The Last Warrior: book & film review

The Last Warrior by Clair Huffaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fifty years ago I saw a film called The Last Warrior, which I now discover has been renamed to Flap. I enjoyed the film very much, so when I saw the book in a second-hand bookshop last month I had no hesitation in buying it.

In the film a hard-drinking, reckless-living Indian named Flapping Eagle decides that his people have been pushed around by the white man long enough. Mounting his horse H-Bomb, Flap proceeds to hijack a railroad, lasso a helicopter, and begin the Last Great Indian Uprising. His assaults on the Establishment provide an earnest indictment of Indian neglect by the U.S. government. And that pretty much summarises the plot of the book as well. If my memory has not faded too much over the last fifty years, the film stuck pretty closely to the book

The story is both funny and sad, and well worth reading.

So much for the book review, but there is a deeper story behind why I had no hesitation in buying the book when I saw it. 

When I saw the film I was living in Windhoek, Namibia, and working at a local newspaper, the Windhoek Advertiser for money, and otherwise for the local Anglican Church whose bishop, Colin Winter had an American secretary named Marge Schmidt. Marge had seen the film in the USA, and insisted that I must see it, so we went together to see it.

And I could see why she insisted I must see it. The film is mainly set in an Indian Reservation near Phoenix, Arizona (where Marge Schmidt now lives) And almost every weekend I visited poor rural communities like those shown in the film -- the Ovitoto Reserve for Hereros to the north, Rehoboth for Basters in the south, and in between there were small camps for road and railway workers, which closely resembled the places in the film.

Ovitoto Reserve, north of Windhoek, 1971

 The time, 1971, was also a turning point for Namibia. The World Court had just declared South Africa's rule over Namibia illegitimate. The Lutheran Churches, who scarcely ever criticised the government, circulated an open letter declaring, in effect that South African rule of Namibia was misrule. And The Last Warrior was showing at a local cinema, which showed an analogous situation in the USA.

The effect on the cinema audience was profound. 

In those days cinema audiences in central Windhoek were all white. And at the end of this film there was dead silence. People left in hushed silence. Usially people chatted with each other when leaving, about the film they had just seen or something else. They would greet people they knew. Some would laugh, some would call to others. But this time there was none of that. It seemed that no one missed the message of the film. It was not far away in the USA. It was here, and now. 

I have never seen a cinema audience behave like that before or since. And that is why I think the film was worth seeing, and the book worth reading.

View all my reviews

Is Putin's "secret weapon" going to blow up in his face?

More contrasting views from Russia and the West. According to Time the Orthodox faithful constitute Putin's new "secret weapon". Russia: Pussy Riot and Putin’s Religious Backing | World | TIME.com:

The prison sentence handed down last week against three members of Pussy Riot, a group of activists opposed to President Vladimir Putin, will restrict a lot more than the personal freedoms of the young women convicted. Judge Marina Syrova sentenced them to two years in prison for offending the faithful of the Orthodox Church by performing a crude anti-Putin song near the altar of a Moscow cathedral in February. While many were offended by the gesture, the judge’s verdict has put the state’s seal of approval on the righteous anger of one community, and that anger is proving hard to control.

But according to a Russian source something different is going down Russian Orthodox to Form Party | Russia | RIA Novosti:

Autocratic Russia and the Union of Orthodox Citizens are planning to register an “Orthodox” political party, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday.

The organization’s founders said they see Russia as a monarchy with a special role for the Russian Orthodox Church and the patriarch of Moscow and all Russia as the country’s spiritual leader.

Does that mean Putin is going to leave his own political party, and join this new one?

US politics in a nutshell

Someone posted this on Facebook, and for those living outside the USA it says it all. It tells you all you need to know about both main parties in the current US election, and the other parties don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being elected anyway.

Yes, I know it's simplistic, and it over-simplifies complex issues, but unless you're a professional political fundi, it tells you all you need to know.

Hat-tip to Daniel Lieuwen, who shared it on Facebook.

I know more about America than the average American

A few days ago I wrote a blog post critical of American notions of justice, of its legal system, and the attitudes of its lawyers. I had a few qualms about it, since I'm not American, and the longest time I spent in America was two weeks, back in 1995. What do I know about it?

Well, more than most Americans, it seems.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace for the ISI civic-literacy quiz:

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.

The result?

