The Australian publishers of "The Daring Book for Girls" have run into a spot of controversy:
The publisher HarperCollins yesterday apologised for offending indigenous Australians after complaints that a forthcoming edition of The Daring Book for Girls breaks Aboriginal taboos by encouraging girls to play the didgeridoo.Mark Rose, head of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, said the publisher made "an extreme faux pas" by including a chapter on how to play the Aboriginal musical instrument in its Australian edition.Traditionally, women do not play the didgeridoo, a long wooden tube played by buzzing the lips into one end. Mr Rose said that women who broke that taboo could face infertility or worse.
The Australian version of the book will be released in October. It will replace some of the original content with uniquely Australian material, including how to surf and instructions for playing the didgeridoo.
Mr Rose's criticism came after an advance copy circulated. He said it was equal to "encouraging someone to play with razor blades". The publisher said the chapter will be removed at the next printing.
It's one thing to be sensitive – well, overly sensitive – to bizarre cultural beliefs, and for well-meaning Westerners to assume that offence may be taken and must at all costs be avoided. We're all familiar with that particular line nowadays. But to actually give credence to those beliefs - "could face infertility or worse", "equal to encouraging someone to play with razor blades" – is surely taking things a little too far. [I'm assuming with a name like Mark Rose that the man isn't Aboriginal himself, but that may not be the case, I suppose.]
Presumably – so the thinking goes - the traditional Aboriginal culture that developed in the context of a hunter/gatherer society must be preserved absolutely unchanged in a modern 21st century environment, where it's proving to be such a major success.
The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association seems quite aptly named.
Mick Hartley 
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