AUSTRALIA 
Book sparks Aboriginal didgeridoo row
Wednesday, 3 September, 2008
Didgeridoo player (Getty)
Aboriginal activists are demanding that a children's activity book encouraging girls to learn to play the didgeridoo be pulled from shelves and pulped.
The Australian version of the US bestseller The Daring Book for Girls includes a section teaching readers how to play the traditional instrument.
Click here for more off-beat stories
But indigenous Australians say the advice is culturally insensitive, arguing that the didgeridoo is "men's business", and should not be touched, let alone played, by women.
Mark Rose, of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, believes girls who follow the book's suggestion would risk infertility - or worse - if they picked up a didgeridoo.
"We know very clearly that there's a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo," he said. "Infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences. I won't even let my daughter touch one."
Dr Rose said the book's publication was "from an indigenous perspective, an extreme mistake but part of a general ignorance that mainstream Australia has about Aboriginal culture".
"It sends out that Aboriginal culture is tokenistic," he said. "That is the issue that perturbs me the greatest."
Publisher Harper Collins has refused calls to withdraw the book from sale.
Source: SBS staff and agencies
The Australian version of the US bestseller The Daring Book for Girls includes a section teaching readers how to play the traditional instrument.
Click here for more off-beat stories
But indigenous Australians say the advice is culturally insensitive, arguing that the didgeridoo is "men's business", and should not be touched, let alone played, by women.
Mark Rose, of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, believes girls who follow the book's suggestion would risk infertility - or worse - if they picked up a didgeridoo.
"We know very clearly that there's a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo," he said. "Infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences. I won't even let my daughter touch one."
Dr Rose said the book's publication was "from an indigenous perspective, an extreme mistake but part of a general ignorance that mainstream Australia has about Aboriginal culture".
"It sends out that Aboriginal culture is tokenistic," he said. "That is the issue that perturbs me the greatest."
Publisher Harper Collins has refused calls to withdraw the book from sale.
Source: SBS staff and agencies
