June, 2010

The scholarship is the result of collaboration between Shalom College, a residential college at the University of NSW, and the Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit, School of Public Health and Community Medicine at University of NSW. From one scholarship holder in 2005, we have 14 scholarship holders in 2010.

Ceciia Alfonso told me that “I take my dog Maliki to work every day – and I’m glad that the artists do as well. The only days that I leave Maliki at home is when he has a bad dose of the farts – they are truly horrible.”

The penalties for the unauthorised possession of wildlife in the NT are high – for an individual the maximum penalties range from $65,000 to $130,000 and are of course much higher for corporate offenders.

One easy way to pick a real ringer – rather than the wanna-be’s, usedtobe’s or nevercouldbe’sbuttryinghard’s – in a crowd is to look for the amount of cow shit stains on his or her hat – if it has a generous spray of shit from brim to brow then they are most likely a real ringer – or stole the hat off one.

Gaining Ground is focussed on the lower Mississippi delta, but strikes me that this approach may have broader application – particularly in an Australian context where we have a seemingly endless struggle trying to work out how we are going to manage major economic and ecological assets like the Murray/Darling river systems.

Further to my previous post here on the 33rd Society of Ethnobiology meeting at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the following week I traveled up to the small resort town of Tofino for the 12th International Congress of Ethnobiology conducted by the International Society of Ethnobiology. There I joined with my colleague from Nature Kenya, Fleur Ng’weno, to co-chair a larger symposium on Ethnoornithology than I had presented the week before in Victoria, BC.

The Night Parrot is relatively small, prefers to shuffle about close to the ground (like it’s closest taxonomic cousin the aptly-named Ground Parrot, Pezoporus wallicus), is nomadic across a vast area and with exceedingly cryptic plumage, it has never been n easy bird to tick off on your list. There are only a few specimens in museum collections – and most of those were collected from a small part of northern south Australia many years ago. The last confirmed sighting of the Night Parrot was in 1912 and for the last 100 years the Night Parrot has widely been considered to be extinct and it wasn’t until the 1970′s that a series of unconfirmed reports of sightings started to emerge. In 1989 eccentric millionaire Dick Smith offered a $50,000 reward for proof of the current existence of the Night Parrot.

Michael Loyd Young, documents the 150 miles of Highway 61, the famed blacktop road snaking from Memphis, TN down to Greenville, MS. At the halfway point, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, sits Clarksdale, MS, the city considered the birthplace of the blues and the location of Robert Johnson’s famed “Cross Road Blues” intersection of Highway 61 and 49. The Delta has been home to blues legends such as Charley Patton, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Cadillac John Nolden, B.B. King, T-Model Ford, Mississippi Slim, Big Jack Johnson, and Willie King, among countless others whose music has become the glue that holds these communities together as they struggle to survive.

The population of this beautiful mid-sized forest-dweller, Fischer’s Turaco (Tauraco fischeri) is of near to threatened status and is found in coastal and riverine forest and woodlands in Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania and southern Somalia along the east African coast.

The conference theme, “The Meeting Place” is well represented by the Grouse and the other Atla’gimma spirits who gather in the ceremonial “bighouse” to share in the song of sacred interactions that keep the forest ecosystem alive. Just as each Atla’gimma character has their own dance, every ethnobiologist has their own discipline and interests. But, the synergisms of shared knowledge, like the magic of each Atla’gimma spirit dancing to the same music, is far more powerful than the sum of the parts.