One thing I hate more than professional homosexuals...

(and that's a dig at nasty creeps like Perez Hilton)...and that is professional aborigines inventing "traditional" this and "traditional" that to get publicity.   Whales seem to be jolly popular amongst a lot of people these days, so the "traditional" aboriginal whale whisperer was been invented.   Pity one of them couldn't tell from his whisperings with a dying calf that it was a she, and not a he!   Now a "traditional" burial is going to be held for another dead whale calf washed up on a beach.   Except we know that in times gone by the "traditional" thing to do would be to eat it.   As if primitive people living on a survival knife-edge, (as is the invariable lot of such people), would ever be stupid enough to pass up such a rich bounty arriving unexpectedly.   It is only because they are lucky enough to be living in the perpetual bounty that only an advanced technological civilisation can provide that they can indulge this ridiculous farce.   I realise aboriginal people are still engaged in the difficult project of being aboriginal in 21st Century Australia. This is a project I actually support. But this kind of dishonest and fake aboriginality is not what they need.   It's how to maintain an aboriginal identity while engaging the real economy, which means getting a real education and then real jobs.   Not this kind of sad put-on pantomime. The new green Dreaming  Andrew Bolt Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 09:33am     Professional Aborigines now merge the Noble Savage myth with the New Age green faith. The Gold Coast Bulletin yesterday: A DEAD baby humpback whale (that) was found washed up at Runaway Bay will be given a traditional Aboriginal burial. The whale was towed to South Stradbroke Island where it was buried late yesterday at the request of elders from the Kombumerri tribe, traditional owners of the land. Members of the Kombumerri yesterday said they had a cultural obligation to treat the whale with respect as their name meant “saltwater people”. “We are traditional hunters and gatherers connected to the ocean and if we had failed to do this the sea gods would be very angry with us,” said Hilary Blundell. Tribal elders will return to the island in the next few days to perform a traditional burial ceremony for the whale. The Gold Coast Bulletin editorialises under the heading “Sad, but that’s life”: DOES the death of a whale really warrant a funeral conducted by Aboriginal elders? It certainly wasn’t the norm in pre-European Australia when the beaching of whales was a time of great feasting, rather than sadness. In his book The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia, Henry Reynolds writes that “coastal clans were used to gathering in large numbers to eat whales cast up on the beaches”. That sounds more like a barbecue party than a solemn ritual. Indeed, Torres Strait Islanders continue to hunt and eat that other seagoing mammal, the dugong. A funeral for a whale sounds like a case of politically correct romanticism rather than the continuation of an age-old tradition. We’ve seen this before, of course. Remember last year’s traditional Aboriginal whale whisperer? Collette is the abandoned calf, or was, found listlessly drifting among the boats of Pittwater last month. Every New Age wailer in Sydney was soon by her sickly side, sobbing, holding out buckets of milk, or crooning odes to a mammal then known, confusingly, as Colin.   But Associated Press describes the undoubted star of this circus: “One effort came from Aboriginal whale whisperer Bunna Lawrie, who visited the calf Thursday afternoon. Adorned with feathers on his head and white paint markings on his face, Lawrie reached into the water to stroke Colin while singing a humming, tongue-rolling tune.”   Wow. Reporters were impressed. What had the whale whispered back, they demanded to know?  Replied Lawrie solemnly: “He felt really lonely and he wanted to be with his mother and family.”   Really? In fact, Collette gave Lawrie the back of her fin, not even bothering to set him right about her true sex, and spending less time yapping with him than did the journalists. As AP conceded: “After a few minutes the whale swam away to nuzzle a nearby yacht.”   If Aboriginal whale whisperers are traditional, someone forgot to tell the whale.

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