Saturday

[Donald Q.]

Raiders, invaders, you ran your sheep   This internal rhyme sets out on the wrong foot for me. The sentiment is serious but that raiders/invaders is a bit too bouncy.
and cattle across our sacred land,
built sheds upon our bora grounds
and kept us from our past.    This whole first stanza seems a bit tame, like are just explaining, setting the scene for the detail later. I think you need more emotional intensity from the start. raiders and invaders, cattle and sheep, shed building; it all feels a little mundane and abstract, even though it is neither of these things. Cut to the meat of the imagery and emotion; these are grounds so sacred that even the Aboriginal women and children are not permitted there, these are places of ritual, pain, heritage. All you give us here is that the invaders 'kept us from our past'. Mine the feelings and specifics that are implicit and bring them to the surface.

Wiradjuri we, born free  Again here, I'm not sure you need the internal rhyme. Also I was tripping over trying to say the line because of the word order I think. 
to die as you please. You
spread your disease, you rape
and you maim, you plunder 
and poison and pass us the blame. This is a list of things that happened. They are all terrible things, but it's too abstract as is. 

Windradyne raised his spears and his men Having Windradyne described here gives a good energy, he is a figurehead for poem. 
took war into your new white homes; 'new white homes' is good
you couldn't find us, you who are blind,
you killed our women and children instead.
You made a sport of Wiradjuri murder,
baited our hungry, slaughtered our young,
buried it all in a mountain of lies. This is the best stanza so far because it begins to capture the emotion of the tribesmen,

Cudgegong cries I think metaphors about the river and the land work well in this context
as Wiradjuri die
and Windradyne yields
so the ploughing of fields 
may continue 'til all 
the corpses have gone The new rhythm and rhyme here is a turn that happens too suddenly. The short lines and the rhyming is perhaps a little too neat for the subject? That being said it does somehow capture the surrender by Windradyne. Not sure how I feel about it as a whole stanza... I think it depends on the overall flow of the piece once you have edited it. It seems an ignoble conclusion, although perhaps that is an echo of the sad truth. 

and we are all corpses
in the end    This is not needed, these two lines are trite and undermine the struggle you are describing. 


*For background: The Bathurst Massacres

Overall I think this is an interesting poem; you've taken on a real task in describing the brutality of these historic struggles. I think the problem with this current edit is that the first half is a bit too much of a listing of the events, whilst the the final stanzas neatens the ending too much. Perhaps that's why the middle stanza is the best; as I've said earlier I think you can find more emotion and a greater specificity in the storytelling which will take the next version to another level. 
        I want to know about the power dynamics of the natives and the invaders, the struggles of tradition and a need to survive, the turn between agriculture and warfare, all that interesting stuff. I think the most chilling line in the article you have linked is "Morriset held a victory dinner in the barracks. The following day they set out again and continued the killing for two more months." Find the details which made you want to write about this conflict and make them the centre of your redrafts. I look forward to reading more.