You answered 29 out of 33 correctly — 87.88 %

Thousands Protest After Wisconsin Governor Threatens to Deploy National Guard to Intimidate Unions | Moral Low Ground

They're rioting in Africa, there are earthquakes in New Zealand. It's all over the TV news channels. The US government has been expressing disapproval of an armed forces crackdown on demonstrators in Libya, but I had to turn to Russia Today to learn that the Governor of Wisconsin in the USA is threatening to use armed forces to intimidate demonstrators there, and that those protests have been going on for longer than the ones in Libya, but have gone largely unreported in the rest of the world.

Thousands Protest After Wisconsin Governor Threatens to Deploy National Guard to Intimidate Unions | Moral Low Ground:

ThinkProgress reports that Governor Walker has threatened to call out the National Guard if state workers resist his draconian rollback of their rights. Walker told a reporter that the Guard is “prepared… for whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for.” Veterans groups denounced the governor’s threat to use the National Guard, traditionally deployed to help citizens in times of natural disasters or other life-and-death emergencies, to settle personal scores. “Maybe the new governor doesn’t understand yet– but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force,” said Robin Eckstein, an Iraq War veteran, former Wisconsin National Guard member and member of the veterans group VoteVets.org.

I wonder if any National Guard members in Wisconsin will be defecting to Canada, as the Libyan Airforce pilots defected to Malta?

Where was that again?

I knew that many Americans had a poor knowledge of geography -- perhaps they don't teach it in school -- but I didn't realise it was this bad.

No wonder they haven't found Osama bin Laden after looking for more than 8 years.



Hat-tip to whoever sent this in an e-mail to my wife at work.

I gather that WGN9 is a broadcast station in Chicago.

You might be an American Evangelical if...

You might be an American Evangelical if:

10. T-shirts with Christian catch-phrases are a part of your evangelism strategy.

9. Your car is equipped with the ever-popular license plate frame that reads, "In case of rapture, the car is yours!"

8. You're convinced Jesus was a Republican.

7. Tim LaHaye's Left Behind book series is gospel truth.

6. Your favorite authors are Stormie Omartian and Joel Osteen.

5. Anyone who disagrees with you has taken the wide path.

4. You're convinced Sarah Palin has a bright future as a political candidate.

3. Your notion of God's purpose for your life happens to correspond nicely with upper middle-class suburban life.

2. You can't fit anymore music on your ipod because it's full of songs by John Tesh and Michael W. Smith.

1. You feel this post is alienating and abrasive, and your first inclination is to unsubscribe from this blog.

With acknowledgements to Christians in Context: from orthodoxy to orthopraxy.: Top Ten Marks of a Mainline Evangelical.

Tiananmen Square Is None of Your Business, Congress by Ron Paul

The US Congress recently debated a resolution condemning human rights abuses in China 20 years ago. At least one member of of their congress urges that they should be paying more attention to human rights abuses closer to home, and nearer to the present.

Tiananmen Square Is None of Your Business, Congress by Ron Paul:

While we certainly do not condone government suppression of individual rights and liberties wherever they may occur, why are we not investigating these abuses closer to home and within our jurisdiction? It seems the House is not interested in investigating allegations that US government officials and employees approved and practiced torture against detainees. Where is the Congressional investigation of the US-operated “secret prisons” overseas? What about the administration’s assertion of the right to detain individuals indefinitely without trial? It may be easier to point out the abuses and shortcomings of governments overseas than to address government abuses here at home, but we have the constitutional obligation to exercise our oversight authority in such matters. I strongly believe that addressing these current issues would be a better use of our time than once again condemning China for an event that took place some 20 years ago.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace

10 Reasons for Leaving the American Dream Behind

All over the internet you see these advertisements for "Green Cards" to emigrate to the USA. I'm not sure why they are advertising them, because you can apply for them free at any US consulate.

And here are ten reasons why people want to emigrate from the USA.

10 Reasons for Leaving the American Dream Behind ::

Bye-bye Miss American Pie. I am leaving soon. I still love you America … but, I think a long distance relationship suits us better. Why? Well, I’ve sat down and looked through my entire life in pursuit of the American Dream and this is what I’ve discovered

You'll have to visit the blog to see the reasons, and at least one of them might be a good reason for emigrating from South Africa -- a few years ago my wife was transferred by the firm she worked for to their Johannesburg head office and after a year she resigned, because she reckoned that over the next seven years she would spend a year of her life sitting in traffic jams. But you don't have to leave the country for that. I hear people are sometimes retiring to villages in the Karroo.

