John Spooner in The Australian, 21 July 2021
Category Archives: Australian culture
Outback Magic: Indigenous Music Traversing Boundaries
Music Outback Foundation had its beginnings in late 2001 when Founding Director Steve Berry took an opportunity to conduct a week long music workshop at M’bunghara, a small Indigenous community in remote Central Australia.
Steve’s time there left him inspired to return to the Northern Territory and pursue the possibility of providing regular music education opportunities to remote Indigenous schools. In September 2002 he visited four more schools conducting workshops at each location, and the success of these visits resulted in an invitation to expand the developing program to 12 remote schools in Central Australia.
Filed under Aboriginality, ancient civilisations, art & allure bewitching, Australian culture, australian media, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, education, ethnicity, heritage, life stories, patriotism, reconciliation, self-reflexivity, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Australian Aboriginal Peoples as Sophisticated Hunter-Gatherers?
Christine Judith Nicholls, reviewing the book Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? authored by Peter Sutton & Keryn Walshe …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor Thuppahi
Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched n a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Agriculture or Accident?
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Lionel Rose: Aboriginal Boxer who united Australia
Will Swanton, in The Weekend Australian, 3-4 July 2021, where the title runs “Lionel Rose: battler who united Australia”
Lionel Rose unified the nation more powerfully than Bradman, if more briefly — Bradman never had 250,000 cheering him through the streets.
Lionel Rose turns to embrace Fighting Harada … after he is pronounced the winner
Lionel Rose met Paul Keating. Snipped him for a hundred. The Prime Minister reckoned he never carried any cash. Rose persisted. Did him slowly. Come on, mate. Can’t you spare a lousy hundred for a battler? Larrikinism abounded in Australia’s sporting stars of the 1960s and 1970s. Rose, Dawn Fraser, John Newcombe, larger than-life characters. It was the 1990s by the time Rose hit Keating where it hurt. The hip-pocket. Mischievousness was alive and kicking in Rose, and part of the reason for the request, but he needed the dough, too.
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False Claims of Aboriginality in Australia …. NOW a Problem
Catherine Overington, in The Australian, 2 July 2021, where the title runs thus: “Harmful: warning to ‘race shifters’,” …. with underlining imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
In the US they are known as “race-shifters”; in Canada they are “Pretendians”; and in Australia, they are more commonly known as “box-tickers” – people who discover, or else simply claim an Indigenous or First Nations heritage for themselves.
Some do so because they want to adopt a more exotic profile; others because being “just white” doesn’t have quite the cache it once did, especially in academia. But the sheer number of people now laying claim to an Indigenous identity has begun to distort national statistics, at least according to Indigenous Australian academics and a group of international writers who took part in a lively roundtable on the topic of “race-shifting” at an anthropology conference in May.
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Deadly Blows: Horrendous Onfield Events in Cricket
When Steve Waugh & Jason Gillespie crashed into Each Other at Asgiriya in 1999 at Kandy ….
COL01:SPORT-CRICKET AUSTRALIA:KANDY,SRILANKA,10SEP99 – Australian fielders Jason Gillespie (left) and captain Steve Waugh collide in attempting to take a catch from the bat of Sri Lankan Mahela Jayawardena on the second day of the first cricket test at the Asgiriya stadium in central Kandy September 10. Jayawardena survived with his score on 34 but the two fielders were taken to hospital with Gillespie rushed on a stretcher with a broken leg and Waugh with an injured nose. Jayawardena swept a ball from Colin Miller and Gillespie came in from long-leg while Waugh rushed down from short fine-leg to take the catch. Sri Lanka went in for lunch at 181 for 5. al/Photo by Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi REUTERS
China: Lessons for Australia from George Yeo
George Yeo in Global Times, 16 June 2021, where the title is “China is a democracy by Lincoln’s definition: former Singaporean FM”
Editor’s Note: As tensions between China and the West continue to heat up, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has become the target of myriad attacks of the US-led Western countries. George Yeo, former Singaporean minister of foreign affairs, thinks this is because many in the West perceive China as a threat to American dominance in the world. Yet Yeo believes the nature of China’s rise is very different from that of the US – and hopefully Americans will eventually realize this. What does Yeo think of the development the CPC over the past 100 years? What are its challenges in the future? Why is China constantly being labeled as conducting “wolf warrior diplomacy?” Yeo shared his insights with Global Times (GT) reporters Li Aixin and Bai Yunyi.
Filed under accountability, Australian culture, australian media, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, economic processes, education, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, security, self-reflexivity, transport and communications, unusual people, world events & processes
The Wikipedia Tale of the Murugappans of Biloela … Today, Mid-2021
Murugappan family asylum claims .… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murugappan_family_asylum_claims
Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam (Priya) and Nadesalingam Murugappan (Nades)[1] are two Sri Lankan Tamils seeking asylum in Australia. The couple married in Australia and have two Australian-born children. Until their detention by Australian Border Force in March 2018, the family was resident in the central Queensland town of Biloela, and consequently referred to as the Biloela family by some media.[2][3] The cause of the couple and their children has been supported by some residents of Biloela as well as asylum-seeker advocates.[4]
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High Noon in Mid-Air, August 2019: For the Murugappans of Biloela
ABC Account on 30 August 2019, with this title “Who are the Tamil family from Biloela and why are they being deported?” …… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-30/who-are-tamil-family-from-biloela-why-are-they-being-deported/11463276
Last-minute injunctions have stalled the deportation of a Tamil family who have spent years fighting to stay in Australia. The plane carrying the Sri Lankan couple and their Australian-born daughters had already left the tarmac at Melbourne Airport when a judge granted a reprieve over the phone. Here’s what we know about the family’s case:
Dozens of people rushed to Melbourne Airport in a bid to stop the family being deported on Thursday night.. … Supplied: @HometoBilo)
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Appreciating Sunil De Silva: Urbane Master of Many Trades
Hugh Karunanayake, in an Obituary Appreciation in THE CEYLANKAN, Vol XXIV/2, May 2021 **
My acquaintance with Sunil De Silva was mainly after he migrated to Australia in the early 1990s when I encountered him at a Sri Lanka Association dinner which he attended in formal attire replete with a curved pipe, (ala Sherlock Holmes) firmly placed in his mouth. We immediately acknowledged each other, he recognizing me as a senior student from his old school and as a fellow denizen of a small town in Colombo called Pamankade.
