"Mutant Message Down Under" oral presentation

Knowledge is passed down to her of bush medicine and foods, sacred ceremony and the secret business of both men and women! Integral to this tribe is respect to the land and worship to "Divine Oneness," sort of like the circle of life. She is given the highest honours when she is given admittance to the only sacred site left in Australia, a cave where she learns that the "Real people" will soon voluntarily become extinct via celibacy. The book then climaxes when it is revealed to her that she was chosen as a messenger to tell the western world about the concept of "divine oneness" and to save the dying planet. Her acceptance is described as fate by the tribal elder and she basically symbolically becomes reborn into an Aboriginal person. In essence, she claims these events in the book to be truth despite the obvious fact they show blatant disregard for Aboriginal law and respect to its culture. Instead I would suggest Morgan uses Aboriginal cultural as a mouthpiece through which to channel her pre-determined New Age ideals and practices. Thus Aboriginal culture is misappropriated to the extreme. .
             My initial reaction on reading the book was that I thought it was self-glorifying, it was very ambiguous leading me to question its authenticity, it was offensive to Aboriginal culture, and above all it depicted a strong us and them paradigm depicting traditional Aboriginal culture as exotic, "the other" and superhuman. After being in the desert for 3 months and supposedly being enlightened to the fact the "Real People" tribe are so much more spiritually enlightened than the western world, she return to the city QUOTE "it was time for me to return to "civilisation." Civilisation by definition is "an advanced stage or system of social development" also implying this tribe was backward and primitive. At this point I violently wrote in the book "has she learnt nothing?" .
             But when I initially read this book I was not aware of the massive controversies surrounding it and it wasn't till I looked on the internet I realized how much controversy this book has stirred up.