The paradox of the (US) religious right

Here's a very interesting article on the American religious right.

nourishing obscurity: [the christian right] and other paradoxes:

It is said that only 40 per cent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve per cent believe Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. This failure to recall the specifics of Christianity may be further evidence of the nation's educational decline but it probably doesn't matter all that much in spiritual or political terms.

Here is a statistic that does matter: 75 per cent of Americans believe the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves. That is, three out of four Americans believe that this notion, at the core of American politics and culture and which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, appears in Holy Scripture. And Franklin's homily is counterbiblical.

Some may wonder why the American religious right should be of interest to anyone other than Americans. One reason, perhaps is that because of the Internet and other forms of electronic communication the views of the American religious right have been disseminated throughout the world. Before about 1990 very few people outside the USA knew what they were thinking. There were books and magazine articles by and about them, and some radio broadcasts, but though we could read the text, the sub-text was not heard. With BBS conferences, newsgroups, chat-rooms and blogs this kind of thinking was revealed for the rest of the world to see.

James Higham of the Nourishing Obscurity blog refers to it as the "Christian Right", but I refer to it as the "religious right" because, as the article reveals, there is very little that is Christian about it.

What I have noticed is that it seems to be a kind of meta-religion among many Americans. I've seen similar sentiments expressed by people who claim to be Roman Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, "emerging" and Orthodox. Whatever their professed religion, its teaching are overridden by and subordinated to this metareligion, which, in Christian terms, must surely be seen as a kind of idolatry.

There are similar things in other parts of the world, of course. The difference is that they seem to have far less influence outside their own countries, and in some cases they have been influenced by US models.

On my bookshelf and in my "heresies" file I have some examples of publications by the South African religious right, which flourished in the apartheid era, though one still sees some echoes of it in some of the election posters that line our streets. Here's a quote from one of them:

Not only have we enemies on our borders -- we have them among us too.Apart from the categorical traitors, the liberals and the relativists, there are the "hands-uppers" -- those who would surrender us without resistance to our ruthless enemies. "Better red than dead" is their craven slogan. Our fate would then be that of Mocambique, which surrendered with little opposition.

That comes from a little booklet called Pray or perish by one Francis Grim, published in 1976. He published several other booklets in a similar vein, and all had one overriding theme -- that Christianity was reduced to being a mere means to an end. The end was to save the apartheid state from "communism".

So the American religious right is by no means unique. There's a movement called Pamyat in Russia that seems not dissimilar. But the American version has far more influence worldwide. So I recommend the article on James Higham's blog. It's worth a read.

The first and greatest commandment is this: God helps those who help themselves. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt not tax the rich to feed the poor. These two commandments override all the law and the prophets, and nothing in the Bible or the church fathers should be allowed to gainsay them.

Inauguration of US President Barack Obama

We watched the inauguration of US President Barack Obama on TV, and recorded it to watch again in 8 years time if I'm still around.

He made a good speech.

The orchestral music was significant in view of the theme of "change" - Simple gifts. The words were not sung, but for those who know them, they are perhaps significant:

'Tis the gift to be simple
'Tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
and when we find ourselves in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of joy and delight.

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and bend we shan't be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Which perhaps signals the end of American hubris. I hope so!

And there seemed to be an atmosphere of hope, similar to the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela here in 1994. It just felt like a similar atmosphere.

Of course hopes can be disappointed, and people perhaps have impossible expectations, which can never be fulfilled. But it's a bit like a wedding, of which Fr Alexander Schmemann said the grace and hope can be lost, perhaps in a single night, but the potential is still there.

Study finds more U.S. Orthodox Christian converts - USATODAY.com

Study finds more U.S. Orthodox Christian converts - USATODAY.com:

Although Orthodox churches were historically immigrant communities, the study found that nine out of 10 parishioners are now American-born. Thousands of members had converted to the faith as adults: 29% of Greek Orthodox are converts, as are 51% of the OCA.

'I would not have expected this many,' said Alexei Krindatch, the Orthodox Institute's research director. 'My sense was that in Greek Orthodox, it would be around 15%, and OCA maybe one-third.'

It would be interesting to see how that correlates with the language used in services. I suspect that more OCA parishes use English in their services.

Western re-think on Caucasian war?

