A new books list

Guess what--I finally got my first temp job! It's reception work, which is slightly less than exciting, but hey--I have paying work!!! For the next week I will be working for a company that promotes art as an investment and they educate people on how to invest in artwork and how to expand their portfolios. They also hold exhibitions and rent out art. Rent out art??? I had no idea there was such a thing! If you're an art piece owner, you can lease your pieces to this company to be rented out. It's a bit of a random company, but some of the art pieces are pretty gorgeous. Here's a piece that is on display at our office right now. It's a piece by an aboriginal artist:What you can't see is that the painting is entirely made up of dots and dashes (like the morse code, ha ha!) and it's actually made up to be a topographical landscape of the artist's land. The company I am currently working for works with some very well-renowned Australian artists and their current exhibition includes work by two aboriginal artists (including the piece above). Let me tell you some fun facts I learned today:

• Nearly 50% of the artwork in Australia is aboriginal artwork
• 70% of the art exported from Australia is aboriginal art
• Aboriginals only make up 2% of Australia's population

Interesting, huh? I look forward to looking more in depth into the aboriginal issues here in Australia. So far it seems as though they're about on par with Native American and African American issues back in the states. Aboriginal poverty and crime rates are sky high. According to wikipedia (we all know I've got to broaden my sources, but still, I like my wiki), the terms "aborigine(s)" and "aboriginal(s)" are seen as insensitive and often offense. The PC term to use, which, being an adopted Seattlite and wordly sensitive, I must put into effect is "Indigenous Australian(s)". This is very similar to what I found in South America as well--it seems that the use of the word "indigenous" is currently seen as less derogatory. However, we all know that the level of political correctness of terms in our language changes constantly so I will keep you informed. :) Another term that I have not yet come across personally, but wikipedia insists is another term that has been adopted, is "black". Will history ever stop repeating itself? Not that there's anything wrong with that term in the least, but there's so much room for creativity. "Black" was formerly used as a way of racially stereotyping and therefore it used to have a negative connotation, so I guess we can say, "Yippy!" that they've taken a negative term and flipped it to a positive one. But they could have made up with something like... the SASS'ers(Smallpox and Slavery Survivors) which would emphasize their amazing ability to overcome and survive...or just strike the "ab" from "aboriginal" and we have the "originals". Maybe that's lexically too close for comfort but then again that's just me, a lover of words and a believer in the world of endless possibility. There are many beautiful aboriginal words (a lot around Sydney that end with -ong?), so they could have used one of their own words instead of using stupid English words. Anyhoo...