I am sharing One Australians Perspective with you please read
Frank Seeley
Cultural Mutilation Uptop
by Chris Sitka (Australia)
Shortly after I arrived in the United States from Australia friends started asking me "What do you think of the book Mutant Message Downunder?" As this book is virtually unknown in Australia I decided to read it in order to give them an opinion. It soon became obvious why it is not a hit in Australia. Only people totally unfamiliar with Australia and the culture of its indigenous people would be taken in by the claim that this fantasy is reality.
Marlo Morgan, the author, claims that this book is a documentation of her experience with a tribe of Australian Aboriginals who chose her to carry a message of great importance to the world. She describes a journey of several months across the Australian continent in which she is taught Aboriginal cultural secrets. I am told she now gives well attended workshops teaching the insights she says they asked her to convey.
In one part of the book she is buried up to her neck in the sand to be cleansed of toxins. The fans of this book have the opposite problem. They have their heads buried in the sand. A large number of people are reading this book and have faith that its message is authentic. That is why I believe it is important for me to point out that this book a ridiculous fabrication.
I am a white Australian of European descent. I do not have any Aboriginal blood in me. I have worked for and with Australian Aboriginals, including traditional elders. I do not claim to have been initiated or told any secrets of clan lore. I have learned much from them and from studying writings about their culture for over twenty years. I have been given a 'skin' name by women elders of the Western Desert Kukatja language group. This is necessary for them to be able to relate to and work with me. I do not claim that it in any way makes me Aboriginal. However I do believe that it gives me certain obligations. I see exposing the grossly inaccurate portrayal of Australian Aboriginal desert culture in Mutant Message as one of those obligations.
The introduction to this volume, written by the author, is full of defensive claims about the authenticity of her story. No wonder. As an Australian who has spent some time walking out in the desert and relating to traditional Aboriginal people I found it hard to find any authenticity in the pages of this book. Revealingly, elsewhere in the introductory pages, it is described as a novel. However even novelists usually do research to make the setting of their story ring true.
A feature of this poorly written novel (claiming to be fact) is that no locations are described by name. Even the author's pre-adventure stay in Australia's large cities is enveloped in secrecy. We never learn whether she wooed her Robert Redford look-a-like beau in Sydney or Brisbane or Cairns. We can only guess. A difficult job because she describes a city with the world's most beautiful natural harbour - presumably Sydney - where tropical cane toads abound. There are no cane toads in Sydney so perhaps we should assume that Cairns has miraculously obtained a harbour for the benefit of this writer.
Marlo Morgan alludes to the fact that she was to spend five years in Australia but doesn't tell us how long she really was there. From her description of Australia I wonder if it was even a week. If indeed she was in Australia for a number of years, or even long enough to act out the events described in Mutant Message she must be very forgetful. It is more than suspicious that after describing in detail, from memory only, numerous conversations she had over four months with the nomad tribe she supposedly travelled with, the fact that you don't make phone calls with quarters in Australia slipped her memory. I wonder how come she forgot that in Australia we don't even have quarters as part of the currency.
Towards the end of her account Marlo describes walking out of the desert and meeting a man on the edge of a city who gives her a quarter. Maybe he happened to have one and was just humoring an obviously flaky American. However she does claim to have made a call from a phone box with it. Sorry Marlo but you would have needed two twenty cent pieces and even that would not have been enough for the long distance call you describe making. Then follows an even more surprising description of how the New Age Mutant Messenger found her way back to civilization to convey the great wisdom she alone is chosen to impart. She has money wired from her office to the telegraph company nearby. I understand that in the States there is such an institution as a telegraph company and a telegraph office where wayward wanderers can pick up cash. But Marlo was describing an unnamed Australian city. In the interests of a more authentic sequel let me tell you there is no such thing in any Australian city.
Perhaps this is being picky. I could mention any number of inaccuracies like this such as the description of Australians liking warm beer (that's England, Australians like it icy) and mere spelling mistakes (Quantas for Qantas, Foster's Lauger for Lager). Her descriptions of cutesy Australian scenarios and even the insulting sub-title downunder written upside down are designed to appeal to American readers' desire to see Australia as quaint and exotic. It would be just laughable to an Australian brought up on American Westerns and sit-coms if it were not for the core "message" of the book.
When I first picked up Mutant Message and flicked through it I was prepared to believe that Marlo Morgan had some kind of experience with some Aboriginal people and had kind of stretched the truth out in the interests of self promotion. However a close reading leaves me in no doubt that she did no such thing. Almost every detail is false. This is blatant cultural appropriation in the interests of profit. If the author is not an out and out cynical operator she is sadly deluded.
Her description of the tribe she crossed the deserts of Australia with bears little relation to any indigenous Australian people. She describes ornaments, musical instruments, cooking utensils, ceremonies, landscape, social relations, clothing and much else which simply do not exist anywhere in the traditional cultures of the Australian continent. She does claim that her tribe is a special, less corrupt, more highly evolved group than your average run of the mill Australian Aboriginal. It is still curious that her description of their culture bears no resemblance what so ever to any Aboriginal traditions. Instead her tribe practice numerous Native American customs. I would be tempted to believe that this was the story of a Native American tribe lost in Australia if Marlo Morgan had not herself assured us that they are Aboriginal.
I could give you several dozen examples of this cultural inversion designed to make American readers feel at home. For example at one point she describes the women making an object that mystified me. It involved making a hoop and catching spider webs out of a tree. The origin of this one was revealed to me when I glanced through a New Age catalogue a couple of days after reading Mutant Message. Why, it was a Native American dream catcher!
Most notable in this Americanization is the names she ascribes to the desert tribe's members. Storyteller, Tool Maker, Sewing Master, Big Music, Secret Keeper. This was my first indication that this book was suspect. This kind of naming does not exist in Aboriginal culture. People have names, but they are not translatable in this way. Nor is there such a thing as a specialist Tool Maker. Everyone makes their own tools. Many of the functions described in her fanciful names don't even exist.
What's more people are rarely addressed by their personal names. People are commonly addressed by their 'skin' or kinship name. This term is shared by others of the same generation. The translation for Napaltjarri, my 'skin' name, is daughter-in-law to a Napanangka or grand daughter to a Napangarti. Even if there are six other Napaltjarris sitting within ten feet of me I am always addressed by that term. One's kinship is far more important than one's individuality. Even in language groups without strict 'skin' terms older people are called aunty or grandmother rather than their name.
Never once does Marlo refer to having been given a 'skin' name or of herself in kin relation to the people she claims to have spent several months with. A strong kinship system is the dominant feature of all Australian Aboriginal traditions. In numerous instances I have witnessed traditional Australians unable to speak to or fully acknowledge the presence of a person without a 'skin'. They avert their eyes and mumble incoherently if forced to speak to a white person. As soon as it becomes obvious this person will be around for a while, and must be related to, they are given a 'skin' name so that relaxed communication is possible. Anyone outside the kinship system is virtually non-existent. Given the boasting in the rest of her novel it would be surprising if Marlo forgot to mention having been given a 'skin'. It is inconceivable that Aboriginal people would impart secrets to anyone without a 'skin'. Being given a name like Mutant is equally improbable. The concept of a mutation, a Western scientific term, is non-existent in Aboriginal culture.
I have to wonder if Marlo Morgan has ventured out into the Australian desert at all. She does accurately describe the thorny nature of walking in the desert barefoot. I too have pulled thorns from my feet - but I knew what kind of thorns they were. Marlo obviously does not. She describes in detail walking for months on spinifex grass.
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