This dispatch arrived earlier this week.  It is titled Touché

Bonjour,

From my dad’s anecdotes:

SEP.’07- Not all that long ago dad was having one of his sessions and kept coming up with his now habitual rather negative opinions. This caused his daughter in law (of whom he is rather fond) to remark that: “Well, you know Mark: every silver lining has its dark cloud”. Touché!

During the early days of the Intervention (2010) the “Yuendumu Local Implementation Plan” was launched. Acronym ‘LIP’- in hindsight most appropriate as ‘lip-service’ best describes the plan’s subsequent implementation.

Japangardi from Alice Springs (who partly grew up in Yuendumu), had been hired as a “facilitator” by FaCSIAH and gave us all a pep talk. At one time during his presentation he asserted that the Warlpiri language had held us back. “You could never have sent a man to the moon using the Warlpiri language”. My immediate thought was that this is absolute claptrap and when discussing this with a visiting linguist, she thought she had seen some paper (possibly written by the late Ken Hale) in which the splitting of the atom or some such is explained in Warlpiri.

Years before I’d heard a tape (‘tape from America”) in which Ken Hale gave a detailed description to his Warlpiri audience of how he and his family had gone skiing, all in perfect Warlpiri. Not quite the same as sending a man to the moon or splitting the atom but demonstrating what I’m on about none the less.

Yuendumu Japangardi’s immediate reaction was much more to the point: “Why would we want to send a man to the moon?” Touché!

Whenever news readers call Colombia ‘Columbia’ my pedantic alter-ego awakens and I shout “Colombia you dick-head!” at the TV screen. I find this particularly aggravating, and my reaction is tinged by not a small measure of envy, when the mispronouncing journalist has had an airfare to Bogotá paid for.

Some while ago when our child care facility was entirely locally run, when one called it on the phone, and no one answered, the recorded message said : “you have called the kerdoo kerdoo kerlangoo …..” a seriously mispronounced version of the Warlpiri ‘kurdu-kurdu kurlangu’ (‘belonging’ to children). I voiced my objections to the kardiya (non-Aboriginal) manager of the centre “Why don’t you get a Warlpiri person to speak on the answering machine?” After several such admonitions and after a few months had passed I said “why haven’t you changed the recorded message?” She replied: “I’m leaving it on, especially for you, to piss you off!” Touché!

If I ever put something on an answering machine (which I won’t) it’ll be ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ Not the Rolling Stones version, but Aretha Franklin’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eto2urJTKno

Senator Brandis (Australia’s Attorney General) famously and self-righteously declared in the Senate that “Australians have a right to be bigots”. In all fairness to him, I don’t know the context he said it in. More recently he had a question for Senator Dinatale. On a point of order Richard Dinatale interjected George Brandis’ question “My name is Dinatale, not Dinatalay” to which George Brandis (graciousness is not his forté) responded with “that is my English pronunciation”

A while later another Senator had a question for Senator Brandarse, “oops Brandis, that is my English pronunciation “ Touché!

Let’s call the whole thing off….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYS9EQWkXg

Often I’m asked what do Warlpiri people want. It is not for me to say. Although I wouldn’t be the first to have the chutzpah, the arrogance, to think I had the right to decide what it is they want, and a firm belief that I knew what was best for them.

If I’m asked what in my opinion do Warlpiri people need, do I think a better house, better services, a job?

Nah! They need to be allowed to be themselves without ethnocentric value judgements.

They need Respect! Their Weltanschauung needs to be accepted and respected. I’m not holding my breath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0POmdK18WU

Keep in mind, this is only my opinion.

I don’t know much…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvTvSSztu50

Adieu,

François