Are Western countries beginning to doubt the wisdom of their rush to support Georgia in last months Caucasian conflict?

Did Saakashvili Lie?: The West Begins to Doubt Georgian Leader - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International:

But now the volume is being turned down on the anti-Moscow rhetoric. Last week German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier publicly called for clarification on the question of who is to blame for the Caucasus war. 'We do need to know more about who bears what portion of the responsibility for the military escalation and to what extent,' Steinmeier told a meeting of Germany's more than 200 ambassadors in Berlin. The European Union, he said, must now 'define our relations with the parties to the conflict for the medium and long term,' and that the time has come to have concrete information.

If there is a re-think going on, however, the signs are very faint -- "nuanced" as they like to say in academia.

Der Spiegel reports

But now, five weeks after the end of the war in the Caucasus, the winds have shifted in America. Even Washington is beginning to suspect that Saakashvili, a friend and ally, could in fact be a gambler -- someone who triggered the bloody five-day war and then told the West bold-faced lies. "The concerns about Russia have remained," says Paul Sanders, an expert on Russia and the director of the conservative Nixon Center in Washington. His words reflect the continuing Western assessment that Russia's military act of revenge against the tiny Caucasus nation Georgia was disproportionate, that Moscow violated international law by recognizing the separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, finally, that it used Georgia as a vehicle to showcase its imperial renaissance.

But there's no sign of any acknowledgement that Russia's response was no more "disproportionate" that Israel's attack on Lebanon in 2006, the US attacks on Iraq in 2003 and Yugoslavia in 1999, or the British attack on Argentina in 1982.

If Western hypocrisy is cracking, the cracks are still painted over.

Do Americans live in an alternative reality?

Perhaps I should have got used to it by now, but I am still sometimes astonished by American arrogance and ignorance.

An apparently serious article, in an apparently serious publication, has the heading "Russia is still Third World". How can one take seriously anything written by anyone who displays such appalling ignorance?

Today in Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news:

In Long Run, Russia Is Still Third World

BY RICHARD EBELING

Posted 9/5/2008

I was in Moscow just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and spent most of three days at the Russian Parliament building, watching as Boris Yeltsin, standing atop a tank, rallied thousands of fellow Russians to defend their emerging democracy against a then-in-progress coup attempt by Soviet hard-liners.

One can only assume that the writer arrived in Russia from another planet, from another galaxy, another universe, or an alternative reality.

Russia was never a Third World country.

The author witnessed one of the events that marked the end of the Cold War, but seems to be unaware of what the Cold War was all about.

The Cold War was between the West (First World) on the one side, and the East (Second World) on the other.

The "Third World" comprised those countries that were neutral in the Cold War. They refused to take sides, and were prepared to do business with both sides (sometimes playing one against the other to gain the advantage). The Third World, also known as the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) or the Afro-Asian Bloc, was founded by India, Indonesia and Yugoslavia.

Russia, on the other hand, was at that time part of the USSR, and was in fact the dominant country in the USSR, which was the leader of the Second World.

Now it seems that the media in both Russia and the USA are determined to fan the embers of the Cold War into a flame again, and so perhaps people like Ebeling are not so much ignorant as disingenuous, and are simply writing to confuse people about recent history in order to pave the way for another nuclear stand-off.

So perhaps it is time to recall the Cold War. Do we really want to return to those days?

The day God gave thee, man, is ending
The darkness falls at thy behest
Who spent thy little life defending
From conquest by the East, the West.

The sun that bids us live is waking
Behind the cloud that bids us die
And in the murk fresh minds are making
New plans to blow us all sky-high.

83 immigration detainees in the USA died in custody in 5 years

In South Africa immigrants have died at the hands of xenophobic mobs, rather than at the hands of government agencies.

clipped from www.democracynow.org In other news from Washington, two top Bush administration officials are expected to come under questioning today over the treatment of immigration prisoners in US custody. Several reports have emerged recently of detainee deaths and forcible injections of psychotropic drugs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other top Democrats will question Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Julie Myers. According to the Washington Post, eighty-three detainees have died in custody or soon after during the past five years.

Putin picks a church?

Another example of the truism that the media just don't "get" religion!

But this article from the New York Times is more than that. It illustrates some of the huge cultural barriers to understanding between Christians of different understandings and traditions, especially when they are filtered through nationalistic spectacles.

clipped from www.nytimes.com There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin. Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. Mr. Putin makes frequent appearances with the church’s leader, Patriarch Aleksei II, on the Kremlin-controlled national television networks. Last week, Mr. Putin was shown prominently accepting an invitation from Aleksei II to attend services for Russian Orthodox Easter, which is this Sunday.

