NSW Education Minister Prue Car has intervened after a parent complained about a song calling Captain James Cook a “white devil” being played at a public primary school in Sydney’s south.
Bagi-la-m Bargan, a song by Indigenous rapper and activist Birdz, was chosen as the school bell song in the week before and during reconciliation week, an Education Department spokesperson confirmed.
NSW Education Minister Prue Car does not approve of primary school students listening to a song that describes Captain James Cook as a “white devil”. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
The song, told from the perspective of an Indigenous warrior, describes Cook as “a murderer without licence” and mentions a “desire to kill any white devil [that] wanna test my will”.
An anonymous father told 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Tuesday morning he had to explain to his son that “complex things” had happened in Australia’s past after he had asked whether there was “something wrong with being white”.
The complaint prompted Car to call the radio station and tell listeners the lyrics were “pretty concerning” and the Education Department was investigating.
“Anything that creates any sort of division we can’t have in our schools,” she said. “Reading the lyrics and listening to it, I can understand why parents are concerned.”
A department spokesperson said no one had complained to the school directly but apologised “for the distress caused to any parents or children”.
Captain James Cook with the lyrics from the track by Birdz.Credit: illustration: Bethany Rae
“The song was chosen to mark Reconciliation Week and was not intended to be divisive,” they said. “The school’s leadership has been counselled about making appropriate choices for the school bell song.”
The song has been removed from the school’s playlist.
Premier Chris Minns suggested schools may need to go back to traditional bells instead of songs.
“Rap songs, in general, [are] probably not the best for NSW schools,” he said.
Birdz (real name Nathan Bird) told Apple Music in 2021 the song was told from the perspective of a Butchulla warrior “standing on Indian Head on K’gari [Fraser Island] witnessing Captain Cook sail past”.
Cook’s diary entry from May 20, 1770, makes note of the moment the Endeavour sailed past the bluff “on which a number of the natives were assembled, which occasioned my nameing [sic] it Indian Head”.
“[They] trying to warn Captain Cook: ‘You’re going the wrong way’,” Birdz said. “How would you feel, and what would you do, if you’re in that position where you know everything is going to be taken away from you? Your people and your family are under threat.”
The song’s title means “fighting boomerang” in Butchulla language.
Bird grew up in Katherine in the Northern Territory and describes himself as a proud Murri man with Badtjala, Juru, Scottish and Melanesian heritage.
He is a prominent Indigenous activist, describing his music as a “declaration of survival” and “a form of resistance against a system that is geared towards the ongoing dispossession of my people”.
His father was removed from his family in childhood and grew up in and out of institutions before being reunited with his grandmother on the Cherbourg mission as a teenager.
Previous songs played to students as they arrive at Ramsgate Public School include Happy by Pharrell Williams and Ben Lee’s We’re All In This Together.
The school attracted criticism in 2019 when its online newsletter published two letters from students as young as nine, who wrote to then-prime minister Scott Morrison warning that “everything in the world could be extinct” unless he did something about climate change.
The department ordered the school to remove the letters because they breached its “controversial issues in schools” policy.
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