one in five, and up to another four undiagnosed
I came across this article today and literally felt my jaw click as my mouth dropped open at what I was reading.
Basically you should just go and read it for yourself. I realise that we have just as a serious a problem here in New Zealand, particular among the equivilant ethnic groups - but at least here I do believe our government will do something about it and be less likely to get away with treating the indigenous people with complete comtempt.
You know what else it made me think of? That hideous ad for air travel or maybe just Australian tourism in general where they're all rah rah white sand beaches and they have a clip of some Aboriginal dancing and the sound byte is "we've been preparing this 3000 years for you" like the whole point of their culture has been solely lying in wait to entertain the whims of foreign tourists 'cause there's no other purpose to their existence shitballs!!
Basically you should just go and read it for yourself. I realise that we have just as a serious a problem here in New Zealand, particular among the equivilant ethnic groups - but at least here I do believe our government will do something about it and be less likely to get away with treating the indigenous people with complete comtempt.
You know what else it made me think of? That hideous ad for air travel or maybe just Australian tourism in general where they're all rah rah white sand beaches and they have a clip of some Aboriginal dancing and the sound byte is "we've been preparing this 3000 years for you" like the whole point of their culture has been solely lying in wait to entertain the whims of foreign tourists 'cause there's no other purpose to their existence shitballs!!
Labels: media
posted by Bel | 9:43 PM
4 Comments:
That's insane! Although, diabetes here is a tragic symptom and not the cause, IMO. Australian Aborigines have been treated like animals for most of the time that the west has been aware of them, and any cultural change to something resembling a 21st century outlook on race relations has been far too little, too late.
The computer won't open the link! Waaaah!
Okay it worked - and CRIPES, that is quite a crisis... reminds me of the colonisers giving 'the natives' infected blankets...
The way that Australia has ignored the Aboriginal peoples was almost a kind of 'if we ignore them they might go away' sort of thing, and so I wonder what a lot of people will be thinking now that it might come true?
It would be so criminal for a culture to die out as a result of corporatism and cultural imperialism (not that technically we can call it such as those systems work by being so complex taht noone can blame them wholly), and such a sad and literal manifestation of the underlying value behind them, which is not to make the whole world 'white'.
But wait - there's more...
What's the lead story on Stuff.co.nz this morning??
Not Jill Stark's article from The Age (top Aussie paper) that they had cut n pasted ystrday (aah Fairfax -bless), but THIS:
Maori 'facing extinction' from diabetes
Escalating rates of diabetes among indigenous cultures could make the Maori and Polynesian races "extinct" before the end of the century, an Australian expert warns.
You can read the full spin here. It makes an interesting study in compare n contrast journalism.
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