There is an excellent cultural deconstruction of this article from an American Orthodox Christian, who has had some experience of both religious cultures (Orthodox and Protestant) and both national cultures (Russian and American) -- Notes from a Common-place Book: "Putin Picks a Church":

There are several problems with the story, however. For starters, the title itself is ludicrous: 'At Expense of Others, Putin Picks a Church.' I find this image of Putin choosing among churches as an American would shop between denominations to be amusing. Can you really imagine Vladimir Putin trying to decide between, say, the Freewill Baptists, or Missouri Synod Lutherans, or say the New Life Covenant Believers Outreach Center (or is it the New Covenant Believers Outreach Life Center?), rather than say, the Orthodox church which has been the faith of his nation and forebears for over 1,000 years now?

Another quote:

Others complain that some government bureaucrats and Orthodox priests do not show proper respect to Protestants, labeling them "sects" and "heretics." We are accustomed to making distinctions between the term "denomination" (which is acceptable) and "sect" (which is unacceptable). Many Americans assume our situation to be normative, and one that should be a model for less enlightened lands. We are too deep in the forest to see the truth behind the shopping mall this is American religiosity. Our situation is nothing short of bizarre. Russians see little substantive differences between denomination and sect. Why should we expect them to play our silly word games?

And of course the word games also work the other way:

Many Russians perceive it as alien to their culture. This suspicion was not helped when Western missionaries rushed in after the fall of communism. Eager evangelicals viewed the society as completely atheistic. To the extent that they were aware of Russian Orthodox Christians, they were dismissed as superstitious quasi-Catholics, who were not really Christian at all. I know, for I was an evangelical in those days. The Russian Orthodox Church, which had to begin rebuilding, retraining and teaching at that same time, was obviously frustrated by the crush of Western missionaries. But the situation is changing. The Church is resurgent in Russia today. Recent polls find that 71% of the nation considers themselves Orthodox. Studies also point out that there is something of a "baby boom" underway, and that with such, Russia may be slowing turning from the path of demographic suicide.

Lest it be thought that this is simply Orthodox prejudice, back in 1995 Prof Willem Saayman, the head of the Missiology Department at the University of South Africa and a Protestant, visited Russia in 1995, and on his return he said very emphatically that he thought Protestant missionaries from the West should be banned from Russia because of their cultural insensitivity and blatant cultural imperialism.

The Russian Church was like the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among thieves, and Western Christians came but, unlike the priest and the Levite in the story, they did not pass by on the other side, but rifled the victim's pockets while he was still unconscious to see what the robbers had left.

And it was not only Orthodox Christians who suffered from this process, Russian Protestants did as well. The story was told of one Protestant church where the congregation had not heard their own pastor preach for more than a year, because there were so many American visitors who were absolutely convinced that the Lord had laid a message on their hearts that they simply had to give that congregation.

For a Russian Protestant viewpoint on this process, see Mission in post-perestroika Russia by Johannes Reimer. Though the article is somewhat dated, it does give the background against which the present Russian suspicion of foreign Protestant mission groups needs to be seen.

One of the interesting thing about the rush of Western Protestant missionaries to the former Second World in the early 1990s is that quite a surprising number of them have become Orthodox. Something that impressed them was the faith of Orthodox Christians who had lived under atheist hegemony.

Back in the 1970s, when atheistic communism seemed well entrenched in the Second World, I met a Croatian Catholic priest at a Catholic charismatic prayer meeting in Durban. He remarked that everywhere he went in the West, Christians prayed for those behind the iron curtain, that they would have faith. "They may lack many things," he said, "but one thing they do not lack is faith. Their faith is far stronger than that of most of the Western Christians I have met."

Bush vetoes anti-torture bill

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush vetoes interrogation limits:

US President George Bush says he has vetoed legislation that would stop the CIA using interrogation methods such as simulated drowning or 'water-boarding'.

He said he rejected the intelligence bill, passed by Senate and Congress, as it took 'away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror'.

Need one say more?

