Archive for June, 2007
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
Reactions from the field
Out here in the field it’s not easy to get a sense of people’s reactions to the federal government’s proposals. This is mainly because of the lack of detail and the complete politicisation of what has been anounced. The fact that the plan lacks detail or even any long-term goals and targets (Howard on NT Stateline last [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Indigenous, The Intervention by jangari
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
Too Busy
I was going to comment on the government’s response to the Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle “Little Children are Sacred” report commissioned a year ago by Clare Martin, undertaken by Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson, and presented to the Chief Minister last week, but due to the fact that I’m leaving for a two-month field trip [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Indigenous, The Intervention by jangari
Friday, June 22nd, 2007
Yiligawu
Yiligawu – ‘I’m alright now, I’m ready’ (but it isn’t exactly true).
I leave for the Northern territory on Monday morning, to start my third fieldtrip, the longest one yet, at a lazy 8 weeks. Unfortunately, work has been considerably busy over the last week, tying up all the loose ends, making sure I’ve finished any [...]
12 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by jangari
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
Thomas King on Storytelling
ABC Radio National’s indigenous arts and culture program Awaye is broadcasting over five weeks, beginning last week, a series of lectures by the Canadian Cherokee author, Thomas King, about storytelling.
Last week’s story, “The truth about stories”, was a thoroughly interesting talk in which King tells his version of the Cherokee creation story. He combines autobiography, [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in History, Indigenous, Philosophy by jangari
Saturday, June 16th, 2007
Parlez vous l33t?
I was talking to a friend today about the difference between standard language and internet language, and he brought up the issue of francophone chatrooms and the various acronyms they use.
Certainly a lot of people know the various English internet acronyms, like lol for laugh out loud¹, and rofl ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ and [...]
12 Comments » - Posted in Languages, Nothing in particular by jangari
Saturday, June 9th, 2007
"We Don’t Understand You"
This post has been attracting altogether way too much spam of late, so comments are now off. If you wish to leave a comment, email me.
I have to confess, I can’t recall precisely hearing this, but it seems to be so widespread that, well, I must have heard it. Even so, I seriously doubt its [...]
21 Comments » - Posted in History, Linguistics by jangari
Thursday, June 7th, 2007
Canada (update: and Australia) versus Indigenous Peoples
Canada elected a new government 18 months ago and it appears that they’re trying to prevent the UN Human Rights Council’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from being approved (adopted, in the official terminology) by the general assembly. To put this into perspective, the decleration and resolution, avaliable from here, took 24 years [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Education, Indigenous, Linguistics, Politics by jangari
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
Pre-Columbian Poultry
I read in the Herald today that archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered chicken bones in South America, in territory occupied by the Mapuche people, which predate Columbus by at least 70 years. The chicken bones are important historically, because obviously, chickens aren’t native to the Americas. DNA evidence places the ancestry of these chickens in [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in History, Nothing in particular by jangari
Monday, June 4th, 2007
Pullum Weighs In (updated)
Geoffrey Pullum over at Language Log has weighed in on the debate over the role of English in Aboriginal communitues in Australia, and the return to the days of the White Australia policy and assimilation, perpetrated by the most conservative government in our history, under the subterfuge of ‘allowing aborigines to integrate into the mainstream [...]
36 Comments » - Posted in Education, Indigenous, Linguistics, Politics by jangari
Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
Featural Spoonerism
Everyone know what a Spoonerism is, right? When you metathesise, or switch, some set of segments from one word to another – usually everything before the first vowel – for some sort of effect. For instance, “you have hissed all my mystery lectures” as opposed to “you have missed all my history lectures”, or a [...]
