The Reception to Indigenous Claims for Recognition of Traditional Connections to Land and Sea The Clash of Conceptual Languages Around Australia's Mabo Decision.

In retrospect, it seems strange that such a striking feature of many languages could have gone unnoticed for such a long time, especially since clues had been littering the academic literature for a while. References to unusual ways of talking about space (such as БЂњyour west footБЂ«or БЂњcould you pass me the tobacco there to the eastБЂ«) appeared in reports about various languages around the world, but it was not clear from them that such unusual expressions went beyond the occasional oddity. It took the extreme case of Guugu Yimithirr to inspire a systematic examination of the spatial coordinates in a large range of languages, and only then did the radical divergence of some languages from what had previously been considered universal and natural start sinking in. To begin with, in Australia itself the reliance on geographic coordinates is very common. From the Djaru language of Kimberley in Western Australia, to Warlbiri, spoken around Alice Springs, to Kayardild, once spoken on Bentinck Island in Queensland, it seems that most Aborigines speak (or at least used to speak) in a distinctly Guugu Yimithirr style ...»