Not What I Think

20180405

School smoking ceremonies

When I went to school a smoking ceremony was a bunch of louts up the back having a fag, then after being found out, being wacked for it. You didn't used to be able to smoke in schools.

Now you can, as long as its an aboriginal smoking ceremony.

Here's a letter you can use at your school too:

Dear Chief Medicine Man,

Please excuse [children's names] from attending the smoking ceremony to be conducted as part of harmony day.

Burning wood and leaf matter can emit the following toxic chemicals: acenaphthene, fluorene, phenanthrene, anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benz[a]anthracene, chrysene,m benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene, benzo[a]pyrene, dibenz[a,h]anthracene, benzo[g,h,i]perylene, indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene.

Given [children’s names] propensity to react to unusual chemical exposure it would be unsafe to expose them to the risk of inhaling any of these compounds.

Additionally, the smoking ceremony is an animist religious ceremony. I hope the school will balance it by holding Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Christian blessing or equivalent ceremonies. I also hope the school will point out that this is a religious ceremony and it represents a superstitious and scientifically uninformed worldview to which we do not subscribe.

If the school management does not believe in evil spirits, its endorsement of smoking ceremonies is cynical and insulting to Aborigines. It reinforces a patronising perception of Aborigines as quaint curios, picturesque Stone Age relics lost in their own dreamtime, a people divorced from the rest of a nation that ought to belong to everyone who lives in it.