Biting off more than I can chew?

This time I choose an aboriginal boy as a character for my writing exercise. Maybe he will feature too in my novel, though I’m daunted by the challenge of trying to write from his point of view in a credible way, of getting into his head. How can I possibly ever understand that sensibility? Am I biting off too much? Have I set myself an impossible challenge?

Week 2, number 3, "Standing in the rain..."

Standing in the first rain of the season Igawoor could feel the red soil open like a young girl. He was on a place of increase, a sacred place where life multiplies. Nearby in the Dreamtime the ancestors first came out of seas to sing the earth into existence. His creature spirit was the snake or joorr. Its tail scoured the earth and left many river valleys between here and Ngarlan, the home of the Nyulnyul, his people.

Now they were staying near the white mans mission camp. There was food at the mission camp, but the whitefella was deaf to the dreamtime songs, and the Nyulnyul sickened to be near him for long. As the rains quickened the earth there would be so much bush tucker plump tubers and lazy goannas and bush bananas and wallabies glutted on sweet grasses his people would melt away from the mission like a puddle evaporates in the sun.

Six moons ago some whitefella brought him and his brother Ngoordinyboor here to dive for pearl shell. Igawoor didnt know why the whitefella collected pearl shell. The Nyulnyul used it in sacred ceremonies; pearl shell was the essence of water. Perhaps the white man wanted to control the rain too.

Igawoor had learned some whitefella words like tobacco, tucker, water, hunger, boat and shark. On the second day of diving Ngoordinyboor had been eaten by a shark. The water turned red. But there was no escape from the purposes of the whitefella. If you didn’t collect a pearlshell, you had to bring up sand or seaweed from the ocean bottom to show you’d been there. If you stayed too long resting on the side of the boat, the white man would smash your fingers with the oar. Igawoor learnt it was best to go back inside to the songs and dreams of the ancestors, to wait.