Monday, November 14, 2011

I am glad I am still an ape....

I read something very interesting last night researching indigenous Australia for my ELC class. I came across this site which has a question and answer forum and it asked: 'How do Aboriginal people celebrate Xmas? And the answer, wait for it, was
 'There was no celebration of Christmas in the true Aboriginal culture. However, for those indigenous Australians who have accepted Jesus and embraced the human culture, they will celebrate it the same way as the rest of Australia.'

I did not have time to send in a scathing letter to these people but obviously someone else did for it now reads:
There is no celebration of Christmas in the true Aboriginal culture. However, for those indigenous Australians who have embraced the western culture, they will celebrate it the same way as the rest of Australia.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_Aboriginal_culture_celebrate_Christmas#ixzz1dkxAvvdg

Apart from the fact that Xmas has nothing to do with Aboriginal culture at all, I developed a satisfied feel from the statement and understood I was a non human because I definitely do not believe in accepting JC and furthermore I do not celebrate X-mas along with a few other Jews, the Muslims, Hindus and whatever in the world. It is even arrogant to assume that western culture = Christianity. It does not. The foisting of a foreign belief system on indigenous peoples is still going on in some parts of the world. They seem to have no idea that these people have their own beliefs and religion.
Furthermore I felt angered thinking back to my time at Narrandera High School where the powers to be had the arrogance to use a forty five minute session of Teacher Professional Development time to subject staff to a presentation by the Librarian's oldest daughter who had been to Papua New Guinea on a missionary mission to 'civilise the natives and bring JC to them.' We had pictures and a video of these poor little papuan kids singing off key,'The blood of Jesus will save me' or some such ridiculous thing.
Now I am for tolerance and co-existing, but didn't our very fundamentalist Principal think that not all his staff are Christians, besides aren't Staff Development Days for the development and knowledge of teachers and their teaching skills? They still are down here.
Am I glad to be back in Victoria where a spade is a spade and we do what we are supposed to do in the classroom and not play religious games and whatever else he was trying to do aided by our very 'Christian librarian.'
It is arrogant of any religion to think that people are 'better off believing in their particular brand of G-dliness.'
I am very happy being a Jew and have no desire to have other religions thrust down my neck. Thank you.

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