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Keywords: Dead Language

  • RELIGION

    21st century exorcism

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 December 2010
    5 Comments

    I respect the work of exorcists who offer appropriate pastoral care to those acutely troubled. I also believe it is not generally helpful to give prominence in the churches to demonic possession and exorcism.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    Resurrecting Indigenous language

    • Jonathan Hill
    • 01 December 2010
    5 Comments

    Dhurga is a dead language. At my school however it is taught to every student, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. A subject like this is quite radical in an education system that is heavily focused on churning out workers rather than thinkers.

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Teaching children to read the Aboriginal world

    • Nigel Pearn
    • 18 August 2010
    3 Comments

    The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Tales from the kingdom of force

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 16 August 2010
    2 Comments

    Flicking the frisbee with a well practised arm, Jimmy told me about his former home in Sri Lanka. 'Last time I was there, I was carrying bodies to their graves in my arms, even the bodies of friends.' Homer's Iliad is a poem of force in which, at all times, the human spirit is shown modified by its relations with force.

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  • RELIGION

    Speaking for country, speaking for self

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010

    Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Melbourne College of Divinity Centenary Conference, Trinity College, University of Melbourne, 6 July 2010.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's a girl!

    • Moira Rayner
    • 25 June 2010
    25 Comments

    The importance of a woman getting the highest political post in the land is not in its being a 'first', but that Gillard is her own woman. She has not turned into an 'honorary bloke'. Gillard's singular attribute is her sincerity and the genuineness of her public conversations. And she can laugh.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freedom Flotilla and Israeli 'pirates'

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 02 June 2010
    31 Comments

    Turkey has condemned the attacks on a flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza as piracy. Branding activists as terrorists and denying the human situation in Gaza will not help an Israeli cause that is proving increasingly alienating.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The wild mind of Peter Steele

    • Morag Fraser
    • 28 May 2010
    8 Comments

    When I met Peter Steele I noticed a spark, a shimmer of wit that almost subverted his serious courtesy. There was a wild mind at work and play, and I would have to run prodigiously fast even to catch at its stirrups. So it has proved: it's been a long, vigorous, and exultantly grateful following.

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  • RELIGION

    Funerals for criminals and abusers

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 May 2010
    23 Comments

    Many Catholics complained Carl Williams was allowed burial in a Catholic Church. Some victims of sexual abuse were angry that bishops and priests glorified the funeral of a priest who had been charged with sexual abuse. These responses reflect a changing understanding of funerals in the Church.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Black Saturday gibe mars Murray's might

    • Philip Harvey
    • 16 April 2010
    6 Comments

    In one poem Les Murray would reduce the causes of the Black Saturday fires to differences in forest management between 'hippies' and 'rednecks'. Utilising poetry to play the blame game demeans our understanding of the complexity of that disaster.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Libraries lead the e-book revolution

    • Philip Harvey
    • 01 March 2010
    9 Comments

    We are seeing only the early technology of the e-book. In five years the e-book will look, feel, sound, smell and gesticulate in very different ways from its iPad and Kindle prototypes. As usual, libraries are quietly ahead of everyone else.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church as advocate in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 February 2010

    'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.

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