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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Aborigine Group Seeks to Bring Gap to Australia

The core/gap theory of the world is probably the most recent great geographical development. Spatialness of a rough, not flat, world does have impact on a countries development. Some like TDAXP explore the core/gap theory into a sub-state level to document how competing cultural trends seek to globalize or regress a country. Similar ideas have been discussed on this blog including Arab-style Islamization in Europe and Indian's trying to deny equal rights to women in Mexico.

Now there is a new development with much less impact but still troubling. An edutainment book on Australian culture for girls has lessons on how to play the didgeridoo. Unfortunately for the book publish who later apologized, the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association seeks to bar women from playing the instrument. The association went so far to claim that playing it will cause infertility in girls.

The British documented women didgeridoo players in an informal setting in the early days of Australian colonization. However, like most "native" movements today the association is fundamentalist in nature. It seeks not to keep the conservative ways but create a "pure" version of the past. A past where women had no place. They also seek to create a place for their past today in the gaps of the world.


Fight the power!

1 comment:

Adrian said...

my dad plays the didgeridoo - it's a pretty sweet instrument.