Here’s the twenty fourth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly
LiteratEye #24: Home-Made Hocus Pocus Masquerades as Wisdom of an Ancient People
By W.J. Elvin III
July 31, 2009
“Jangga Meenya Bomunggur.”
In other words, “The smell of the white man is killing us.”
That’s from the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation’s mission statement, a very powerful statement and well worth checking out.
The Dumbartung group is an arts advocacy organization in Australia.
One thing the indigenous people find stinky about the white man, or in this case, woman, is exploitation through false claims of association and knowledge.
There have been several cases of authors making false claims of that sort. One in particular provoked Aborigine delegations to track down the perpetrator, Marlo Morgan.
They tried to confront Morgan, author of Mutant Message Down Under
Morgan made millions from Mutant. In it, she claimed she was kidnapped by a mysterious band of Aborigines, forced to go on desert walkabout, and ultimately initiated into realms of secret knowledge. Continue reading “LiteratEye #24: Home-Made Hocus Pocus Masquerades as Wisdom of an Ancient People”