to the documentary Liyarn Ngarn, which featured Archie Roach, Patrick Dodson and English actor Pete Postlethwaite.

The album reflects Roach’s journey from pain to reconciliation through stories of Aboriginal Australians.  The songs are of pain, loss, racism, redemption and hope.

In Old People Singing he brought to life old people singing their country, asking, “Do you belong to a place or does a place belong to you?”

Travellin’ Bones is about the repatriation of ancestral bones to their rightful home.

Stories of Aboriginal death in custody from the poems John Pat by Jack Davis and Never Blood by Kevin Gilbert were turned to haunting songs.

Liyarn Ngarn means a ‘coming together of the spirit’ and this song expresses the need for healing and reconciliation.

The song Too Many Bridges shows the disappointment with the political dismemberment of the reconciliation and Sorry Day movements.

Archie Roach, an elder statesman of Aboriginal music and an extraordinary songwriter, has described these songs as a reaffirmation of identity, country, beliefs and spirit.

A copy of the film is currently included with the CD; it features music and appearances from WA’s Pigram Brothers and Patrick Davies.  It also includes heartbreaking footage of young Aboriginal poet Robert Walker singing in Fremantle jail where he later died after being assaulted by prison officers in 1984.