ELL: Mammoth Jujubes: Who's Funding You? Mother nature?

[Mike Lawrence]

The fundys, those creatures of bays and inlets, are at
it(yawn) once again. I'm refering to 'chalk talk' so
well known around college campuses this time of year.
It's usually a plea, a challenge of some kind,
christian, religious-passionate in nature. Well,
universities likely got their start with funding from
somewhere, but to feel guilty for it's beginnings is
like feeling guilty for having an alimentary drive.

Make no mistake, for those languages included in the
category of endangered, it is about erasure and
replacement, as we have an example in Inupiaq:

Carillon, August 16, 2002

'University of Colorado Researchers Excavate Mammoth
Skull and Tusks,'

...more than 10,000 years ago in what was once a
freshwater spring near Roxborough State Park....an
intact young female mammoth....'

Ah, yes. And she is huge.

Inupiaq kiligvak 'mastodon,' seems to be a word that
underwent some changes as they regard contact with
white-eyes. Kiligvak, pronounced ki-lyig-vuk is
without accent (something unusual as it relates to the
language). Kiligvak was Anglicized to Killigivuk, the
'new' version. Notice the fear-word 'kill', and the
penetration of a consonant, the mutation of a vowel.
Delirious.

More profoundly, Kellog is a place in Siberia, a
traditionally-known shamanic place. As I mentioned
before as Buddhism entered China, shamans began to
have economic problems. With christainity introducing
money in New Guinea during intense evangelization, so
too we watch both hands in the shell game: See Inupiaq
dictionary for more pathologies, especially where the
mastodon should be alphabetically, and where
pastoralism introduces a gap on either side of which
is the 'hunting' of sin. I will post the excerpt about
erasure and replacement, a tactic of organized
religion, later.

That Neolithic priestly invention, resentment is
always a part of this erasure machine. In what was
known as Russian America, the Eyak people were
basically ignored by American anthropologists and
linguists for 125 years as their numbers steadily
declined, signalling the irreplaceable loss of
cultural diversity. The Eyak shamans tossed bones, and
likely there were some Eyaks who wore labrets. That
would be one way to mutate pronunciation.

If I were an Eyak shaman and I noticed the one-bookers
coming my way with tape recorders, I'd quickly
innovate a labret that would do calisthenics in my
mouth. Conversely, the missionary has much trouble in
realizing the calisthenic value of a kow-tow.

Prognostication. Perhaps church and state's worst
nightmare. Unfortunate, yet, let's press on: See
Ulufudu, Zulu Bone Oracle, Berkeley: Wingbow press,
1983.

The idea of a giant trampoline is not a new one in
Siberia, known to eskimos as well. But more
profoundly, we see its primal roots in Zulu shamanic
medicine and 'religion.'

'juju obs. ideo. [>jujuboza] of hurling, tossing
jujnu (injuju, izinjuju) n. species of flowering herb,
Silene burchelli'

....but here used as a verb!:
'jujubezwa, jujubezana, umjujubezelo 1. hurl far 2.
toss up and down
umjijimezelo hurling to a distance'
[Zulu-English Dictionary, Johannesburg: University
Press, 1958(printed in great britain)]

Interestingly, we have some Yaqui resonance as well,
in the word wewelo, 'I am(only) sending out vines in
all directions.'
[Yaqui Deer Dance, II] Notice the
self-checking-of-the-ego style in the syntax.

The Zulu word ulu is an archaism, no longer used nor
attested in the literature. Another(yawn)
disappearance. But uli is a proto-world word
semantically close to 'water, life.'




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