Well, I could add this: Red Star Coven: Death to America

The Gaza bombshell

The hypocrisy of the USA is astounding. It recognises the "independence" of Kosovo led by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army), yet encourages boycotts of Hamas-led Gaza. It complains about genocide in Darfur, yet stands idly by while Israel rains cluster bombs on the children of Lebanon.

clipped from www.vanityfair.com After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever. The United States has been involved in the affairs of the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. With the 1993 Oslo accords, the territories acquired limited autonomy, under a president, who has executive powers, and an elected parliament. Israel retains a large military presence in the West Bank, but it withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

In the mean time

Earlier this week, American peace group Jewish Voice for Peace expressed outrage at the terrible loss of life in the latest escalation of violence in the Middle East in Gaza and Sderot. We also called for an immediate joint ceasefire, and an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza, which has barred food, medical supplies and fuel from an already desperately poor and malnourished 1.5 million Palestinians.

Today, we mourn the loss of 8 students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Jewish Voice for Peace believes the loss of just one person is one life too many. There is no difference in the immeasurable heartache felt by the parents of dozens of children killed in Gaza last week, or the parents of the 8 students killed yesterday in Jerusalem. All killings must stop.

Multiculturalism

There's an interesting discussion going on over at the alt.usage.english newsgroup.

Don Phillipson, of Carlsbad Springs, Ottawa, Canada, asks:

Citations are requested for the first uses of "multiculturalism" by governmental officials or politicians in Europe (inc. Britain) and the USA, preferably with enough context to indicate the meaning of the noun (or adj. multicultural.)

My tentative thesis is that this word entered contemporary politics in Canada (Multiculturalism Act 1971) and was then taken up in Europe (by Britain and by other countries that operate in French, German, Dutch, etc.) where its meanings were different: and ultimately in the USA where meanings were different again, whence it returned to Canada to function in ways unforeseen in 1971.

Most obviously, as legislated in Canada in 1971, "multiculturalism" had nothing to do with race (skin colour) or with immigrants. (It was a strictly local response to Canadians of "other ethnic groups" who told the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism that, because their ancestry was non-French and non-British and they did not see themselves as either "English Canadians" or "French Canadians," they were apprehensive that public anxiety about B&B topics should not mean they were "second-class citizens. The largest language groups voicing this concern were German, Polish and Ukrainian: i.e. the people were all "white" and mostly Canadian-born.)

In Europe e.g. Britain, "multiculturalism" was associated less with long-recognized white "races" (e.g. Scotch, Welsh, Irish) but with first-generation immigrants from Asia and Africa i.e. "visible minorities." In the USA "multiculturalism" was subtly different again, because there were new "visible minority" communities (e.g. from Korea and SE Asia) but also long-settled Hispanic and black communities. Most obviously, the largest visible minority in the USA was black Americans who had been settled in America for 200+ years and who had recently been engaged in the
Civil Rights movement, a significant social revolution.

Thus the "multiculturalism" associated nowadays with all-black US TV situation comedies is substantially different from that of (say) Turkish or South American
communities in Europe: and wholly different again from the concerns in 1971 of Canadians of Greek or Portuguese or Lebanese ancestry: and the word today in Canada is powerfully guided by American ideas based in demographic features that do not occur in Canada (i.e. the concept has completed a circle, during which its
meaning has changed.)

In order to test this thesis, it would be useful to have citations of the first official uses of the word "multicultural" in various places, e.g. Britain, Denmark, the USA, as well as current meanings.

My response:

I'm unable to give any "official" citations, though I'll note any if I find them and report them.

A purely impressionistic observation (from reading newsgroups and other electronic forums) is that in South Africa it tends to be primarily descriptive (South Africa is a multicultural country) and multiculturalism is the state of being multicultural, whereas in the USA and UK it seems to be regarded as prescriptive, since many people seem to object to multiculturalism.

To this South African, at least, objections to multiculturalism sound racist, and a demand for a return to apartheid thinking, which was the idea that a multicultural society was highly undesirable, and that therefore different ethnic/cultural groups MUST be separated, and could not possibly live together, be educated together, or marry each other.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on the matter? What do "multicultural" and "multiculturalism" mean to you?

Night of the living dead

With Vladimir Putin apparently being cast in the role of an evil vampire by so many, I thought that this was a good and succinct explanation:

Notes from a Common-place Book: "Vladimir Putin. His only crime, that I can see, is putting his own country's interests ahead of the Bush administration, and of course, being right about so many things he warned against in the lead-up to our invasion of Iraq."