Our Dispatch today was first published on 25 April 2011. Still the racist Intervention continues with white Australia’s complicity, the deliberate destruction of language is ongoing. A look at Argentina.
Bom dia meus amigos,
The hornero is Argentina’s national bird.
http://youtu.be/jfLKgW4BFvM
Its status resulted from its amazing mud nest. Different from all other bird nests. The little boys of the Palomar of my childhood were obsessed with hunting birds and lizards withhondas (slingshots). I still bear a scar on one of my fingers from when the knife slipped when I was trimming a forked stick. Never but never however did we shoot horneros, nor damage their nests nor steal their eggs, we had too much respect for them. Horneros are not afraid of humans, they trust them. They have been shown much respect by humans.
Warlpiri people are wary of kardiya (non-Aboriginal people). They say kardiya-kujaku or wail-pali (whitefellah)-kujaku to their children same as they might say maliki-kujaku (beware of the dog) or walna-kujaju (look out for snakes). They haven’t been shown enough respect by kardiya to trust them. Kardiya don’t respect their differentness.
Many moons ago I read an essay by Stephen Jay Gould on the evolution of the Hershey Bar. On the basis of a graph plotting price and weight against time, he showed that in the future that wonder of all wonders would evolve: the weightless Hershey bar selling at (I forgot the exact price) say $4.57. A major evolutionary upheaval occurred when the Mars Bar was introduced to the North American market.
I am told that cane toads have to reach a certain size to become toxic. The introduction of the cane toad to Queensland resulted in the death of many snakes, big headed snakes that is, that were able to swallow the large toxic cane toads. Small headed snakes survived. In less than a century the average size of snake heads in Queensland was reduced considerably. Evolution can be much quicker than generally believed.
When the crown of thorns starfish colonized the Great Barrier Reef it caused untold damage, and continues to do so.
When I ordered a pizza in Argentina, much to my delight, I was brought an entirely different species of pizza than that I’d become accustomed to in Australia. This pizza had very thick melted mozzarella cheese on it. Absolutely delicious. When I remarked on this, I was told that if they’d put less cheese on it nadie va venir a comprarlas (no one will come to buy them). Me las hubieron tirado a la cabeza (they would have thrown them at my head) said the charming waitress. The species would have become extinct.
Several species of culinary crown of thorns are doing untold damage around the world. MacDonalds are as evident in Buenos Aires as in Sydney.
When monolingual assimilationists colonized Australia, extinction of language species occurred at a rate faster than that suffered by the trilobites during the Cambrian period or the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous.
Of the more than 200 languages existing in Australia before the linguistic crown of thorns appeared on the scene, barely a few dozen survive.
Darwin’s The Origin of Species has been invoked to espouse the inevitability of species extinction.
“Survival of the fittest” has been perversely used to rationalize and justify the injustices of colonisation, massacres and holocausts.
If only the “fit” survive at the expense of the “different”, the “varied” the “beautiful” and the “clever”, the world will become a dull place indeed, and only “fit” people to appreciate it.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (the original title of Darwin’s book) may well describe the principles that lead to the extinction of species, cultures and languages. THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT, nor does it make it inevitable.
In Argentina the extinction of the thick melted mozzarella pizza was prevented. The predatory thin cheese pizza didn’t stand a chance: se los hubieran tirado a la cabeza.
The Northern Territory Department of Education’s “4-hours English only” policy, is the latest manifestation of the linguistic crown of thorns that has been devouring its way through the mosaic of languages that once covered the Australian landscape, se lo debemos tirar a la cabeza.
Obrigado,
Franklin