Publisher offends Aborigines by encouraging girls to play didgeridoo
Taken from Telegraph.co.uk
Mark Rose, head of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, said the publisher made "an extreme faux pas" by including a chapter on how to play the Aboriginal musical instrument in its Australian edition.
Traditionally, women do not play the didgeridoo, a long, hollow wooden tube played by buzzing the lips into one end.
The Australian version of "The Daring Book for Girls" - a best-seller in the United States - will be released in October.
The book will replace some of the original content with uniquely Australian material, including the rules of netball, how to surf and didgeridoo-playing instructions.
Rose's criticism came after an advance copy circulated.
He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Tuesday afternoon that the offensive chapter was equal to "encouraging someone to play with razor blades."
The publisher said Wednesday that the chapter will be removed at the next printing.
"HarperCollins Publishers apologizes unreservedly to any aboriginal Australians who were offended by the inclusion of instructions on how to play the didgeridoo in the forthcoming publication 'The Daring Book For Girls,"' the publisher said in a statement.
"HarperCollins will replace this item when the book is reprinted as clearly we had no intention to offend."
Rose said the mistake was also the fault of the ignorance of the Australian public in general.
"I would say from an indigenous perspective, (it was) an extreme mistake, but part of a general ignorance that mainstream Australia has about Aboriginal culture," Rose said.
"We know very clearly that there's a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo. Infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences," he said. "I won't even let my daughter touch one."
Rose was attending a conference Wednesday and could not be reached by The Associated Press.
While different Aboriginal communities have varying ideas on what will or will not happen to a woman who touchs the didgeridoo, most seem to agree that it is the man's role to play the mostly ceremonial instrument.
didgeridoo
http://www.arc.org.yu/
digeridoo implement.
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10 DIDGERIDOO FACTS
1. Possibly the world's oldest musical instrument
2. A wind instrument originally found in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia.
3. Is made from limbs and tree trunks hollowed out by termites (insects).
4. Is cut to an average length of 1.3 metres and cleaned out with a stick. or hot coals.
5. Was used as an accompaniment to chants and songs.
6. Produces a low-pitch, resonant sound with complex rhythmic patterns.
7. In sure tribal groups only played by men but in most groups by men, women and children.
8. Traditional various forms at the didjeridoo where found in Central Australia around Alice Springs.
9. The Didgeridoo is the sound of Australia.
10.If the earth had a voice it would be the sound of the Didgeridoo.
Since the European invasion
Since the European invasion until very recently, government policy relating to Aboriginal people has been designed and implemented by non-Aboriginal people. The common justification for most policies for Aborigines was that they were "for their own good". There have been policies of protection, assimilation, self-determination and reconciliation. It is now clear that none of these policies have actually made the condition of Australia’s Indigenous people any better than it was prior to the invasion.
When the six Australian colonies became a Federation in 1901, white Australia believed that the Aborigines were a dying race and the Constitution made only two references to them. Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census (although heads of cattle were counted) and Section 51 (Part 26) gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. This was the situation until the referendum of 1967 when an overwhelming majority of Australians voted to include Aborigines in the census of their own country.
Since the European invasion until very recently, government policy relating to Aboriginal people has been designed and implemented by non-Aboriginal people. The common justification for most policies for Aborigines was that they were "for their own good". There have been policies of protection, assimilation, self-determination and reconciliation. It is now clear that none of these policies have actually made the condition of Australia’s Indigenous people any better than it was prior to the invasion.
When the six Australian colonies became a Federation in 1901, white Australia believed that the Aborigines were a dying race and the Constitution made only two references to them. Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census (although heads of cattle were counted) and Section 51 (Part 26) gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. This was the situation until the referendum of 1967 when an overwhelming majority of Australians voted to include Aborigines in the census of their own country.
The Board’s policy was based on a belief that "protection" of Aborigines would lead to their "advancement" to the point where they would eventually fit into the white community. Protection and segregation policies were enforced until the1940s, when they were replaced with policies of assimilation and integration. Features of the administration of the Board included the implementation of the assimilation policy, and, from 1950/51, the movement of Aboriginal people to stations where they could be prepared for absorption into the general community.
The policy of assimilation meant individual families were persuaded to share the life in the towns with whites. Earlier government policies had relocated Aborigines from their homelands to reserves. The assimilation policy aimed at breaking up these reserves and "encouraging" people to give up seasonal and casual work, replacing this with regular work for wages (which remained unequal). The stations were considered as "stepping-stones to civilisation".
The Aborigines Welfare Board of NSW consisted of 11 members, with two positions designated for Aborigines, one "full-blood" and one having "a mixture of Aboriginal blood". The amendment to the Aborigines Protection Act in 1911 established Kinchela Boys Home and Cootamundra Girls Home for Aboriginal children removed from their families. In these homes, Aboriginal children were taught farm labouring and domestic work, many of them ending up as servants in the houses of wealthy Sydney residents.
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http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Barani/themes/theme3.htm
Aboridzini su dobili pravo
Aboridzini su dobili pravo glasa u Australiji tek na referendumu 1967!
Danas ih ima negdje oko 1%. Jos uvijek su ugrozeni (veca stopa smrtnosti, socijani uslovi u kojima zive, obrazovanje itd). Imaju fascinantnu mitologiju/religiju (the Dreaming ili dreamtime, tema za poseban blog), crteze, ples, muziku...